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Publications Updated October 2004  Email me by clicking on this link

CATALOGUES  / PERIODICALS / REVIEWS / RECOMMENDED / LIBRARY / ANTIQUARIAN / REPORTS

Some of the books that I strongly recommend for foundation studies for organic farming are not available in bookshops today. However, after much searching, I found this great, pro bono, Australian site, run by Steve Solomon, makes many of the works of Alfred Howard, Eve Balfour, Friend Sykes, Newman Turner and others available. and www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010104howard/010104frame.html 

Not on the label; What really goes into the food on your plate by Felicity Lawrence, published by Penguin, £7.99. Irish readers can get a copy in the discount book and stationery shop, Reeds in Nassau Street, Dublin and in Patrick's Street, Cork (just up the road from Eason). There are savings of up to 40% on current books (don't know how a relatively small, two-shop business does it - I have some experience of the book trade having been a bookseller and publisher myself for 15 years, battling against the likes of Eason, who were both  wholesaler and a competing retailer - but sin scéal eile). Good review on  www.itv.com/page.asp?partid=1536 - and see my article, News, June  in Archives

Dying For A Hamburger: Modern Meat Processing And The Epidemic Of Alzheimer's Disease*  By Dr. Murray Waldman and  Marjorie Lamb. Published, 2004 by Random House.  www.randomhouse.com  See my article Dying for a Hamburger September 7th 2004.

Before The Wells Run Dry: Ireland's transition to renewable energy. Edited by Richard Douthwaite, published Autumn 2003.

So Shall we Reap published in September 2003, by Penguin. The author, Colin Tudge, is visiting research fellow at the Centre for  Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the London School of Economics. The book deals with world agriculture and the role of science within it. Tudge is a GM sceptic. 

FATAL HARVEST: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture.  This is the one every visitor to my "library" caravan picks up first. One German visitor, did a review in English, she was so impressed by it; "...the excellent pictures are eye-catching and mind-mobilising... you get "a good idea of what the problem is just by the emotional effect that the photos have on you." 

Bringing the Food Economy Home - Local Alternatives to Global Agribusiness, published, Zed Books, London, 2002, £9.99.
Also, From the Ground Up: Rethinking Industrial Agriculture, published Zed Books, London, 1993, £7.95. 
Both can be ordered by phoning, UK, 1803 868 650.

Agri-Culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature is the latest book (2003) by Prof Jules Pretty. From Exeter University, he is a passionate advocate of sustainable agriculture.  
By the same author, Regenerating Agriculture: Policies and Practice for Sustainability and Self-Reliance, published, Earthscan, London, 1995. Also,The Living Land: Agriculture, Food and Community Regeneration in Rural Europe, published, Earthscan, London 1998. 
Pretty et al., The Real Cost of the British Food Basket, published by the Centre for Environment and Society at Essex (2002?).
Pretty et al., An Assessment of the External Costs of UK Agriculture, published by Agricultural Systems, London, 1999. 
You should also look at a powerful essay Pretty wrote, published by the Fabian Society, Aug. 2001 - New Farming for Britain; Towards a National Plan for  Reconstruction. www.fabian-society.org.uk/freethinking/texts/newfarmingforbritain.html

Bringing the Food Economy Home - Local Alternatives to Global Agribusiness, published, Zed Books, London, 2002, £9.99.
Also, From the Ground Up: Rethinking Industrial Agriculture, published Zed Books, London, 1993, £7.95. 
Both can be ordered by phoning, UK, 1803 868 650.

FAST FOOD NATION, Eric Schlosser, Penguin, April '01. Quote from Schlosser interview ..."And, you know, McDonald's purchasing decisions have an incredible, incredible effect on commodity markets. This past summer, anticipating protests against biotech foods, McDonald's basically told its suppliers it would no longer purchase any genetically engineered potatoes. And as a result, the market for genetically engineered potatoes in the United States just about vanished". 
Review still wanted - Penguin ignored our request for a review copy. Continues to be on best selling lists, even in the UK, October 2002.

