Agriculture Books Bibliography

This section covers books on agriculture, or on selecting plants suitable for farming.

North American Cornucopia: Top 100 Indigenous Food Plants

Author(s): Small, Ernest

Publisher: CRC Press, 2014

ISBN: 978-1466585928

Comments: A funny thing about agriculture: from a nearly limitless variety of perhaps 40,000 North American species, why do we eat only a few dozen? Granted, it takes a long time to convert a plant such as maize into a today's varieties of corn, and many species aren't digestible by humans, but there remain a large variety of potential food sources. This very readable book assesses the 100 indigenous North American species that are the most promising candidates for development as cultivated foods. Potato beans, for example, a plant that forms potato-like tubers, were enjoyed by Henry David Thoreau and many others in history, but they are largely overlooked today, and a great candidate for commerical development. This well-researched work includes information about the species, their culinary uses, agricultural information, history, range maps, even Indian lore. This is not a field guide. 743 pages.

Range: North America

Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms

Author(s): Stamets, Paul

Publisher: Ten Speed Press, 2000

ISBN: 978-1580081757

View at: Amazon

Comments: Author Paul Stamets probably knows more about mushroom cultivation than anybody else. In this book, he discusses cultivation of medicinal, edible, or otherwise useful mushrooms. This book is a standard reference on the subject. It is not a guidebook, covering species chosen by Stamets because they are prized as delicious, medically useful, or psychoactive. He presents growing techniques that are generally applicable to fungi. 592 pages.

Note: book cover sizes in the list below are shown relative to each other. The list is organized by primary author. Some out-of-copyright books are available free at the supplied links.