Library Catalog
On the Shelf at CCBC Libraries
The Fate of Food by
In the fascinating story of the sustainable food revolution, an environmental journalist and professor asks the question: Is the future of food looking bleak--or better than ever? "In The Fate of Food, Amanda Little takes us on a tour of the future. The journey is scary, exciting, and, ultimately, encouraging."--Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction Climate models show that global crop production will decline every decade for the rest of this century due to drought, heat, and flooding. Water supplies are in jeopardy. Meanwhile, the world's population is expected to grow another 30 percent by midcentury. So how, really, will we feed nine billion people sustainably in the coming decades? Amanda Little, a professor at Vanderbilt University and an award-winning journalist, spent three years traveling through a dozen countries and as many U.S. states in search of answers to this question. Her journey took her from an apple orchard in Wisconsin to a remote control organic farm in Shanghai, from Norwegian fish farms to famine-stricken regions of Ethiopia. The race to reinvent the global food system is on, and the challenge is twofold: We must solve the existing problems of industrial agriculture while also preparing for the pressures ahead. Through her interviews and adventures with farmers, scientists, activists, and engineers, Little tells the fascinating story of human innovation and explores new and old approaches to food production while charting the growth of a movement that could redefine sustainable food on a grand scale. She meets small permaculture farmers and "Big Food" executives, botanists studying ancient superfoods and Kenyan farmers growing the country's first GMO corn. She travels to places that might seem irrelevant to the future of food yet surprisingly play a critical role--a California sewage plant, a U.S. Army research lab, even the inside of a monsoon cloud above Mumbai. Little asks tough questions: Can GMOs actually be good for the environment--and for us? Are we facing the end of animal meat? What will it take to eliminate harmful chemicals from farming? How can a clean, climate-resilient food supply become accessible to all? Throughout her journey, Little finds and shares a deeper understanding of the threats of climate change and encounters a sense of awe and optimism about the lessons of our past and the scope of human ingenuity.
Call Number: HD9000.5 .L57 2019
We Are the Weather by
In We Are the Weather, Jonathan Safran Foer explores the central global dilemma of our time in a surprising, deeply personal, and urgent new way. Some people reject the fact, overwhelmingly supported by scientists, that our planet is warming because of human activity. But do those of us who accept the reality of human-caused climate change truly believe it? If we did, surely we would be roused to act on what we know. Will future generations distinguish between those who didn't believe in the science of global warming and those who said they accepted the science but failed to change their lives in response? The task of saving the planet will involve a great reckoning with ourselves--with our all-too-human reluctance to sacrifice immediate comfort for the sake of the future. We have, he reveals, turned our planet into a farm for growing animal products, and the consequences are catastrophic. Only collective action will save our home and way of life. And it all starts with what we eat--and don't eat--for breakfast.
Call Number: SF140.C57 F64 2019
Clean Meat by
Paul Shapiro gives you a front-row seat for the wild story of the race to create and commercialize cleaner, safer, sustainable meat--real meat--without the animals. From the entrepreneurial visionaries to the scientists' workshops to the big business boardrooms--Shapiro details that quest for clean meat and other animal products and examines the debate raging around it. Since the dawn of Homo sapiens some quarter million years ago, animals have satiated our species' desire for meat. But with a growing global population and demand for meat, eggs, dairy, leather, and more, raising such massive numbers of farm animals is woefully inefficient and takes an enormous toll on the planet, public health, and certainly the animals themselves. But what if we could have our meat and eat it, too? The next great scientific revolution is underway--discovering new ways to create enough food for the world's ever-growing, ever-hungry population. Enter clean meat--real, actual meat grown (or brewed!) from animal cells--as well as other clean foods that ditch animal cells altogether and are simply built from the molecule up. Also called lab-grown meat, cultured meat, or cell-based meat, this race promises promise to bring about another domestication. Whereas our ancestors domesticated wild animals into livestock, today we're beginning to domesticate their cells, leaving the animals out of the equation. From one single cell of a cow, you could feed an entire village. And the story of this coming "second domestication" is anything but tame.