THE WORLD IS NOT FOR SALE- FARMERS AGAINST JUNK FOOD, Josè Bovè and Francois Dufour, June, 2001. 
Publ. Verso. ISBN 1859846149. Watestones, Cork, can get it to order. Approx. € 25.00 in Ireland.

The Killing of the Countryside, Graham Harvey, publ. Jonathaan Cape, London, 1996.

Off Our Trolleys? Food Retailing and the Hypermarket Economy, Hugh Raven and Tim Lang, publ. Institute for Public Policy research, 1995. 

ORGANIC -  A NEW WAY OF EATING by Sophie Grigson and William Black. The definitive guide to cooking, eating and above all, enjoying organic food. Stunning photos by Georgia Glynn Smith. Published, Headline 2001. Price £25.00. 

EUROPEAN FOOD LAW, by Raymond O'Rourke. Published, Palladian Law Publishing, Beach Road, Bembridge, Isle of Wight, UK, PO 35 5NQ. Price, £58.00. Copies by post cost extra: UK £3.50 per book, Rest of Europe, £8.00 and anywhere else, £12.00 per book. They also offer an online update at www.palladianlaw.com 

THE GREAT FOOD GAMBLE, John Humphrys, Hodder & Stoughton, 2001, p/back, £12.99. "This book will haunt every visit to a supermarket"; from Paul Heiney’s, review Sunday Times, Culture, 8^th April, ’01. Review on www.waterstones.co.uk by Prof. Tim Long.  Sadly IP 16.25 in Ireland, in Waterstones, Cork. The Ecologist is doing a special offer - £10.99, incl. p&p - call, in UK, 1870 162 0870.

ANTONIO CARLUCCIO GOES WILD  Fresh recipes, 120 of them, for wild food from land and sea. Published Headline, 2001, £25.00. 

The End of British Farming, Profile Books, May 2001, 128 pp, £5.99. Guardian correspondent, Andrew O'Hagan's, shattering indictment of industrialised agriculture, excerpts from which appeared in the Guardian.

Science, Money, Politics; Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion Daniel S. Greenberg, Univ. Chicago Press, 2001.  'There is too much hype. Every gene that is discovered will lead to a cure for cancer.' - Maxine Singer, the National Academy of Sciences, quoted in, Big Science: Bloated, Whiny and Self-Important, book review from Scientific American. http://www.sciam.com/2001/0901issue/0901reviews1.html 

THE ORIGINS OF THE ORGANIC MOVEMENT Philip Conford, £14.99. This is a more substantial than my humble essays on the subject and will be essential reading to the serious organic researcher. One reviewer: "This is an excellent book. Its title may seem unpromising but the underlying issues are the most crucial of our time, relating to the future of all humanity and of our fellow creatures". See this fine review, by Colin Tudge (author of In Mendel's Footsteps) on The Independent site; www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=82658 

Must-have magazines

The Ecologist- RETHINKING BASIC ASSUMPTIONS.  Redesigned in 2002, it now has more colour and is published monthly rather than bi-monthly. The Ecologist was the instigator of the best-selling and mind-set changing Monsanto Files (an edition of the magazine entirely focused on the GM debate) in 1998.
One year, 10 issue subscription, from as little as £28.00, concessionary rate. 
Has a free advertising section, The Exchange, for NGOs, individuals, charities, and campaign groups. Indispensable. Email: theecologist\@galleon.co.uk.  www.theecologist.org

Resurgence  Published bi-monthly in the UK. An intellectual alternative magazine, edited by the extraordinary Satish Kumar (gave a great lecture at the Convergence Conference, Spring 2004) which is a platform for ecological and more esoteric debate. Contributors include, George Monbiot, Noam Chomsky, Vandana Shiva, Jonathan Porritt etc. One year, 6 issue subscription, UK, £23.50. Recommended. www.resurgence.org  

