Farmscape: The Changing Rural Environment - Softcover

Mary Swander; Gene Logsdon; Anna Lappe; Frederick Kirschenmann; J. Harley McIlrath; Jim O'Loughlin; Brian Burmeister

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9781888160680: Farmscape: The Changing Rural Environment

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1888160683 ISBN 13: 9781888160680

Publisher: Ice Cube Press, 2012

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Farmscape is inspired by the community play which documents the contemporary Midwest farmscape. Savor the taste of organic vegetables on a truck on its way to the local farmer s market, suit up in protective clothing and a mask before you enter a hog confinement operation. Experience the David and Goliath story of an organic farmer up against the economic forces of the 3500 acre agri-business operation next door. In the end, you ll understand that during the pioneer days, farming completely changed the ecosystem of the prairie. A hundred and fifty years later, this landscape is dramatically changing again. This book will feature a collection of well-known and talented contributors including: This book contains the full readers theatre script as well as commentary on both Farmscape and the Changing Rural Environment

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About the Author:

Mary Swander (born November 5, 1950) is U.S. author of the recent memoirs The Desert Pilgrim (Ice Cube Press) and Out of this World as well as three books of poetry, Heaven-and-Earth House, Driving the Body Back, and Succession. Swander has also co-authored a musical, Dear Iowa, with composer Christopher Frank, which has been produced across the Midwest and on Iowa Public Television. Her awards include the Whiting Award, a National Endowment for the Arts grant for the Literary Arts, the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, and the Nation-Discovery Award. In 2009, she was named to a two-year term as the Poet Laureate of Iowa. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, she is a Distinguished Professor of English at Iowa State University.

From Booklist:

Swander’s students in Iowa State University’s Writing about Environmental Issues course set out to gather the stories of Iowa farmers from which this set of monologues was created. The voices here describe the perpetual challenges and change of farm life and its personal impacts. Commentary follows the script, accompanied by black-and-white photographs evoking times past. Testimonies cover the struggles and opportunities of three different (at times antagonistic) types of agriculture: direct-market farming, undifferentiated commodity-market farming (one or two bulk commodities sold to food chains), and differentiated, branded-product farming (Eden Farms, Berkshire Pork). All this comes alive in the stories of a middle-aged failed family farmer, an organic vegetable truck farmer, a senior citizen winery owner, and a twentysomething slaughterhouse worker. As this chorus of disparate voices somehow connect, Swander creates a unique achievement: a volume that records how this oral history and theater project “has helped fuel positive change and dialogue” in Iowa. Now, in book form it just may do the same on a national level. --Whitney Scott

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