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Empty Pastures:
Confined Animals and
the Transformation
of the Rural Landscape
By Terence J. Centner
$35
University of Illinois Press |
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Book examines rise of ‘factory’ farms
Over the past century, American agriculture has shifted dramatically.
Small, commercial farms find it increasingly difficult to compete
with large-scale—mostly indoor—animal-feeding operations.
Empty Pastures, written by
Terence Centner, UGA professor of agricultural and applied economics,
sees the dwindling numbers of livestock in the American countryside
as a symptom of a broader transformation, one with serious consequences
for the rural landscape and its inhabitants—animal as well
as human.
Centner investigates the environmental, social, economic and political
impact of the rise of the so-called factory farm. He exposes the
ramifications of the contemporary trend toward industrial-scale
food production and probes the extraordinary, worrisome changes
that are taking place in rural landscapes.
The issues Centner tackles include groundwater contamination, the
loss of biodiversity, animal welfare, concentrated odors and other
nuisances, soil erosion and the economic effects of the disappearance
of the small family farm. He proposes a series of pragmatic reforms
for regulating factory farms to halt ecological degradation and
revitalize rural communities.
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