Reddit mentions: The best agronomy 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.

Actually avoiding GM soy is pretty easy if it bothers you. US organic food standards prohibit GM products. About 90% of the soy products I have access to at my grocery (soy milk, tofu, tempeh) are organic and as such not GM.

This said, I know of no clinical evidence that has shown any health difference of GM vs non-GM. There is speculation about allergy potential (say for Bt corn), but I've seen no convincing data to support this link.

If you are interested in a detailed discussion on the topic, you might check out the book tomorrow's table It was co-authored by an organic farmer and a plant geneticist. It provides a well thought out, more scientific description of the pros and cons.

The big upside that few people tend to recognize is that GM foods are a very promising way to allow us to grow way more food, food that is much better for us, and at the same time have less environmental impact. Not all GMs provide these benefits currently, but the technology has the potential to do this good.

As an example, imagine if we could grow corn in Ethiopia that would be rich in B6, contain tons of balanced protein, be resistant to drought, insects, and fungus. Many of these innovations are possible and are likely part of our future, but they won't happen without engineering the genomes of these crops.

It seems you have a balanced view of patents.. their potential benefit and their pitfalls. However, your history is lacking. In the US, hybrid seed development and distribution was created by farmers and land grant universities based off of public funds. Since food was thought of as a public good, the incentive to develop the experimental technologies for hybridization was fortified with taxes and public support. University extension agents would distribute these varieties for public use and feedback without expectation of massive profits. This was social contract. Then, in the search of profits private breeders worked IP protection on plant varieties, destroying this system entirely and limiting the options of production for farmers. Power shifted away from growers and public universities and into private breeding companies who now represent a handful of firms with total control over the majority of domestic seed production. You can read about it here in a book called First the Seed


There are so many things and conveniences I enjoy that did not require patent intervention. Patents are a young, human creation. Some more imagination and historical lens show how many other incentive systems can be employed to support these conveniences rather than consolidation of power for monied interests

I see GMOs as part of a trend that began with the privatization of hybrid seeds in the US and the Green Revolution globally. They didn't start the project of taking the means of production away from farmers, but they absolutely are a part of it. (For a really thoughtful take on how biotechnology has been used to increase corporate control over agriculture, I recommend Jack Kloppenburg's First The Seed.)

As for the point about uneven food distribution--what good will increasing food production do if the people who need it can't get it? If worldwide food production increases by 50%, but all of that additional food either goes to waste or is used inefficiently because poor people can't afford it, then what is the point? We need to make sure that everyone gets a more-or-less equal slice of the pie before we need to worry about having a bigger pie.

I'd also quibble with your assertion that organic farms take up more land than conventional farms. That may be true (I don't really have the time to comb through the methodology of the paper you linked to), but that assumes that organic farms and conventional farms have comparable ecological impacts. This seems to be comparing apples to oranges.

Ok well monoculture is not a factor of GMOs... Something may come for GMO plants, but at least they extend the time until bananas become endangered. And when the next pathogen comes up, hopefully we can have a new genetically altered strain to combat that, too.

> if you provide a gmo banana, then the other species will be discarded

If you don't have a GMO banana, then a fungus may make the banana go extinct, the "species will get lost". With a GMO banana, you at least have that banana, and you can use it to provide herd immunity to non-resistant bananas.

You may be interested in this book: Tomorrow's Table by Pamela Ronald. She's a geneticist at UC Davis, and her book is about explaining what GMOs are (especially in context to current other methods of breeding) and how organic farming and GMOs can and need to be used together to pragmatically increase sustainable agriculture.

http://grist.org/series/panic-free-gmos/

It is a series of articles about GMOs written by Nathanael Johnson. It is really well researched and written.


Also, this book: Tomorrows Table, by Pamela Ronald and R. W. Adamchak. It is written by a GMO researcher and an organic farmer who are married. Written with a lot of good citations, and very accessible to a lay person. Link: http://www.amazon.com/Tomorrows-Table-Organic-Farming-Genetics/dp/0195393570/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408658213&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=tomorrow%27s+tabe


Well done taking the first steps to educate yourself!

I really like Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food by Pam Ronald and Raoul Adamchak. It's written by a husband and wife team—the husband is an organic farmer, and the wife is a rice geneticist. I found it to be a good primer on genetic engineering and the basics of organic farming. They take the position that genetic engineering and organic farming are both tools that should be employed in the future of agriculture.

