Friday, May 24, 2019

New book chapter (from CUP) available on agricultural metrics & corporate sustainability

Once upon a time (late 2013 or early 2014) I was asked to co-write a chapter on sustainable agriculture metrics with Peter Kareiva. I learned a lot writing it, and when I realized it would take a while to get published I wrote a blog post about the most surprising thing I learned (that global agricultural land had been decreasing since 1998, not rapidly expanding): https://blog.nature.org/science/2014/06/18/global-agriculture-land-sustainability-deforestation-foodsecurity

That surprise, and the blowback I got after publishing it, inspired me to write another book chapter which came out in late 2017:
http://fish.freeshell.org/publications/DataNotDogma-Chapter11-preformatted.pdf
and a follow-up blog since my writing wasn't clear enough: http://sciencejon.blogspot.com/2018/01/take-2-what-i-wish-id-put-in-my-recent.html

But now, 5+ years later, the actual original book is finally published!

Those interested can read the final chapter at http://fish.freeshell.org/publications/FisherKareiva_CUP_2019_preformatted.pdf

The first half is OK but is out of date and was written when I knew far less about agriculture. I'd skip to the 2nd half (start with the "Can Corporate Sustainability reporting be a force for improved agricultural practices?" section). There's some interesting content I haven't seen anywhere else on corporate sustainabiltiy and food labels.

I haven't read the rest of the book yet but am looking forward to it! You can get the whole book here:  Agricultural Resilience: Perspectives from Ecology and Economics (Cambridge University Press)

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