CCR RECOMMENDS 50 BOOKS

This is a highly curated list of significant books, including:

• Rachel Carson’s classic Silent Spring (1962), which set the stage for understanding the impact humans were having on the planet.
• Paul Hawken’s Drawdown (2017), which focused on 100 solutions to reverse global warming, 1/3 of which have to do with food, land use or farming.
• Gabe Brown’s Dirt to Soil (2018), which tells one farmer’s story who turned his back on conventional agriculture and switched to no-till farming transforming his degraded farm ecosystem into one full of life.
• Jonathan Safran Foer’s We Are the Weather (2019), which addresses ourpower to affect climate change through our food choices. Mark Bittman’s review, in the New York Times, is as stunning as the book itself.
• Charles Mann’s The Wizard and The Prophet, which tackles the overarching question of how we are going to feed 9.8 billion people in 2050.

We continually question how climate change impacts food and agriculture and how food and agriculture impacts climate change. The titles range from books focusing on what we eat (too much meat) to what we throw away (nearly half of what we buy); on industrial farming as opposed to regenerative farming; on books by fishermen who have turned to kelp farming as the warming of the oceans and the resulting acidification have threatened both their livelihoods and the creatures living in the sea. And, we look at guides – to homesteading on a quarter acre, to “carbon farming,” to creating an eco-friendly home, to regenerating land, storing carbon, and creating climate resilience.

Many of these titles were bestsellers from the time they were published.