Daniel Imhoff and Jo Ann Baumgartner (eds.): Farming and the Fate of Wild Nature: Essays in Conservation-Based Agriculture

Abstract

Through the collaboration between the Wild Food Alliance and Watershed Media, this collection of essays was published in 2006 to ‘‘provide the scientific, philosophical, economic, and cultural underpinnings for an emerging movement, conservation-based agriculture.’’ (p. v). The collection seeks to address two questions: How much wildness can a farm or ranching operation support and still remain economically viable? And how much agriculture can take place in an area and still support optimal levels of biodiversity? While it is not clear that the collection directly answers these questions, posing them, and introducing the issues involved makes an interesting, provocative and important contribution to the agriculture literature. The editors seek to distinguish conservation-based agriculture from the more well-known sustainable agriculture by stating that sustainable agriculture, particularly in the form of organic production, ‘‘has fallen short of deep reforms because it has failed to adequately address the interconnections between farms, ranches, and the landscapes that support them’’ (p. vi). This is a bit of an overreach. In fact, site-specific approaches to promote a diversity of crops, livestock and landscapes are core principles of sustainable agriculture. Sustainable agriculture is about holistic approaches where crops and livestock are pursued as part of a greater system that includes natural landscapes and resources, communities, livelihoods and human well-being. It is true however, as the editor’s note, that sustainable agriculture does not often explicitly include ‘‘wild bio-diversity.’’ As the sustainable agriculture movement made Americans take a step back from their plates and question what goes into growing their foods, the farming-with nature movement, as described in this collection, will make us take an even longer view of that process by examining how much wildness can coexist with our food system. Until now the answer has been ‘‘none.’’ While the introduction mentions a previous collection by The Wild Farm Alliance on the topic, we are not aware of similar books. Consequently, this present collection may serve to introduce the topic to the general public. However, the book is best suited to be read by scholars and writers who will use it as research in articles intended for sustainable agriculture/mainstream farm and non-farm publications. This would be a fine text for college classes in nature writing or environmental sciences, as well as in American history classes. Although the writing in the collection is good, we found that some of the most famous writers (Wendell Berry and Barbara Kingsolver) had the least readable essays. Each of the authors is credible for addressing their topics, which range from the wide views such as a history of North American settlement and its effect on predators to an examination of why organic thinking isn’t enough (Kirschenmann and Gould) to specific instances of water restrictions at a dam killing thousands of salmon (Williams). The second half of the book is particularly interesting in that it tells the stories of individuals and groups who are already helping to restore biodiversity on the continent. One of the most interesting chapters is by Laura Jackson (The Farmer as Conservationist?) who is a biology professor at the University of North Iowa at Cedar Falls. Her essay J. Jordan (&) Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Georgia-Griffin, Griffin, GA 30223-1797, USA e-mail: jjordan@uga.edu