Call Number: TX838 .S53 2018
Pig Tales by
Barry Estabrook, author of the New York Times bestseller Tomatoland and a writer of "great skill and compassion" (Eric Schlosser), now explores the dark side of the American pork industry. Drawing on his personal experiences raising pigs as well as his sharp investigative instincts, Estabrook covers the range of the human-porcine experience. He embarks on nocturnal feral pig hunts in Texas. He visits farmers who raise animals in vast confinement barns for Smithfield and Tyson, two of the country's biggest pork producers. And he describes the threat of infectious disease and the possible contamination of our food supply. Through these stories shines Estabrook's abiding love for these remarkable creatures. Pigs are social, self-aware, and playful, not to mention smart enough to master the typical house dog commands of "sit, stay, come" twice as fast as your average pooch. With the cognitive abilities of at least three-year-olds, they can even learn to operate a modified computer. Unfortunately for the pigs, they're also delicious to eat.Estabrook shows how these creatures are all too often subjected to lives of suffering in confinement and squalor, sustained on a drug-laced diet just long enough to reach slaughter weight, then killed on mechanized disassembly lines. But it doesn't have to be this way. Pig Tales presents a lively portrait of those farmers who are taking an alternative approach, like one Danish producer that has a far more eco-friendly and humane system of pork production, and new, small family farms with free-range heritage pigs raised on antibiotic-free diets. It is possible to raise pigs responsibly and respectfully in a way that is good for producers, consumers, and some of the top chefs in America.Provocative, witty, and deeply informed, Pig Tales is bound to spark conversation at dinner tables across America.
Call Number: HD9435 .E68 2015Publication Date: 2015
Databases
- ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
Articles on any subject. This is a good place to start.
- Science Direct This link opens in a new window
Articles from journals on science, technology and medicine for advanced research.
- Environment Complete This link opens in a new window
Articles about ecology, energy, natural resources, science, technology, law, public policy, and social impacts.
Tools You Will Need
Find Locally Grown Foods
- Farm Alliance of Baltimore
A vibrant collective of urban farms. - Maryland's Best
Linking Maryland farmers with consumers - Homegrown Baltimore
from Baltimore Office of Sustainability
Associations
- CUESA (Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture)
CUESA is dedicated to cultivating a sustainable food system through the operation of farmers markets and educational programs
What Foods are Local to Maryland?
- Maryland-Grown Foods
from Maryland Department of Agriculture
Online From CCBC Libraries
Living Green by
This book makes "green living," as it relates to teens and young adults, an approachable subject. The information and resources it comprises make it valuable for anyone who is interested in living a more sustainable and environmentally friendly life. Our actions have a powerful impact on the environment: how we heat and cool our homes, the types of cars we drive, and even the foods we consume all contribute to the health of the planet. Living Green: Your Questions Answered, an installment in Greenwood's Q&A Health Guides series, provides clear, concise answers to readers' questions about living a more eco-conscious life. In addition to explaining fundamental concepts such as carbon footprint, climate change, and sustainability, this book offers practical steps readers can take in their everyday lives to reduce their environmental impact across a number of areas, including energy usage, transportation, food and water, and even fashion and personal care products. Each book in this series follows a reader-friendly question-and-answer format that anticipates readers' needs and concerns. Prevalent myths and misconceptions are identified and dispelled, and a collection of case studies illustrates key concepts and issues through relatable stories and insightful recommendations. The book also includes a section on health literacy, equipping teens and young adults with practical tools and strategies for finding, evaluating, and using credible sources of health information both on and off the internet--important skills that contribute to a lifetime of healthy decision-making. * Makes the subject accessible to readers by means of a simple Q&A format * Helps readers hone their research and critical thinking skills in a Guide to Health Literacy section * Provides real-world examples of concepts discussed in the book through case studies * Dispels popular misconceptions in a Common Myths section and directs readers towards accurate information * Points readers towards additional books, organizations, and websites for further study and research in an annotated directory of resources
ISBN: 1440859825Publication Date: 2018
The Climate Nexus by
Secure supplies of water, food and energy are essential to human dignity and well-being around the globe. Their vitality is dependent on healthy ecosystems supporting thriving biodiversity. All four elements are inter-related in that actions to govern one will automatically affect the others -- known as the Nexus. Global demand for the first three elements is increasing due to population growth and rising per capital incomes in developing countries, with steadily worsening results for the fourth. The Nexus elements are also subject to increasing pressures from climate disruption in the form of more frequent and severe flooding, droughts, storms, pest outbreaks, and extreme heat. Nature's capacity to moderate these impacts is also being eroded by rapid, widespread land use development and associated pollution. The combination of increasing demand, decreasing supplies, and rapidly changing hydro-climatic conditions at all points of the Nexus requires transformative policy responses that encompass economy, equity, social justice, fairness, and the environment. The Climate Nexus outlines these challenges and offers a pathway to resolving them.
