NCW Libraries

The son of a sharecropper, Will Allen had no intention of ever becoming a farmer himself. But after years in professional basketball and as an executive for KFC and Procter Shamble, Will Allen cashed in his retirement fund for a two-acre plot a half mile away from Milwaukee's largest public housing project. The area was a food desert, with only convenience stores and fast-food restaurants to serve the needs of local residents. In the face of financial...

Explains how drones help farmers maximize efficiencies and bring abundant harvests.

Managing Crops and livestock in a changing climate creates unprecedented challenges for North American food producers. Resilient Agriculture explores the solution in sustainable agriculture by blending the experiences of award-winning farmers and ranchers with a comprehensive review of the latest sciences on climate risk, adaptation and resilience to examine: The Opportunities and complexities created by rising temperature, a lengthening growing season...

"Big farms need big machines, and crop sprayers are some of the biggest. Farmers use these timesaving devices to spread substances such as fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides on their crops. While readers learn about the different kinds of crop sprayers, their many parts, and their importance to the farm industry, they'll be impressed by the colorful photographs of the machines in action -- including one in the air!"--Publisher's website.

Urban and rural collide in this wry, inspiring memoir of a woman who turned a vacant lot in downtown Oakland into a thriving farm. When Novella Carpenter -- captivated by the idea of backyard self-sufficiency as the daughter of two back-to-the-earth hippies -- moves to a ramshackle house in inner-city Oakland and discovers a weed-choked, garbage-strewn abandoned lot next door, she closes her eyes and pictures heirloom tomatoes, a beehive, and a chicken...

Due to a burgeoning sustainable-living movement, you don't have to own acreage to fulfill your dream of raising your own food. This book walks every city and suburban dweller down the path of self-sustainability. It introduces the concepts of gardening and farming from high-rise apartment, participating in a community garden, vertical farming, and converting terraces and other small city spaces into fruitful, vegetable real estate. This volume answers...

"Bill McKibben is not a person you'd expect to find handcuffed in the city jail in Washington, D.C. But that's where he spent three days in the summer of 2011, after leading the largest civil disobedience in thirty years to protest the Keystone XL pipeline. A few months later the protesters would see their efforts rewarded when President Obama agreed to put the project on hold. And yet McKibben realized that this small and temporary victory was at...

An account of all the new and surprising evidence now available for the beginnings of the earliest civilizations that contradict the standard narrative. Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains, and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and...