US Davis is huge in plant genetics. One of their professors, Pamela Ronald, is a world expert in plant genetics and GM technology. Fun fact: her husband is an organic farmer and they wrote a book together about biotechnology and organic farming.

GMO is so good for struggling farmers, unfortunately some uninformed idiots think it's bad and dangerous but they don't know any of the facts. It's inevitable whether you try to stop it. it's coming, and it's a good thing. For further reading,

Here's Bill Gates, talking this year about GMO foods, breaking down why it's a good thing.

In the video he recommends a book called Tomorrow's Table

Also, Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Peter H. Diamandis

It's written by the guy that started the X prize, he's an MIT professor and Harvard MD.

He basically says GMO foods are gonna change the poor parts of the word for the BETTER and goes on to describe the harm that kooks are causing trying to stop them.

GMO food crops that can be grown in an inherently "organic" way. Although current systems exclude GMO crops from being labelled as such because people are scared of the recombinant aspect of biotech crops, there is nothing inherently juxtaposed about the science of organic farming and genetically-modified crops. In the future we will have a greater focus on GMO tech that increases yield/nutrition/flavor without having to dump herbicides/pesticides on the field. An awesome book about this: http://www.amazon.com/Tomorrows-Table-Organic-Farming-Genetics/dp/0195393570

A good read: Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food

If you haven't read Tomorrow's Table I highly recommend doing so. Balance of approach is the future agriculture.

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.

I took a course in my undergrad about the genetic engineering of plants. I read most of this book and really enjoyed it. It is fairly basic in its concepts, but at the same time very informative and detailed.

>Human genome, and how modification really works

I'm not to well versed in the modification of the human genome. I don't think there is much literature in this area because there is not a lot of research that currently works with directly modify the human genome (ethical issues). I would imagine though there are books out there on the modification of animals and mammals in general.

I was a freshman in 08 as an engineer (graduated now). I forget what our summer reading was, but I never heard of it prior to moving in, never read it, and still got my A in Eng101 and it was never mentioned. I may have gotten lucky. If your summer reading is mentioned in classes, I doubt it would be in E101, but instead your required general electives like Eng101.

However, sorry if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're awfully peeved about the cost of the book. Is this book it? If so, if you're upset about $13.63, just wait until your calculus book. Or physics clickers. Or every other cost associated with college.

My advice - pay the $13.63, read the book, and be ready to start your college career off on the right foot. Engineering isn't easy, so making sure you do well in your first classes is critical in cementing that GPA before later classes that are far more difficult.

>Here are a few articles about examples of GM crops promoting superbugs and superweeds:

There is no such thing as 'super' pests or weeds. That is a misnomer. There are weeds resistant to herbicides, yes, and pests resistant to the plant's GE defenses, yes, but they are neither super not new. The first herbicide resistant weeds were documented two decades before GE crops were on the market, and resistance breakdown (when a pest overcomes a plant's resistance) happens as a result of simple evolutionary biology and has no bearing on the origin of the resistance. It happens in non-GE crops as well, so if your argument against Ge crops is that the same laws of population genetics apply to them as apply to every other crop, you're against a lot more than just GE and should take up a stance against conventional breeding as well.

>Well-managed organic practices can reduce pest damage naturally without sacrificing yields.

Well, first off, citing the Rodale Institute on organic is like citing Monsanto on GE. Second, false dichotomy. Organic is a method of growing things. Genetic engineering is a way of improving a plant. The only wedge between them is ideological, not reality based (some say both should be used). That, really, is the biggest problem with organic. It's ideology, not science. There's nothing wrong with biological techniques, in fact, the world would be a lot better off it the could replace chemical based ones, however, that does not mean that the dogmatic organic approach is the right way to go, nor is an appeal to nature is valid, and furthermore, genetic engineering is a biological technique. Third, what happens when things are run not well but average? Here's the (study) referenced in your second link by the way.

edit: I should probably add that I'm not trying to dismiss the dangers of resistant weeds and pests, just that they are a poor argument against genetic engineering itself (also, they're dangerous because they threaten to take away the benefits GE has already provided, so to use them as an argument against GE is to start out admitting they have been very useful).