The Spirit of the Soil: Agriculture and Environmental Ethics

By Paul B. Thompson and Paul B. Thompson

Book Overview

In this second edition of The Spirit of the Soil: Agriculture and Environmental Ethics, Paul B. Thompson reviews four worldviews that shape competing visions for agriculture. Productionists have sought increasing yields--to make two seeds grow where only one grew before--while traditional visions of good farming have stressed stewardship. These traditional visions have been challenged by two more worldviews: a call for a total cost accounting for farming and an advocacy for a holistic perspective. Thompson argues that an environmentally defensible systems approach must draw upon all four worldviews, recognizing their flaws and synthesizing their strengths in a new vision of sustainable agriculture. This classic 1995 study has been thoroughly revised and significantly expanded in its second edition with up-to-date examples of agriculture's impact on the environment. These include extensive discussions of new pesticides and the effects of animal agriculture on climate and other areas of the environment. In addition, a new final chapter discusses sustainability, which has become a dominant idea within environmental studies and agrarian political philosophy.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B075KZCQ1C
• ISBN13: 9781138676633
• Release Date: May 2017
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 252 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Superb general intro. to politics and ethics of agriculture

The educated layperson will find Dr. Thompson's *Spirit of the Soil* to be a perfect introduction to the bewilderingly complex ethical and economic questions that increasingly surround modern agriculture. The author ruthlessly dissects politically charged and often intentionally vague terms and concepts such as "sustainability," "stewardship," the consumer mentality, and the flawed yet indispensible materialism of modern production agriculture. This book will be enormously helpful to anyone who wants to attack farm policy with a more mature understanding of the ethical issues upon which the cultural and physical sustainability of modern agriculture depends