• Authors: Helena Norberg-Hodge, Peter Goering and John Page
• Publisher: Local Futures/ ISEC & Zed Books, 2000
• Length: 120 pages
• Paperback with b&w photos

Modern industrial agriculture is in crisis. In our obsession with 'efficiency' and short-term profit, we are losing all real connection with the natural world. As a result, the dream of global abundance promised by the introduction of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and hybrid seeds is becoming a nightmare of health risks, degraded land and ailing communities. The way we produce our food is destructive and quite simply unsustainable.

From the Ground Up: Rethinking Industrial Agriculture sets the decline of agriculture within the broader context of industrialization as a whole, and explores some of the fundamental principles which underlie the 'growth-at-any-cost' thinking of modern society. At the same time, it documents the growing public distrust of conventional agricultural practices, and highlights some of the most promising alternatives leading to more sane, environmentally healthy ways of producing food.

This book is a valuable reference for those concerned with the future of agriculture - in the industrialized countries as well as the Global South, where agricultural development continues to be modeled on the industrial ideal.

Endorsements:

'A superb overview… Not only details the cul-de-sac into which industrialized agriculture has taken us, but provides useful insights into ways out of the crisis.' - Nicholas Hildyard, The Ecologist

'Both a deeply disturbing and an inspiring book that combines, for the first time, a comprehensive critique of industrial agriculture with visionary reviews of the potential of the new and worldwide movement towards ecological agriculture.' - Patrick Holden, Soil Association

'A concise and very readable book covering many of the contradictions of industrial agriculture and linking North/South problems in a very satisfactory way.' - Professor Michael Redclift, Wye College, University of London