Book Review 11

Review

Title: Growing a Revolution: Bringing our Soil Back to Life

ISBN 10: 0393608328

ISBN 13: 9780393608328

Published: 2017

Pages: 320

Cost: $26.95

Rating (1-5): 5

Submitted By: Green, V. Steven

Additional Reviewer: Schulz, Ashley

Date posted: January 11, 2018

Growing a Revolution: Bringing our Soil Back to Life is an essential addition to the library of conservationists, farmers, and agricultural scientists.

In many parts of the world, agricultural soils have been degraded by the long-term use of intensive tillage and reliance on intensive chemical inputs. As a result, soils have become addicted to these rough practices to achieve high yields of crops for food, feed, fiber, and fuel. Many assume that this is the way it must be, but according to David Montgomery, there are steps we can take to improve soil health. Montgomery traveled extensively to learn how farmers are improving soil health through sustainable practices. “Growing a Revolution” is the resulting compilation of his adventures and insights into the practices that farmers are using to improve the health of their soils.

Although Montgomery includes a lot of science in “Growing a Revolution,” the book is delivered like a novel, not a textbook. The book is broken down into thirteen chapters filled with detailed stories of Montgomery’s travels, intermixed with understandable science about soil processes and their relationships with the sustainable practices that are discussed in each chapter. Montgomery begins with an abbreviated history of agriculture, including the four major agricultural revolutions that have occurred thus far, including: 1) the introduction of the plow, 2) adoption of soil husbandry, 3) mechanization and industrialization, and 4) the “Green Revolution,” which shifted us toward our modern use of proprietary seeds and agrochemicals. Within these introductory chapters, Montgomery also emphasizes the importance of healthy soil to sustain a growing population, and addresses some of the myths that have been brought about by the “Green Revolution” that perpetuate our dependence on plows and agrochemicals. These preface chapters lead into Montgomery’s stories of farmers that have cut out tillage and chemicals. Montgomery uses many, sometimes extreme, analogies throughout the book to get his point across. For example, he says that heavy fertilizer applications can turn plants into “botanical couch potatoes,” and that agrochemical salesmen are like “drug dealers” because they feed a cycle of addiction. Montgomery continues this argument against tillage and chemicals throughout many of the subsequent chapters, while introducing the reader to underutilized practices, such as crop rotations and cover crops, and lesser-utilized practices, such as composting with worms and integrating livestock.

After introducing the reader to many successful practices of conservation agriculture, Montgomery collapses them into three overarching principles: minimal soil disturbance, cover crops, and crop rotations. These three principles are the key to improving soil health. Once implemented together, these practices can save farmers money and time. Montgomery contends that the only people that may be threatened by conservation agriculture would be fertilizer and agrochemical companies. However, he also indicates that widely implementing these practices may take time, since it requires change in long-standing cultural practices. The key to conversion is to provide farmers with local, full-scale examples of successful implementation, as well as training and technical support for those who are interested in adopting practices of conservation agriculture.

“Growing a Revolution” provides a refreshing, positive perspective about our ability to reverse global soil depletion, and may be the encouragement that we need to implement conservation agriculture, the fifth agricultural revolution. Since this book is suitable not only for conservationists and farmers, but also the general consumer, Montgomery has created the potential to positively influence the minds of a diverse array of people, who in turn, could influence policies that promote more sustainable practices in agriculture. Montgomery contends that with support from consumers, as well as farmers’ willingness to “ditch the plow, cover up, and grow diversity,” soil health and fertility can be restored around the world to help sustain agriculture, the environment, as well as the continually growing global population.