Investigative food journalist Barry Estabrook reveals the huge human and environmental cost of the $5 billion fresh tomato industry and the price we pay as a society when we take taste and thought out of our food purchases.

"Do you want to provide fresh produce for your family through backyard gardening? Do you wish to build an affordable, sustainable, regenerative, resilient, low-maintenance and abundant garden? Permaculture makes the most use of what nature provides for us by using specific designs strategies to maximize nature’s gifts such as food, energy, and shelter. A counter to heavy industrial farming, permaculture is all about conscious planning that caters...

Agriculture has the discipline of ecology and evolutionary biology to help us produce food in properly functioning ecosystems. All visions of a sustainable or resilient society must rely on renewable resources. Other spheres of human activity do not have that advantage. Agriculture, broadly defined, may be the only artifact in current civilization where that potential resides.

"Modern farming allows us to buy almost any kind of food at any time of the year. But this convenience comes at a cost. This important book shows how we can farm and grow food without harming the planet. Case studies show how scientists are investigatingways to prevent the problems modern farming creates, including pollution from chemicals used for growing crops, clear cutting of rainforests to make space for grazing and farmland, and contributing...