Book description
The costs of industrial agriculture are astonishing in terms of
damage to the environment, human health, animal suffering, and social
equity, and the situation demands that we expand our ecological
imagination to meet this crisis. In response to growing
dissatisfaction with the existing food system, farmers and consumers
are creating alternate models of production and consumption that are
both sustainable and equitable. In Growing Stories from India:
Religion and the Fate of Agriculture, author A. Whitney Sanford uses
the story of the deity Balaram and the Yamuna River as a foundation
for discussing the global food crisis and illustrating the Hindu
origins of agrarian thought.
By employing narrative as a means of assessing modern agriculture,
Sanford encourages us to reconsider our relationship with the earth.
Merely creating new stories is not enough -- she asserts that each
story must lead to changed practices. Growing Stories from India
demonstrates that conventional agribusiness is only one of many
options and engages the work of modern agrarian luminaries to explore
how alternative agricultural methods can be implemented.
""This book is highly significant for its stunning
cross-cultural leaps that work. Sanford's call to environmentalists to
turn their minds from wilderness to agriculture is of enduring
significance." -- Ann Grodzins Gold, author of In the Time of
Trees and Sorrows: Nature, Power, and Memory in Rajasthan" --
A. Whitney Sanford, associate professor of religion at the
University of Florida, is the author of Singing Krishna: Sound Becomes
Sight in Paramanand's Poetry. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.
