Novelist and nature writer Richard Horan embarked on an adventure across America to reveal that farming is still the vibrant beating heart of our nation. Horan went from coast to coast, visiting organic family farms and working the harvests of more than a dozen essential or unusual food crops--from Kansas wheat and Michigan wild rice to Maine potatoes, California walnuts, and Cape Cod cranberries--in search of connections with the farmers, the soil, the seasons, and the lifeblood of America.

Sparkling with lively prose and a winning blend of profound seriousness and delightful humor, Harvest carries the reader on an eyeopening and transformational journey across the length and breadth of this remarkable land, offering a powerful national portrait of challenge and diligence, and an inspiring message of hope.

Each co-product feed, often erroneously labelled as processing waste, is described precisely, allowing the reader to distinguish between grains and supergrains, peeled potato and potato peel, steep liquor and spent wash. It describes, for example, how sugar beet fields are audited to ensure good farming practice, how cooking destroys the anti-nutritional factor in raw potatoes, and chopping reduces the risk of choking and how the extraction of sugar and starch leads to higher energy value feeds. Guidance on feeding is provided, with cautionary notes for the farmer and pointers to the factory, where improved practices can enhance feed quality and increase demand.