Seeds of Sustainability is a groundbreaking analysis of agricultural development and transitions toward more sustainable management in one region. An invaluable resource for researchers, policymakers, and students alike, it examines new approaches to make agricultural landscapes healthier for both the environment and people. The Yaqui Valley is the birthplace of the Green Revolution and one of the most intensive agricultural regions of the world, using irrigation, fertilizers, and other technologies to produce some of the highest yields of wheat anywhere. It also faces resource limitations, threats to human health, and rapidly changing economic conditions. In short, the Yaqui Valley represents the challenge of modern agriculture: how to maintain livelihoods and increase food production while protecting the environment. Renowned scientist Pamela Matson and colleagues from leading institutions in the U.S. and Mexico spent fifteen years in the Yaqui Valley in Sonora, Mexico addressing this challenge. Seeds of Sustainability represents the culmination of their research, providing unparalleled information about the causes and consequences of current agricultural methods. Even more importantly, it shows how knowledge can translate into better practices, not just in the Yaqui Valley, but throughout the world.

Agriculture is one of the most important influences on biological diversity. Conventional agriculture has heavily contributed to reducing the diversity of ecosystems, species and genes, but it has also created new diversity. The eighth Interactive Session of the 2nd World Conservation Congress dealt with a broad spectrum of agricultural issues from around the world and examined the linkages between biodiversity, economy and society. This publication represents the opinions and issues raised by those participating in the Session, and it contains both the papers prepared by presenters and contributions from those unable to attend.

This book focuses on the impacts of the built environment, and how to predict and measure the benefits and consequences of changes taking place to address sustainability in the development and building industries. It draws together the best treatments of these subjects from the Leeds Sustainability Institute’s inaugural International Conference on Sustainability, Ecology, Engineering, Design for Society (SEEDS). The focus of discussion is on understanding how buildings and spaces are designed and nurtured to obtain optimal outcomes in energy efficiency and environmental impacts. In addition to examining technical issues such as modeling energy performance, emphasis is placed on the health and well-being of occupants. This holistic approach addresses the interdependence of people with the built and natural environments. The book’s contents reflect the interdisciplinary and international collaboration critical to assembly of the knowledge required for positive change.

Seeds of Sustainable Agriculture is a groundbreaking analysis of agricultural development and transitions toward more sustainable management in one region. An invaluable resource for researchers, policymakers, and students alike, it examines new approaches to make agricultural landscapes healthier for both the environment and people. The Yaqui Valley is one of the most intensive agricultural regions of the world. It also faces resource limitations, threats to human health, and rapidly changing economic conditions. Pamela Matson and colleagues from leading institutions in the U.S. and Mexico spent fifteen years addressing this challenge. Seeds of Sustainable Agriculture provides unparalleled information about the causes and consequences of current agricultural methods. It also shows how knowledge can translate into better practices, not just in the Yaqui Valley, but throughout the world.

Access to healthy foods is increasingly impaired by socio-economic and environmental influences. Providing a region with an adequate supply of food and access are basic tenets of a sustainable foodshed. This thesis highlights food access in Humboldt County, California by identifying and mapping local food production and food retail location resources with a geospatial lens. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology, local food access and production patterns were assessed with socioeconomic data to identify regions of Humboldt County having adequate or inadequate access to fresh and healthy food. Multiple GIS methods including participatory mapping, proximity and distance measures were employed to analyze food access throughout the county. Spatial analysis of food resources allows for determination of adequate or inadequate food access and classification of any 'food deserts' in Humboldt County. This research benefits the community and the Humboldt County Food Policy Council by highlighting vulnerable neighborhoods without access to fresh and healthy food resources, while identifying sustainability initiatives to help further food-system equality.

A single seed is more than just the promise of a plant. In rural south India, seeds represent diverging paths toward a sustainable livelihood. Development programs and global agribusiness promote genetically modified seeds and organic certification as a path toward more sustainable cotton production, but these solutions mask a complex web of economic, social, political, and ecological issues that may have consequences as dire as death. In Cultivating Knowledge anthropologist Andrew Flachs shows how rural farmers come to plant genetically modified or certified organic cotton, sometimes during moments of agrarian crisis. Interweaving ethnographic detail, discussions of ecological knowledge, and deep history, Flachs uncovers the unintended consequences of new technologies, which offer great benefits to some—but at others’ expense. Flachs shows that farmers do not make simple cost-benefit analyses when evaluating new technologies and options. Their evaluation of development is a complex and shifting calculation of social meaning, performance, economics, and personal aspiration. Only by understanding this complicated nexus can we begin to understand sustainable agriculture. By comparing the experiences of farmers engaged with these mutually exclusive visions for the future of agriculture, Cultivating Knowledge investigates the human responses to global agrarian change. It illuminates the local impact of global changes: the slow, persistent dangers of pesticides, inequalities in rural life, the aspirations of people who grow fibers sent around the world, the place of ecological knowledge in modern agriculture, and even the complex threat of suicide. It all begins with a seed.