New Internationalist  Around since 1970 and co-operatively managed, this excellent monthly magazine focusses on issues of world poverty and inequality. It constantly analyses the connections between the powerful and the powerless, seeking solutions to material and spiritual deprivation. Subscription for one year is £29.85 in UK and €44.25 in Ireland - that represents a discount to Irish subs. of about 25%! Well done NI! They also have a very good website, attractive and well-designed with wonderful access to back issues at, www.newint.org. See, May 2000, issue on pesticides - Pick your Poison - The Pesticide Scandal. Also Peter Rosset, director of www.foodfirst.org on small farms and how they consistently produce far more per hectare than large farms.

Wild Ireland, first published in 2000, is a bi-monthly magazine dedicated to exploring and showing the wild and beautiful side of Ireland. Its 76 pages of articles and sumptious photos are a feast to the mind and eye. Contact for subscriptions: colm@wildireland.ie . www.wildireland.ie.

organiclife, first published Summer 2001. I first saw, and bought, the third issue (Nov/Dec 2001) of this new, glossy UK bi-monthly. It looked streets ahead of anything we'd seen before - at least this side of the pond. Photoghraphy was stunning and there were all-prizes-no-blanks in the 82 pages of Regular and Feature articles. Tiny whinges though: text editing could be better, spell-checking needed to be more rigorous and why, like everybody else in organic publishing, do they have to be bi-monthly? Why not monthly?  www.organiclifemag.com. Email; subs@organiclifemag.com 
But is there life at Organic Life? Cannot call up their website or get replies to emails or telephone calls, October 2003.

Book Catalogues   

One of the most comprehensive catalogues of books and pamphlets on organic issues is that of the Soil Association in Britain. Twelve categories and hundreds of books, with balanced descriptions, make this the essential mail order book-shop. www.soilassociation.org.

Green Books is part of the the Schumacher Circle which embraces Resurgence Magazine, the Soil Association etc. You can view new and recent publications online at www.greenbooks.co.uk or download the full catalogue

Acres USA,  www.acresusa.com  the family-owned, eco-agriculture monthly, that has been around for more than 30 years has a 74 page, book catalogue that must be the largest list of books on organics in the world. Many of the books are new to us - shame that surface deliveries take so long from the States. Email; news@acresusa.com. 

Another good list is that from Henry Doubleday Research Association (HYDRA); www.hydra.co.uk. Their emphasis is mainly on organic gardening.

Land Heritage Trust (UK) publishes Organic Farming Titles - Olde and New, £2.00 incl. postage. This is a compilation of over 200 titles, ranging from the earliest pioneers to the latest authors. Also publishes an elegant Manifesto, which is a good introduction to the history of organic farming and the present state of agriculture. www.landheritage.org. See also my Antiquarian section below.

The Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales, www.cat.org.uk, has an interesting selection of books and pamphlets mostly, obviously, on alternative technology, but they have some on organic gardening, especially composting.

Permanent Publications, www.permaculture.co.uk, have a good list of titles on permaculture, organic growing, ecological building and renewable energy.

A small selection of quality books on environmental politics is available from www.zedbooks.demon.co.uk. Included is Vandana Shiva’s, Stolen Harvest and Hodge, Goering and Page’s, well-reviewed, From the Ground Up.

www.rodaleinstitute.org The Rodale Institute, founded by philanthropist, J.I.Rodale, in 1941, is the publisher of Organic Gardening, with sales of 600,000, the world’s best- selling gardening magazine. It has a good publications’ catalogue which includes the reprinted, seminal, Agricultural Testament by Sir Albert Howard and Christopher Shirley’s, What Really Happens When You Cut Chemicals?

