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There is no shortage of wonderful books on soil health and innovative farming practices. We enjoy sharing and exchanging good book titles with our family and network of agriculture enthusiasts. Personal reviews are added where applicable.
| BOOK TITLE | AUTHOR | LINK | DESCRIPTION | Personall Read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A Soil Owner's Manual | Jon Stika and Eve Stika | A Soil Owner's Manual | ||
| Dirt to Soil | Gabe Brown | Buy on Amazon | Good book. Easy to read in layman’s terms. Great starter book. He talks about all the W things but goes into just enough depth to keep it intriguing. Not scientific. Only book I’ve ever read twice. I actually met Gabe, and when I told him that he immediately said, “Sorry I made it such a hard read!” | * |
| For the Love of Soil: Strategies to Regenerate Our Food Production Systems | Nicole Masters | Buy on Amazon | It’s a good background book. | * |
| Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations | David R. Montgomery, Tim Lundeen, et al. | Buy on Amazon | David goes through civilizations and their soils. I found it fascinating. If you’re into that, you might enjoy it. | |
| The HIdden Half of Nature | David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Growing a Revolution | David R. Montgomery | Buy on Amazon | ||
| What Your Food Ate | David R. Montgomery, Anne Biklé, et al. | Buy on Amazon | ||
| The Biological Farmer | Gary F. Zimmer and Leilani Zimmer-Durand | Buy on Amazon | Met him at a local meeting, from Wisconsin.He’s all organic. Rye following corn, when rye is young he spreads clover mix, he harvests rye in July, He mows the clover twice (summer and fall) The following spring, he field cultivates the clover twice. He plants corn. He rotary hoes it twice. He cultivates it twice, and then he combine it. He’s tilling the soil 6 times to get there, but he says he just goes on the surface. He has beautifu,l soils. | |
| Science in Agriculture | Arden B. Andersen | Buy on Amazon | ||
| The Farm as Ecosystem | Jerry Brunetti | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Quality Agriculture: Conversations about Regenerative Agronomy with Innovative Scientists and Growers | John Kempf | Buy on Amazon | ||
| The Complete Guide to Restoring Your Soil: Improve Water Retention and Infiltration; Support Microorganisms and Other Soil Life; Capture More ... Cover Crops, and Carbon-Based Soil Amendments | Dale Strickler | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Mineral Nutrition and Plant Disease | Datnoff, Elmer, & Huber | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Restoration Agriculture | Mark Shepard | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Water For Any Farm | Mark Shepard | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Water in Plain Sight | Judith Schwartz | Buy on Amazon | ||
| When Weeds Talk | Jay McCaman | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Weeds, Control Without Poisons | Charles Walters | |||
| The Future Proof Farm | Steve Groff | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Holistic Management: A Commonsense Revolution to Restore Our Environment: Third Edition | Jody Butterfield, Allan Savory, et al. | Buy on Amazon | Great book, harder read for me, like reading a text book, but I feel it is a more powerful book. I was struck by his reversal of desertification. He is the pioneer out there on this, but comes from it on a different angle. This man has the experience and knows what he is talking about. | |
| The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture | Wendell Berry | Buy on Amazon | Listened to, difficult to listen to. | |
| A Sand County Almanac | Aldo Leopold | Buy on Amazon | Read in college, from a friend. Didn’t like it back then because I thought I knew better to trust “modern science”. I recently read it again and appreciate the author’s keen observance and awareness of his immediate environment. | |
| Call of the Reed Warbler: A New Agriculture, A New Earth | Charles Massy and Nicolette Hahn Niman | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants | Robin Wall Kimmerer | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Civilization Critical: Energy, Food, Nature, and the Future | Darrin Qualman | Buy on Amazon | ||
| The Buffalo Hunters: The Story of the Hide Men | Mari Sandoz and Michael Punke | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Weeds and What They Tell | Ehrenfried E. Pfeiffer | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Weeds - Guardian of the Soil | Joseph A. Cocannouer | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Weeds, Control Without Poisons | Charles Walters | |||
| The Buffalo Harvest | Frank H. Mayer and Charles B. Roth | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians | Gilbert L. Wilson | Buy on Amazon | ||
| The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor | Mark Schatzker, Chris Patton, et al. | Buy on Amazon | Great book. Not so much about soil health as the additives that are put into our food by the food industry to sell and market food. | |
| 40 Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World | Howard G Buffett and Howard W. Buffet | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Humus Chemistry: Genesis, Composition, Reactions | F. J. Stevenson | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Soil Microbiology, Ecology, and Biochemistry | Eldor Paul and Serita Frey | Buy on Amazon | ||
| The Nature and Properties of Soils | Ray R. Weil and Nyle C. Brady | Buy on Amazon | ||
| The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers, and Ranchers Are Tending the Soil to Reverse Global Warming | Kristin Ohlson, Dina Pearlman, et al. | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Journals of Lewis and Clark | Norman Dietz, Meriwether Lewis, et al. | Buy on Amazon | ||
| The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming | Masanobu Fukuoka (Author, Afterword), Larry Korn (Editor), Wendell Berry (Preface), Frances Moore Lappé (Introduction) | Buy on Amazon | Great book. Highly recommended. Totally underestimated.So simple its scary. This book comes to mind every time i’m at a meeting where people want to push the agenda of damaging soil-harming practices to grow grain. Pronounced. The man deserved respect. | |
| Managing Profitable Cover Crops | Sustainable Agriculture Network and Andy Clark | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Soil Biology Primer | Ingham | |||
| Life in the Soil: A Guide for Naturalists and Gardeners | James B. Nardi | Buy on Amazon | ||
| An Agriculture Treatment | Howard | |||
| Early History Of North Dakota: Essential Outlines Of American History | Clement Augustus Lounsberry | Buy on Amazon | ||
| 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus | Charles C. Mann, Darrell Dennis, et al. | Buy on Amazon | Good book. This is a hard read book. The takeaway is that the indigenous population of the Americas before so called discovery of the Americas, what happened to them. The terra prita fields of the Amazon, it sparked me to start making my own biochar. | |
| Tao Te Ching | Lao Tzu | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Jodi Enos-Beralge | ||||
| Power Unseen: How microbes rule the world | Bernard Dixon | Buy on Amazon | ||
| The Future Is Rural: Food System Adaptations to the Great Simplification | Jason Bradford | Buy on Amazon | ||
| 85% true/minor ecologies | Kristen Gallagher | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard | Douglas W. Tallamy | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Nature's Best Hope (Young Readers' Edition): How You Can Save the World in Your Own Yard | Sarah L. Thomson (Adapter), Douglas W. Tallamy (Author) | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Soil Science For Regenerative Agriculture: A Comprehensive Guide To Living Soil, No-Till Gardening, Composting And Natural Farming - Complete With A Step-By-Step Action Plan To Quickly Grow Soil | Amélie des Plantes | Buy on Amazon | ||
| Sacred Cow | One of the better books I’ve read. Talks about the most productive soil is attributed to the hoofed animals. That is the reason why we have fertile land is because of unmbulance. All over the earth, the best ground were made my buffalo. The only way to reverse desertification is with a cow. Allan Savory says you need a cow to reverse the deserts. |