From the Ground Up

Helena Norberg-Hodge is director of the Ladakh Project and the International society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC). She is a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, known as the "Alternative Nobel Prize". Peter Goering is ISEC's research coordinator and John Page is its programme director.

This text explores the fundamental principles which underlie the growth at any cost thinking of modern society and highlights some of the most promising alternative ways of producing environmentally healthy food.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 fertilisers, 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 sets the decline of agriculture within the broader context of industrialisation 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 industrialised countries as well as in the South, where agricultural development continues to be modelled on the industrial ideal.