(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best agricultural science books

Sure, I actually used to co-run the Kirkwood Urban Forest Community Garden, right off Memorial. What Ag Tech are you interested in? Are you interested in for-profit setups or just people growing their own? Have you been to Truly Living Well farms? Also here's the UGA publications re: to urban ag, though they don't look particularly tech-oriented at first glance - http://extension.uga.edu/agriculture/urban/

Tech is expensive. So is land. Food in the US is actually really cheap compared to many other countries around the world, so it's hard to break into it as a business unless developing a niche - while having a nearby market that will support the necessary price point.

What technology to use depends on what you're growing. No one in their right mind is going to try to grow commodity crops in an urban setting, they take up too much space and can be grown far far cheaper elsewhere. So urban settings usually focus more on herbs and vegetables, which are more human labor intensive to deal with anyway.

http://www.growingpower.org/ - these folks are something of a role model in the US. If you poke around their videos and pictures a bit, note all the volunteers/interns needed to pull this off, the shear amount of human labor necessary. This place is set up as a nonprofit for a reason.

There are a few people trying to go all open source on the mechanical technology - http://go.farmbot.it/ (you might enjoy the tedx talk on it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CJt4MFn22M ) and also http://opensourceecology.org/gvcs/

There's even a group attempting to develop open source seed genetics, but they've been facing a few logistical hurdles - http://opensource.com/law/14/5/legal-issues-open-source-seed-initiative - and the folks at /r/farming weren't too impressed overall. The seeds the pros use have millions of dollars of R/D behind them.

Also this is my favorite primer on soil science, highly recommend checking it out - Soil Science Simplified 4th ed by Kohnke and Franzmeier - http://www.amazon.com/Soil-Science-Simplified-Helmut-Kohnke/dp/0881338133

Growing in an urban space - if you growing in the ground - does present problems with re: to pollutants. There are special soil tests the Extension Service (in GA, through UGA or through other state landgrant universities) can help one get to make sure the soil is safe to use or one can build raised beds with liners. Here's one of UGA's sites on soil testing - http://extension.uga.edu/agriculture/soil/

UGA is one of the better ag schools in the country so I'd tap them heavily, and if you can get past all the considerable heat and pest issues plus ridiculous water bills (might want to look into rainwater harvesting/catchment stuff as well - http://extension.uga.edu/publications/detail.cfm?number=B1372 ), Atlanta is a great place to grow food.

Hope this is helpful. Let me know if there's anything else I can help address.

If you wanna read about soil, I'd recommend Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth by William Bryant Logan. If you're looking for a soil science textbook, I'd go with Brady & Weil. If you're looking for just general reading recommendations, I've really been loving King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild.

There are some good laboratory manuals that explain the principals behind many common protocols. In molecular biology, "Maniatis et al" is the grand-daddy of them all. In microbiology, Bergey's Manual is the go-to for identifying micro-organisms. You can probably find these in your library if there are not copies in your lab already.

It's a long time since I needed these, so there may be better manuals out there by now.

Looking for:

1. Occupational Health and Safety for Technologists, Engineers, and Managers (Canadian, 2nd Edition) - $10
   
2. The Analysis of Biological Data (2nd Edition) - $5 (Solution book - $2)
   
3. Critical Perspectives in Food Studies (2nd Edition) - $5
   
   Thanks!

The PDQ is great. We also have this in our tech office
https://www.amazon.com/Veterinary-Technicians-Daily-Reference-Guide/dp/0813812046

This too broad, I guess start with any cattle disease text book, but I doubt you'd understand a lick of it if you dont know the basics. Also be careful where you get information from. Articles are usually not a good source. Youd better stick with peer reviewed journals or textbooks.


If you're looking for a specific disease treatment, I'd recommend contacting your local veterinarian.

https://www.acvim.org/Publications

https://www.amazon.com/Veterinary-Medicine-textbook-diseases-Radostits/dp/0702027774

RHS Latin for gardeners. Its a lovely illustrated hardback.. listing roots of plant nomenclature with small features on reoccuring themes.

"RHS Latin for Gardeners: Over 3,000 Plant Names Explained and Explored" https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/184533731X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_wwj8BbRQHQTH4

I have an old copy of this book.

It has samples of the different woods. Lovely.

I think I might have an idea for the comic - this German version of the xkcd book.

It's a (humorous) encyclopedia where complicated stuff is explained with the 1000 most-used English words, so I guess it could fit here for German as well. Also, it's a hoot.

Edit: link because somehow it didn't show up at first

Mosby's has two review books that I found very helpful.

The disc in this one: http://www.amazon.com/Review-Questions-Answers-Veterinary-Technicians/dp/0323068014/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1405533557&sr=8-3&keywords=vtne

and this one: http://www.amazon.com/Mosbys-Comprehensive-Review-Veterinary-Technicians/dp/0323052142/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1405533557&sr=8-4&keywords=vtne

Those the two I utilized the most, and from what I understand- the actual test itself is based off the information given in these.

