Review by Choice Review
The third volume in the "Community Resilience Guide" series, this book explores themes similar to those in Michael Bryan's Food Security (CH, Jul'11, 48-6240) and Paul Roberts's The End of Food (CH, Nov'08, 46-1607). Just as Michael Carolan recognizes in The Real Cost of Cheap Food (CH, Apr'12, 49-4562), Ackerman-Leist (environmental studies, Green Mountain College) acknowledges the complex, confusing issues associated with local food, without detracting from its counterpoints. Much of Ackerman-Leist's argument focuses on how a locavore approach is articulated within a larger food production cycle. The book is divided into three sections. Part 1, "Dilemmas," presents several questions related to the meaning of local food. Sections titled "Drivers for Rebuilding Local Food Systems" and "New Directions" follow. "Drivers" provides excellent discussions of energy and the environment and a fresh look at the implications of food security and food justice, addressing topics such as equitable access, agricultural workers, and different agricultural commodities. The concluding section examines sometimes neglected areas, including current agricultural education or the role of incubator farms, before expanding the concept of local food into community-based food. Ackerman-Leist's task is not simple, but his approach is stimulating and worthwhile. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals; two-year technical program students. L. S. Cline Missouri State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
For a somewhat wonky book about food policy, Rebuilding the Foodshed is unusually humorous and open-minded. Vermont farmer and professor Ackerman-Leist ruminates his way through the conundrums and possibilities of local food, demonstrating how words and their definitions can shed light on and transform our understanding of the rapidly evolving, often confusing, emotion-fraught questions of what people eat, where the food comes from, who has access to what, and how the answers to these questions affect the lives of eaters and growers. Let's call food production farming, he suggests. "Farming is about energy flows. 'Food production' is about a terminal point in the act of agriculture." He finds solutions in the actions of pioneers of food production, distribution, and education, including D-Town Farm-a "step into transcendence" in a deteriorating Detroit suburb that recycles waste to grow vegetables and mushrooms, harvest honey, and help revitalize the devastated local economy. Ackerman-Leist also examines New North Florida Cooperative's farm-to-school program. With insight, he demonstrates how communities can bridge and transcend the "false divides" he pinpoints in the local-food conversation: urban/rural, small-scale/large-scale, local/international, and all/nothing. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In-depth scrutiny of the modern food system and suggestions on how it should change. Ackerman-Leist (Up Tunket Road: The Education of a Modern Homesteader, 2010) explores how to take food production and distribution away from the mega-corporations and place it in the hands of local communities and small farms. He analyzes energy consumption from the field to the refrigerator; the environment, with "the idea that a sustainable food system is one that begins and ends with the careful management of the foundation of it all: the soil"; and food security--i.e., how to ensure that everyone in the country has enough food to ward off hunger and malnutrition. The author also thoroughly investigates biodiversity of crops and conducts a study of "food systems that embrace a diversity of cultural and economic perspectives." Ackerman-Leist culminates his studies by exploring the latest techniques used to improve food production, such as high tunnels and greenhouses that extend growing seasons or the numerous microbreweries and cider houses that provide delicious products without high energy costs. The author's image of "local food" has morphed over time, just as the whole industry has changed: "The image that comes to mind these days is of dynamic, interlocking systems--a vast network of differently sized pulsing centerpoints connected to one other by means of surging flows that create exchanges of resources, ideas, and of course foods." Dense with information and studded with numerous graphs and charts, this book provides a deeper understanding of what principles need to change in order to create local food environments.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