www.just-food.com Although Just-Food.com mainly analyses the  general food industry, it has a good current news section with occasional organic information. It is educational to hear what it is saying to the conventional industry about organics; " dazzling growth", etc. You can glean this from the generous introductions and content lists of its reports. To get details however you may have to pay up to £10,000-00 per volume e.g. From Subculture To Supermarkets – Organic Foods Grow Up, 2 Vols. More modestly priced is the practical, Handbook of Organic Food Processing and Production.

www.cabi.org CABI International (est. 1928) is an international, non-profit, scientific organisation, UK-based, which is also a publisher of books, journals, CDs, databases etc. on agriculture, forestry, veterinary science, human health and disease. A declared aim is to disseminate knowledge in support of sustainable development. Some of its areas of interest include food security, alleviation of poverty and farming productivity. Interesting News Release, March ’01, from CABI Bioscience, Pesticides: Is there an alternative?www.chelseagreen.co.uk.

Geoff Hamilton's Organic Gardening, published by Dorling Kindersly, IP 13.95. Even available at Eason's, Ireland! www.dk.com

Amazon Books at  www.amazon.co.uk and at  www.amazon.com have a good selection. Search for Organic Farming.

Barnes and Noble have an organic section also at: www.barnesandnoble.com.

Also, www.waterstones.co.uk have some publications on organic matters e.g. Organic Farming for Sustainable Agriculture, by A.K. Dahan.

Publishes some organic books: publishers@cplbookshop.com 

www.booksirish.com is the online arm of Dublin's famous Books Upstairs. Has small environment section mainly of Irish interest. Recommend, Nature in Ireland, Tim Robinson's, Stones of Aran (half-price at present), and Michael Viney's, A Year's Turning, in particular.

Do not see the pro-chemical gardening Expert Books, written by the prolific Dr D.G.Hessayon, who, despite authoring 18 titles in this multi-million-copy, best-selling series, hasn't got around to doing an organic one yet. Why?

Reviews

Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain by George Monbiot, MacMillan, London, 2000. Review by Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, founder of the influential Institute of Science in Society. See: www.i-sis.org.uk 