Llama Keeping Raising Llamas – Step by Step Guide Book… farming, care, diet, health and breeding

Ah, hard-core, I like it. I was considering living off grid on a boat at one point and came across this cool book called "sailing the farm" which was all about growing your food in small spaces. A lot of sprouting and small hydro setups. It's out of print and expensive used but I think I was able to grab a PDF on the piratebay, here's the Amazon, https://www.amazon.com/Sailing-Farm-Survival-Guide-Homesteading/dp/0898150515#nav-search-keywords

A good start is this short article. Key paragraphs:

>Gramsci saw the capitalist state as being made up of two overlapping spheres, a ‘political society’ (which rules through force) and a ‘civil society’ (which rules through consent). This is a different meaning of civil society from the ‘associational’ view common today, which defines civil society as a ‘sector’ of voluntary organisations and NGOs. Gramsci saw civil society as the public sphere where trade unions and political parties gained concessions from the bourgeois state, and the sphere in which ideas and beliefs were shaped, where bourgeois ‘hegemony’ was reproduced in cultural life through the media, universities and religious institutions to ‘manufacture consent’ and legitimacy (Heywood 1994: 100-101).

>The political and practical implications of Gramsci’s ideas were far-reaching because he warned of the limited possibilities of direct revolutionary struggle for control of the means of production; this ‘war of attack’ could only succeed with a prior ‘war of position’ in the form of struggle over ideas and beliefs, to create a new hegemony (Gramsci 1971). This idea of a ‘counter-hegemonic’ struggle – advancing alternatives to dominant ideas of what is normal and legitimate – has had broad appeal in social and political movements. It has also contributed to the idea that ‘knowledge’ is a social construct that serves to legitimate social structures (Heywood 1994: 101).

Gramsci's ideas were devised with the exploitation of the worker in mind, but it works just as well when you substitute this for the exploitation of animals.

You can read Selections from the Prison Notebooks here

This is also an interesting book on the strategies of animal liberation and veganism which explores some of those ideas in a very practical way.

This book saved my butt in clinics.


Small Animal Medical Differential Diagnosis: A Book of Lists https://www.amazon.com/dp/1416032681/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_iWx0Db8P0KAR5

Are you asking for flavor creation from scratch or are you looking for guidance how to blend premade flavors? I think both has a lot to do with trial and error and to have a good picture of all the things you are mixing together.

Here are some books, although I think this probably too much information and it's questionable how much reading them helps you:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1932633723/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470551305/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/3527314067/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/364208043X/

How the Cows Turned Mad and The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat both helped me develop my love of science and mysteries and the craziness that is our world.

This was an awesome book. it lays out a lot on overall soil health, not just for a crop, but the concepts of soil health and overall balance between different factors.

>when asking "well how do we resolve these issues?" we don't look to philosophy, we look to science.

And what does science look to? Essentially philosophy. Whether the theories to be tested are developed by looking for symmetries, or using Occam's razor, or appealing to some implicit principle from epistemology or philosophy of logic, it all boils down to philosophy. Science isn't independent of philosophy. It is far better described as a subset of philosophy which deals with the management of observed data.

It's easy for those in physics who are dealing primarily with equations to lose track of how many philosophical assumptions are being made in their theories. In many cases they would really benefit from paying attention to what philosophers have to contribute. Physicists today are quite rigorous with the numbers but they are not at all rigorous in the most crucial element of science -- their interpretations. (Huw Price's book on time asymmetry is an example of something that physicist's should be paying attention to as it very clearly points out logical contradictions and double standards being employed in the discussion of time by top physicists.)

I think right now the problem is that there are too many people in philosophy chiming in on things in physics with completely wrong statements when they don't have the background knowledge in the field to realize how poorly they've understand what is going on. We're seeing a similar thing happening in the other direction with well known physicists (like Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss) who know next to nothing about metaphysics making utterly inane philosophical claims.

Ti consiglio la lettura di Pane e Bugie di Dario Bressanini, in particolare tutta la parte intitolata «Il mito del mangiar sano e "giusto"». Nel mio caso, mi ha fatto cambiare radicalmente opinione sul biologico. Ora, se posso scegliere, prediligo assolutamente i prodotti non biologici.

Benjamin Hart says yes to dominance and alphas; Karen Overall says no. They are equally eminent. Here are their expensive books:

http://www.amazon.com/Canine-Feline-Behavior-Therapy-2nd/dp/0683039121

http://www.amazon.com/Manual-Clinical-Behavioral-Medicine-Dogs/dp/0323008909

...adding: Hart does say that advising people with meek personalities to act more dominant is unrealistic.

Soil Fertility Manual, by the IPNI

The Nature and Properties of Soil, by Raymond Weil and Nyle Brady

Hands On Agronomy, by Neal Kinsey (take some of what he says with a grain of salt)

Soil Fertility and Fertilizers, by Samuel Tisdale (and others)

Der Dinge Erklärer

Maybe Der Ding-Erklärer (the German translation of Randall Munro's Thing Explainer)? https://www.amazon.de/dp/3813507157/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_qhodBb143TQ9Y

It may actually be related to this book called Dirt, though. The author is featured in the documentary.