Cultivation & Raising

Cultivating crops and raising animals is a resource-intensive operation in the U.S. It relies on, among other things: soil, chemical inputs (fertilizers, herbicides, fuel, etc.), water, a range of plant and animal species, and the labor of farm workers and farmers.

Questions to consider: How should we characterize modern crop and animal cultivation in terms of the way it affects land and labor? What is the relationship between conventional cultivation and the health of farmworkers and the land? Why is it that way?

Books

  • Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture (Fitzgerald, 2003)

  • Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit (Estabrook, 2011)

  • Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States (Holmes, 2013)

  • Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California (Guthman, 2014)

  • Life on the Other Border: Farmworkers and Food Justice in Vermont (Mares, 2019)

 

Film & Series

Podcasts

  • On Beeing (99% Invisible, 2019)

  • How To Pick A Pepper (99% Invisible, 2019)

  • Swine Country (Gravy, 2018)

  • Farm to fork: Uncovering hazards in our food systems (Reveal, 2015)