13 Great Books on Food & Farming

These books have shaped my understanding of the highly consequential world of Food & Farming

The following is a list of books that have gone far to shape my outlook on Food & Farming. I invite you to peruse these titles and read one or more as time permits. Each title has a description after it, and some include a link to a video. All but one are available on audio. Some will be available at your public library.

I hope you find this helpful!

Here is the list of Recommended Books.

1. Dirt to Soil, by Gabe Brown. This is one farmer’s journey from conventional to regenerative agriculture. Gabe’s four successive years of crop failures make for a compelling story, worth retelling, especially because the solution, The Five Principles of Soil Health, is equally memorable. Here is one of the author’s best YouTube videos: Treating the Farm as an Ecosystem with Gabe Brown Part 1, The 5 Tenets of Soil Health

2. What Your Food Ate, by David Montgomery and Anne Bickle. This is the story of how nutrients flow from soil to plants to animals to people, presented in clear, compelling language. Here is my interview with the author. David R. Montgomery, PhD | "What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health"

3. Restoration Agriculture, by Mark Shepard. This book will convince you that farming can change our world by cleaning our water, saving our soil and providing habitat for wildlife. Author Mark Shepard is a trained ecologist and a Wisconsin farmer who has put theory into practice. Here is one of the author’s best videos: Homestead Paradise: got barren land, boosted it at a profit

4. Defending Beef, by Nicolette Hahn Niman. Environmental lawyer married a rancher. She was a vegetarian when she wrote the first edition of the book. This is an excellent report on both the environmental impact and health considerations surrounding beef.

5. A Bold Return to Giving a Damn, by Will Harris, owner of White Oak Pastures, which is now in its sixth generation on the south Georgia cattle farm. Will Harris is straight talking and colorful. This is the story of one man’s conversion from industrial agriculture and the struggle to create a profitable farm while caring for the land.

6. Teaming with Microbes, by Jeff Lowenfels. This Alaska lawyer and garden columnist has written four short books which convey the latest scientific findings in the exciting, relevant and rapidly changing field of soil biology.

7. Sacred Cow, by Diane Rodgers and Robb Wolf. This is the most well-researched book I have read from a nutritional perspective. A methodical march through all the health and nutritional considerations, especially as it relates to the choice to eat meat. This is an important choice about which misinformation typically prevails, in my opinion.

8. Cows Save the Planet, by Judith D. Schwartz. This is the place to start if you are ready to understand how our climate really works, from the ground up. We would be well advised to understand how soil and water drive climate change, as told by my friend Judy Schwartz. Chapter 4, “The Return of Lost Water,” completely re-engineered my understanding of our climate.

9. Kiss the Ground, by Josh Tickell. This book tells the story of American farming so as to provide a compelling rationale for change. Chapter 2, “Nazis and Nitrogen,” provides a compelling account of the forces that transformed American agriculture in the post-WWII period. Here is the documentary based on the book. Kiss the Ground Documentary (YouTube).

10. Whitewash, by Carey Gillam. The story of glyphosate, the world’s most “popular” weed killer. The author follows the people who have fallen ill and the companies that made off with the profits. Awareness of a problem is half the solution. Most citizens lack the requisite awareness.

11. Folks This Ain’t Normal, by Joel Salatin. This is the story about how modern life is abnormal, from a historical perspective, starting with the extravagant use of fossil fuel energy, and flowing into our toys, our lifestyle and our food production system. From farming to food to how we build and heat our homes, this Virginia farmer will help you appreciate what we have and wonder how long it could last.

12. Hoofprints on the Land, by Ilse Kohler-Rollefson, a German veterinarian who fell in love with the herding peoples of the world and writes a compelling account of how we need these hundreds of millions of people and their animals who benefit the land and grow uniquely healthy food, such as camel milk.

13. Cadillac Desert, by Marc Reisner. The compelling story of water projects in the West. Colorful characters, dirty politics, dam bursts and publicly funded water projects that make no economic sense. With multimillion dollar projects that make irrigated farmland (temporarily) possible in the West, while inundating perfectly good farmland in the East, water projects seem to be driven by a monomaniacal urge to subdue our rivers. This story remains relevant because water supplies are running out in geographic regions that currently provide much of our food. Here is a related video: Cadillac Desert (YouTube).

There you have it, my list of highly recommended books related to Food & Farming.