Publication Date: 2016
Introduction to the US Food System by
A public health approach to the US food system Introduction to the US Food System: Public Health,Environment, and Equity is a comprehensive and engagingtextbook that offers students an overview of today's US foodsystem, with particular focus on the food system'sinterrelationships with public health, the environment, equity, andsociety. Using a classroom-friendly approach, the text covers thecore content of the food system and provides evidence-basedperspectives reflecting the tremendous breadth of issues and ideasimportant to understanding today's US food system. The book is richwith illustrative examples, case studies, activities, anddiscussion questions. The textbook is a project of the Johns Hopkins Center for aLivable Future (CLF), and builds upon the Center's educationalmission to examine the complex interrelationships between diet,food production, environment, and human health to advance anecological perspective in reducing threats to the health of thepublic, and to promote policies that protect health, the globalenvironment, and the ability to sustain life for futuregenerations. Issues covered in Introduction to the US Food Systeminclude food insecurity, social justice, community and workerhealth concerns, food marketing, nutrition, resource depletion, andecological degradation. Presents concepts on the foundations of the US food system,crop production, food system economics, processing and packaging,consumption and overconsumption, and the environmental impacts offood Examines the political factors that influence food and how itis produced Ideal for students and professionals in many fields, includingpublic health, nutritional science, nursing, medicine, environment,policy, business, and social science, among others Introduction to the US Food System presents a broad viewof today's US food system in all its complexity and providesopportunities for students to examine the food system's stickiestproblems and think critically about solutions.
Publication Date: 2014
Eating Earth by
Exploring the environmental effects of animal agriculture, fishing, and hunting, Eating Earth exposes critical common ground between earth and animal advocacy. The first chapter (animal agriculture) examines greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, manure and dead zones, freshwater depletion, deforestation, predator control, land and use--including the ranching industries public lands subsidies. Chapter two first examines whether or not the consumption of fish is healthy and outlines morally relevant aspects of fish physiology, then scrutinizes the fishing industry, documenting the "silent collapse" of ocean ecosystems and calling attention to the indiscriminate nature of hooks and nets, including the problem of bycatch and what this means for endangered species and fragile seascapes. Chapter three outlines the historic link between the U. S. Government, wildlife management, and hunters, then systematically unravels common beliefs about sport hunting, such as the belief that hunters are essential to wildlife conservation, that contemporary hunting qualifies as a tradition, and that hunting is merciful, economical, or rooted in "fair chase." At the end of each chapter, Kemmerer examines possible solutions to problems presented, such as sustainable meats, organic and local, grass fed, aquaculture, new fishing technologies, and enhanced regulations. Eating Earth offers a concise examination of the environmental effects of dietary choice, clearly presenting the many reasons why dietary choice ought to be front and center for environmentalists. Kemmerer's writing, supported by nearly 80 graphs and summary slides, is clear, straightforward, and punctuated with wry humor.
Publication Date: 2014
Toolkit by
One-third of all food produced in the world is lost or wasted from farm to fork, according to estimates calculated by FAO (2011). This wastage not only has an enormous negative impact on the global economy and food availability, it also has major environmental impacts. The direct economic cost of food wastage of agricultural products (excluding fish and seafood), based on producer prices only, is about 750 billion USD, equivalent to the GDP of Switzerland. The aim of the Toolkit is to showcase concrete examples of good practices for food loss and waste reduction, while pointing to information sources, guidelines and pledges favouring food wastage reduction. The inspirational examples featured throughout this Toolkit demonstrate that everyone, from individual households and producers, through governments, to large food industries, can make choices that will ultimately lead to sustainable consumption and production patterns, and thus, a better world for all.
Publication Date: 2013
Find Access to Healthy Foods
- Hungry Harvest
Rescued Produce.
Delivered! Farm to door for 20% less than grocery. - CSAs Serving Baltimore
From Local Harvest
