Kategoria BISAC: Business & Economics >> Industries - Agribusiness

This book sets out to investigate the process of agrarian change from new angles and with new results. It starts on firm ground rather than from abstract economic theory. Upon its initial appearance, it was heralded as "a small masterpiece, which economic historians should read--and not simply quote"--Giovanni Frederico, Economic History Services.

The Conditions of Agricultural Growth remains a breakthrough in the theory of agricultural development. In linking ethnography with economy, developmental studies reached new heights. Whereas "development" had been seen previously...

"Anyone who wants a thorough understanding of the history of the region must read this book." R. Douglas Hurt, author of Problems of Plenty: The American
Farmer in the Twentieth Century

This meticulously researched book tells the story of Midwestern agriculture during a period of epochal change in farm technology, farm management, and farm life. The hard work, tight communities, and values that had characterized the family farm were replaced by large corporate enterprises with massive acreages, high-tech methods, and global outlooks. While many decry this change as loss, Nordin...

The Nature of the Farm is a theoretical and empirical study of contracts and organization in agriculture based on the transaction cost framework. Transaction costs are important in agriculture because nature (for example, seasonality, weather, pests) plays such a critical role in determining output and limiting the ability of farmers to specialize. The book develops specific models and tests the implications of those models against data sets from across North American agriculture, as well as against historical case studies such as eighteenth-century European land contracts and the...

It is easy to feel overwhelmed and depressed by all the threats facing modern agriculture--threats to the environment, to the health and safety of our food, to the economic and cultural viability of farmers and rural communities. Hundreds of thousands of farmers leave their farms every year as the juggernaut of "big agriculture" plows across our rural landscape. But there are viable alternatives to big agriculture, as many farmers and others involved in agriculture, including consumers, are discovering. In Farming for Us All Michael Mayerfeld Bell offers crucial insight into the...

The business of food and drink is for better and worse the business of our nation and our planet, and to most consumers how it works remains largely a mystery. This encyclopedia takes readers as consumers behind the scenes of the food and drink industries. The contributors come from a wide range of fields, and the scope of this encyclopedia is broad, covering from food companies and brands to the environment, health, science and technology, culture, finance, and more. The more than 150 essay entries also cover those issues that have been and continue to be of perennial importance....

Food security and sustainability are arguably the most important issues facing the agri-food sector at the beginning of a new millennium. In an era of globalization, where nation states appear to have a diminishing role in governing these matters, the existing and emerging power relations underpinning agri-food regulation demand renewed scholarly attention.

Drawing upon the expertise of some of the most prominent writers in rural sociology, geography and anthropology, this book shows how globalization processes open up a new regulatory politics in which non-political forms of...

Of the plant species, woody plants are producing the most abundant biomass resources, playing important roles in the suppression of carbon dioxide increase and supplying huge...

Engagingly written and richly illustrated, Putting Meat on the American Table explains how America became a meat-eating nation--from the colonial period to the present. It examines the relationships between consumer preference and meat processing--looking closely at the production of beef, pork, chicken, and hot dogs.

Roger Horowitz argues that a series of new technologies have transformed American meat. He draws on detailed consumption surveys that shed new light on America's eating preferences--especially differences associated with income, rural versus urban areas, and...

Both horrified and fascinated by a visit with his geography students to the Canada Packers Lethbridge plant, Ian MacLachlan searched for a book that would explain the main features of the Canadian meat packing industry. Finding very little available, he set about writing an account of the industry that is both an economic geography and economic history.

Comprehensive in its treatment of the whole system surrounding the Canadian beef industry, Kill and Chill offers a history of the structural changes in Canada's cattle and beef commodity chain, beginning with calf production and...