Book of the Week #22

The Real Dirt: Toward Food Sufficiency and Farm Sustainability in New England by John Carroll (Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire, NH Agricultural Experiment Station, 2010)

Carroll, a professor at UNH, will be speaking on Friday June 3, 2011 at 7pm at Warner Town Hall to kick off the Kearsarge Area Eat Local Week.

“We have a greater inability to feed ourselves than the rest of the nation,” says Carroll, a professor of natural resources and the environment. Vermont and Maine, he says, can produce food to feed about 20 percent of their populations; Massachusetts can feed 10 percent; and New Hampshire produces enough food for just 5 percent of its people.


“The Real Dirt” follows Carroll’s “The Wisdom of Small Farms and Local Food” (2005) and “Pastures of Plenty” (2008) as the third in a trilogy of books looking at sustainable agriculture and food security in New England. The audience for the book, he says, is “anyone who eats and lives in this region. The book will give them a far deeper understanding of their own food.”  (UNH Media Release)