The corporate take over is here and threatening the foundations of democratic government. That is the message of George Monbiot’s explosive and important book. Corporations have seized control of our hospitals, schools and universities. They have infiltrated the government and come to dominate government ministries, buying and selling planning permission, dispensing our tax money to research and development that benefit industry, taking over the food chain. To top it all, the British Government has colluded in ceding its power to international institutions controlled by corporations, such as the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Anyone who is under the delusion that corrupt or corrupted governments are only in the Third World had better think again.
The chapter on corporate takeover of universities is too close to home. I have been on the permanent academic staff of the Open University since 1976, but was strongly encouraged to take early retirement last June as I became more and more involved in the genetic engineering debate.
In the course of the genetic engineering debate, I had begun to realise that the corporate take over of science was the greatest threat to democracy and to the survival of our planet [1]. That was why I co-founded the not-for-profit Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) to work for social responsibility and sustainable approaches in science and the integration of science in society. As part of the agreement for my retirement, I was to be given an honorary secondment, so I could continue running ISIS from the University, while making it clear it was independent from the University. The situation soon began to rapidly deteriorate, however.
In August, less than two months after my retirement, my research assistant and I were both officially banned from the University campus. Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) alleged in a letter and phone-call to my head of Department that I was in possession of certain internal papers belonging to them. Huntingdon Life Sciences is a privately-owned laboratory, at the time doing contract research for the biotech companies, among them Imutran, a subsidiary of the corporate-giant Novartis.
The University made no attempt to communicate with me or with my assistant before imposing the ban. Had they done so, they would have found that HLS’ accusation was false. I was sent some papers by a group campaigning for animal welfare, who were helping me obtain published scientific papers on cross-species organ transplant – the experiments being carried out in HLS for Imutran - so that ISIS could prepare a scientific critique, which we did [2]. The internal papers were never used and have been destroyed since, as I judged that there was enough in the scientific literature to damn the whole project on safety and moral grounds.
But the chief of HLS, Brian Cass, tried to intimidate me, in phone calls, and in an e-mail, to get me to reveal the identity of the campaigning group. I refused to do so.
When I went on campus to prepare my reply to the ban, the Sub-Dean of Science came into my office and threatened to have me removed physically with the security guard.
After days on the telephone to my Union representative, the Dean of Science agreed to see me. Months later, the ban was lifted for myself, but my for my assistant; the University denied that she had, in fact, been given an honorary research fellowship a year earlier. I was further barred from using University facilities for ISIS.
The animal welfare group, Uncaged Campaigns, has gone public since with a 150 page report leaked to the press, documenting excessive suffering of animals at HLS, and Imutran’s exaggeration of the success of the pig to primate organ transplant research. Imutran has brought an injunction against Uncaged Campaigns to prevent the release of the report. But just four days after the news broke, Novartis announced the closure of Imutran, and the removal of the research to the United States. Nevertheless, Novartis has pursued the case against Uncaged Campaigns to full trial and won. Since then there has been a plethora of prominent articles in the mainstream press condemning animal rights activists and defending Huntingdon Life Sciences.
George Monbiot gives many more examples of similar treatments university administrations mete out to academics daring to dissent from the corporate agenda or to criticise it. The Centre for Human Ecology, founded by distinguished evolutionist and geneti-cist C.H. Waddington more than 30 years ago, was hounded out of Edinburgh University in 1996, essentially for raising questions in both the scientific and popular press about the Conservative Government’s science policies. Academic and government scientists are all too often asked to falsify data in order not to offend corporate funders.
"Today, there is scarcely a science faculty in the United Kingdom whose academic freedom has not been compromised by its funding arrangements. Contact between government-funded researchers and industry, having once been discouraged, is now, in many departments, effectively compulsory ….our universities have been offered for sale, with the result that objectivity and intellectual honesty are becoming surplus to requirements."
The sell-out began under the Conservative Government, and with science research funding which effectively controls what kinds of science would be done. The 1993 white paper on science called Realizing our Potential, intended to "produce a better match between publicly funded strategic research and the needs of industry". The research councils, which distribute most of the public money for science would be obliged to develop "more extensive and deeper links" with industry. They would be required "to recruit more of their senior staff from industry".
The Labour government extended those reforms enthus-iastically. Its 1998 white paper on competitiveness launched a ‘reach-out’ fund to encourage universities to "work more effectively with business". The role of the higher education funding councils, which provide the core money for universities, was redefined " to ensure that higher education is responsive to the needs of business and industry".
