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Friday, September 27, 2013

Book Review - Fruitless Fall - The Collapse of the Honeybee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis - Rowan Jacobsen

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Title:  The Fruitless Fall


Review:  I've always been fascinated by bees, but Fruitless Fall has made me an even bigger fan of these little fellas than ever before and also made me realize just how dependent our society has become upon their health and ability to thrive. Before reading this book I had no idea that the apple, blueberry, strawberry, {fill in the blank favorite fruit or any other pollinated crop for that matter} is just one small catastrophe away from following the path of the dinosaur. Sure, I knew we were in peril but never realized just how razor thin that line has been drawn. Scary thought. Scary times.

The author, Rowan Jacobsen, has clearly done his homework. Through his informative, captivating and sometimes edgy style he introduces us to the fascinating biological lifestyle of the small yet paramount insect we've come to know as the honey bee, a handful of prominent beekeepers across the country who are grappling with the shock waves of colony collapse disorder and an examination of our current agricultural system as well as how/why the heck we got to this place as our nation, as our world, faces the possibility of honey bee extinction, and with it, the lifestyle we currently take for granted. For me, the take home is obvious... respect the life force, respect that which sustains us. Do we really need all the chemicals we're spraying on our crops? Do we really need to truck bees thousands of miles all over the country for pollinating gigs as the seasons turn? Or should we, as the author suggests, revamp our entire agricultural system? I vote for the revamp. I think we've got to get ourselves back to the garden...
Thanks for this review go to TH Waters
Author of Ghellow Road & Letters to Bert

Publisher: Published September 16th 2008 by BloomsburyUSA
ISBN: 9781596915374
Copyright: 2008
Pages: 288
Where did I get the book:  Purchased at a local book seller.


Synopsis: How the disappearance of the world’s honeybee population puts the food we eat at risk.

Many people will remember that Rachel Carson predicted a silent spring, but she also warned of a fruitless fall, a time when “there was no pollination and there would be no fruit.” The fruitless fall nearly became a reality last year when beekeepers watched one third of the honeybee population—thirty billion bees—mysteriously die. The deaths have continued in 2008. Rowan Jacobsen uses the mystery of Colony Collapse Disorder to tell the bigger story of bees and their’ essential connection to our daily lives. With their disappearance, we won’t just be losing honey. Industrial agriculture depends on the honeybee to pollinate most fruits, nuts, and vegetables—one third of American crops. Yet this system is falling apart. The number of these professional pollinators has become so inadequate that they are now trucked across the country and flown around the world, pushing them ever closer to collapse. By exploring the causes of CCD and the even more chilling decline of wild pollinators, Fruitless Fall does more than just highlight this growing agricultural crisis. It emphasizes the miracle of flowering plants and their pollination partners, and urges readers not to take for granted the Edenic garden Homo sapiens has played in since birth. Our world could have been utterly different—and may be still.
Rowan Jacobsen
Author Biography:  Rowan Jacobsen is the James Beard Award-winning author of A Geography of Oysters: The Connoisseur’s Guide to Oyster Eating in North America, Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis, and The Living Shore, about our ancient connection to estuaries and their potential to heal the oceans. He has written for the New York Times, Newsweek, Harper’s, Outside, Eating Well, Forbes, Popular Science, and others, and his work has been anthologized in The Best American Science and Nature Writing and Best Food Writing collections. Whether visiting endangered oystermen in Louisiana or cacao-gathering tribes in the Bolivian Amazon, his subject is how to maintain a sense of place in a world of increasing placelessness. His 2010 book, American Terroir, was named one of the Top Ten Books of the Year by Library Journal. His newest, Shadows on the Gulf: A Journey Through Our Last Great Wetland, was released in 2011. His Outside Magazine piece “Heart of Dark Chocolate” received the 2011 Lowell Thomas Award from the Society of American Travel Writers for best adventure story of the year. He is a 2012 Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow, writing about endangered diversity on the borderlands between India, Myanmar, and China.


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