The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food

Janisse Ray

ISBN 10: 1603583068 / ISBN 13: 9781603583060

Published by Chelsea Green Publishing Co, 2013

About this Item

2012. First Edition. Paperback. Num Pages: 240 pages, index, bibliography. BIC Classification: WMPF. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 229 x 153 x 16. Weight in Grams: 366. . . . . .

Seller Inventory # V9781603583060

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food
• Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Co
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1603583068
• ISBN 13: 9781603583060
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

There is no despair in a seed. There's only life, waiting for the right conditions-sun and water, warmth and soil-to be set free. Everyday, millions upon millions of seeds lift their two green wings.

At no time in our history have Americans been more obsessed with food. Options including those for local, sustainable, and organic food-seem limitless. And yet, our food supply is profoundly at risk. Farmers and gardeners a century ago had five times the possibilities of what to plant than farmers and gardeners do today; we are losing untold numbers of plant varieties to genetically modified industrial monocultures. In her latest work of literary nonfiction, award-winning author and activist Janisse Ray argues that if we are to secure the future of food, we first must understand where it all begins: the seed.

The Seed Underground is a journey to the frontier of seed-saving. It is driven by stories, both the author's own and those from people who are waging a lush and quiet revolution in thousands of gardens across America to preserve our traditional cornucopia of food by simply growing old varieties and eating them. The Seed Underground pays tribute to time-honored and threatened varieties, deconstructs the politics and genetics of seeds, and reveals the astonishing characters who grow, study, and save them.

About the Author

Writer, naturalist, and activist Janisse Ray is a seed-saver, seed-exchanger, and seed-banker, and has gardened for twenty-five years. She is the author of several books, including The Seed Underground, Pinhook and Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, a New York Times Notable Book. Ray is on the faculty of Chatham University's low-residency MFA program, and is a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow. She has won a Southern Booksellers Award for Poetry, a Southeastern Booksellers Award for Nonfiction, an American Book Award, the Southern Environmental Law Center Award for Outstanding Writing, and a Southern Book Critics Circle Award. She attempts to live a simple, sustainable life on a farm in southern Georgia with her husband, Raven Waters.