Thus, it comes as no surprise that the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research council (BBSRC), the main funding body for Britain’s academic biologists with an annual budget of £190m, is chaired by Peter Doyle, an executive director of the biotech corporation, Zeneca. Among the members of its council are the Chief Executive of the pharmaceutical firm Chiroscience, the former Director of Research and Development of the food company Nestle; the President of the Food and Drink Federation; the general manager of Britain’s biggest farming business and a consultant to the biochemical industry. The BBSRC’s strategy board contains executives from SmithKline Beecham, Merck Sharpe and Dohme and Agrevo UK (now subsidiary of Aventis, the company responsible for getting the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) to support the controversial ‘farmscale’ field trials with £3 million of taxpayer’s money). The Council has seven specialist committees, each overseeing the funding of different branches of biology. Employees of Zeneca sit on all of them.
The BBSRC was established in 1994 to replace the biological program previously run by the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC). Whereas SERC’s mandate was to advance science of all kinds. The BBSRC’s purpose is "to sustain a broad base of interdisciplinary research and training to help industry, commerce and Government create wealth".
The BBSRC’s press release falls into three categories: news about the research grants it allocates, news about the findings resulting from those grants, and fierce attacks on critics of genetic engineering. Arpad Pusztai’s publication in The Lancet was condemned as "irresponsible". When Friends of the Earth released the results of research showing that GM oilseed rape pollen was being carried four and a half kilometres (well beyond the legal ‘isolation distances’), the BBSRC issued a statement that the finding was "a distraction from the key issues".
Gene biotechnology research is swallowing up the lion’s share of the research funds. In January 1999, the BBSRC set aside £15m for "a new initiative to help British researchers win the race to identify the function of key genes". In July the same year, £19m was to be spent on new research facilities to "underpin the economic and environmental sustainability of agriculture in the UK" through "work on genetically modified crops". In October, £11m were allocated to projects that would enable the UK "to remain internationally competitive in the deveopment of gene-based technologies". Every year, the Council gives more than £10m in grants to John Innes Centre in Norwich, the genetic engineering institute which houses the Sainsbury Laboratory and has a research alliance with Zeneca and Dupont.
The BBSRC also funds the secondment of academics into corporations to "influence basic research relevant to company objectives". The Council launched a Biotechnology Young Entrepreneurs Scheme, "aimed at encouraging a more entrepreneurial attitude in bioscientists". It has paid for researcher to work for Nestle, Unilever, Glaxo Wellcome, Smith-Kline Beecham, AgrEvo, Dupont, Rhone Poulenc and Zeneca.
Most telling of all, scientists working in university departments receiving BBSRC grants are formally gagged to prevent them becoming "involved in political controversy in matters affecting research in biotechnology and biological sciences". In practice, however, scientists can hype biotechnology to their heart’s content. The gagging is strictly aimed at critics.
The same pattern of corporate takeover is repeated in the other research councils, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Medical Research Council (MRC).
I recently visited the MRC website and found that an extra £1.9 billion is to be committed to "health genomics research" over the next five years [3]. That is in addition to the Government’s projected spending of £675m on university infrastructure through the Science Research Investment Fund, which includes high tech facilities for studying genes and proteins.
A number of the MRC proposals are controversial to say the least (see "Human Studies on GM Food Risks", and "UK population DNA database to be established", this issue).
George has confirmed what many people already suspect and have experienced in their personal struggles for freedom and democracy in different spheres of life. What can we do in the face of the ever-increasing consolidation of corporate control? Monbiot has only one answer: don’t despair, fight on!
"The struggle between people and corporations will be the defining battle of the twenty-first century. If the corporations win, liberal democracy will come to an end. The great social democratic institutions which have defended the weak against the strong – equality before the law, re-presentative government, democratic accountability and the sovereignty of parliament - will be toppled. If, on the other hand, the corporate attempt on public life is beaten back, then democracy may re-emerge the stronger for its conquest. But this victory cannot be brokered by our representatives. Democracy will survive only if the people in whose name they govern rescue the state from its captivity."
This book is meticulously researched and scholarly, but despite the seriousness of the subject matter, it is refreshingly well written. The style of the prose is pleasantly evocative, light and engaging, even when his message is at its most uncom-promisingly radica

1. Genetic Engineering Dream or Nightmare? Turning the Tide on the Brave New World of Bad Science and Big Business, by Mae-Wan Ho, Gateway Gill& Macmillan, 1998, 2nd ed., 1999.

2. Xenotransplantation: How bad science and big business put the world at risk from viral pandemic. ISIS Sustainable Science Audit #2.

3. "MRC SCIENCE BUDGET ALLOCATION ENABLES FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF HEALTH GENOMICS RESEARCH" MRC Press Release MRC/69/000, 22 November www.mrc.ac.uk

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Fatal Harvest ; The Tragedy of  Industrial Agriculture
Edited by Andrew Kimbrell, Island Press.
Hardback £ 62.50
Softback £37.50
Reader edition (Text without the illustrations) £14.50
UK postage £ 2.00
Irish and other EU £ 4.00
I heartily recommend this book. Order straight from the publishers at;

The Eurospan Group
3,Henrietta Street,
Covent Garden,
London, WC 2 E8LU
Email; colin.pierce@eurospan.co.uk