Grasslands: The future of sustainable a...( MADISON WI MAY 12 2009 -- Grassland:...)

MADISON, WI, MAY 12, 2009 -- Grassland: Quietness and Strength for a New American Agriculture was written to increase our awareness of the vital role grass and grassland plants have in ensuring a sustainable future for American agriculture.

Published by the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America, the book's content is geared toward agriculturists, students, the public, and policy makers.

Wendell Berry, a farmer and renowned author of more than forty books and essays about culture and agriculture, provides a moving foreword for the book that stresses the importance of properly educating future farmers about the land and the roles of grasslands.

"True farmers have minds that are complex and responsible," writes Berry. "They understand and honor their debts to nature. They understand and honor their obligations to neighbors and consumers. They understand and respect the land's need to be protected from washing. . . . In the time that is coming, we are going to need many more such farmers than we have, and we will need them much sooner than we can expect to get them. We will get them only to the extent that young people come along who are willing to fit their farming to the nature of their farms and their home landscapes, and who recognize the paramount importance of grass and grazing animals to good farming everywhere."

Taking its inspiration from the classic USDA yearbook Grass: The 1948 Yearbook of Agriculture, which was written at a time of political, environmental, and economic turbulence, much like today, the editors of Grassland set out to create a book that stresses the importance of developing sustainable agriculture in order to maintain the capacity of our planet to sustain life, and to explain that humans are capable of diminishing this capacity. The 1948 USDA yearbook is provided on the CD that accompanies this book.

Aiming to inspire and educat
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