Growing Stories from India: Religion and the Fate of Agriculture (Culture Of The Land)

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. The seven chapters in this book explore the narrative dimensions of human relations with the earth and suggest that we might not only come to understand our narratives but also to employ our ecological imagination to change agricultural practices. The book uses a Hindu agricultural narrative as a framework for discussing human behavior in the context of agricultural practice because this story confronts the dilemmas of human entitlement to the earth's bounty that all agriculturalists face. The dynamics of this story and the ritual and social context of its telling during the Hindu springtime festival of Holi offer insight into forces that shape human relations with the earth and social, particularly gendered, relations among humans. Exploring this story in its broader context reveals parallel social dynamics in Indian and U.S. agrarian thought. These parallel dynamics help explain why agriculture has received relatively little attention in environmental thought and why narratives of industrial agriculture continue to be told. This book directly challenges prevailing agricultural narratives and their relationship to practice and complements dialogue within the scientific areas of restoration ecology, emerging alternative agricultures such as agroecology, and conservation biology because these endeavors assume some level of corrective intervention within ecosystems. This cross-cultural approach helps us imagine means of food production that are sustainable and equitable for multiple human and non-human communities "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"--Provided by publisher. "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"--Résumé de l'éditeur 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.

The ecological imagination: from paradigm to practice Narratives of agriculture: how did we get here? Balaram and the Yamuna River: entitlement and presumptions of control Borrowing Balaram: alternative narratives The festival of Holi: celebrating agricultural and social health The land in between: constructing nature, wilderness, and agriculture Restoration, reciprocity, and repair: revising the ecological imagination. Introduction..............1 Chapter 1 The Ecological Imagination..............12 Chapter 2 Narratives of Agriculture..............28 Chapter 3 Balaram and the Yamuna River..............56 Chapter 4 Borrowing Balaram..............93 Chapter 5 The Festival of Holi..............121 Chapter 6 The Land in Between..............161