The acclaimed and award-winning book about what a rare mushroom can teach us about sustaining life on a fragile planet.

Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world—and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to grow in daunting places. It is also an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. In all its contradictions, matsutake offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: what manages to live in the ruins we have made?

A tale of diversity within our damaged landscapes, The Mushroom at the End of the World follows one of the strangest commodity chains of our times to explore the unexpected corners of capitalism. Here, we witness the varied and peculiar worlds of matsutake commerce: the worlds of Japanese gourmets, capitalist traders, Hmong jungle fighters, industrial forests, Yi Chinese goat herders, Finnish nature guides, and more. These companions also lead us into fungal ecologies and forest histories to better understand the promise of cohabitation in a time of massive human destruction.

By investigating one of the world's most sought-after fungi, The Mushroom at the End of the World presents an original examination into the relation between capitalist destruction and collaborative survival within multispecies landscapes, the prerequisite for continuing life on earth.

This book brings together a rich collection of material on management and organization in agri-food chains and networks. Producers, processors, traders and retailers of agricultural and food products operate in an economic and institutional environment that is increasingly dominated by global developments. Therefore, organizing efficient and effective supply chains as well as managing collaboration among participating firms requires an international perspective. This book presents theoretical and practical insights from many different parts of the world. The topics covered include classical supply chain management issues like logistics, information exchange (e.g. tracking and tracing), quality control, safety assurance, and chain performance. Other timely issues covered are joint innovation, and shared responsibility for sustainability in agri-food supply chains. Special attention is given to issues of governance and organization of chains and networks, for example, by focussing on the role of producer organisations (such as farmer cooperatives) in their effort to combine horizontal and vertical collaboration in the international supply chain. This book is relevant for both academics and managers interested in the latest advances in research on management and organization of international agri-food chains and networks.

Established in 1905, The Forest Service is steeped in history, conflict, strong personalities (including Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot), and the challenges of managing 193 million acres of national forests and grasslands. This unique federal agency is one that combines forest management with wildlife, fish, recreation, mining, grazing, and hundreds of other uses. It operates in the midst of controversy and change. The original intent was to protect the public forests, protect the water supplies, and, when appropriate, provide timber. Much has changed over the last 100 years including many new laws, but the fact that these lands are still fought over today shows the foresight of politicians, foresters, scientists, and communities. This work brings to light the many and varied activities of the agency that many people know little about in a world that is constantly changing. Written by a former Forest Service national historian, topics discussed in the work include wilderness and the Wilderness Act of 1964, recreation battles and interagency rivalry with the National Park Service, timber management including clearcutting, ecosystem management, roadless area and controversies over RARE and RARE II studies, fish and wildlife management including endangered species before and after the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and mining and the General Mining Act of 1872. It also discusses the future challenges: forest fires, water protection and restoration, recreation, involving the public, and fish and wildlife.

The mining industry in North America is an important subject for archaeological investigation due to its rich and conflicted history. It is associated with the opening of the frontier and the rise of the United States as an industrial power but also with social upheaval, the dispossession of indigenous lands, and extensive environmental impacts. Synthesizing fifty years of research on American mining sites that date from colonial times to the present, Paul White provides an ideal overview of the field for both students and professionals. Case studies are taken from a wide range of contexts, from eastern coal mines to Alaskan gold fields, and special attention is paid to the domestic and working lives of miners. Exploring what material artifacts can tell us about the lives of people who left few records, White demonstrates how archaeologists contribute to understanding mining legacies.

Milan and Lombardy have played an important role in the Italian country since the Roman period. This importance is reflected also by the diffusion of stone architecture: a persisting trait of Milan architecture was the use of different stones in the same building. Milan lies in the middle of the alluvial plain of the Po, far from the stone quarries; some waterways were dug out in order to supply the building stones from the surrounding territories. The study of stone as building material was significant at the end of 19th century, but then it was largely neglected by both architects and geologists. So it is significant to suggest a study about the stones employed to build in Milan (Part One) in relationship with a petrographic study about the features of the stones quarried in the whole Lombard territory (Part Two). Part One contains a record of Milanese edifices, edifices marking the different historical periods. Each edifice is described in a "card" containing: the building history, the architect, the kind of stone employed and subdivided according to the different parts of the building, the shape of stone elements. Part Two contains the description of the features of the stones reported in the first part. They are metamorphic and magmatic rocks of the Alpine area; sedimentary rocks and loose materials of the Prealpine area; sedimentary rocks of the Apennine area; loose sediments of the Padania plain. Some stones, coming from other northern Italian regions, and used in Lombard architecture, are also described. Each stone is described in a "card" containing: commercial and historical names, petrographic classification, macroscopic features, mineralogical composition, microscopic features, geological setting, quarry sites, transport to yards, morphology of dressed elements and surface handworking, use in architecture in the whole Lombard territory and abroad, decay morphologies. A particular investigation is addressed to the stones used during the 20th century, a great part of them was never used before in Milan and in Lombardy.

Flag of convenience fishing seriously undermines efforts to protect the marine environment. To counter this threat, "Market Denial and International Fisheries Regulation" rests on the logic of the most basic tenet of economics: if no market exists for a product then producers will cease to produce. Denying market access to the flag of convenience fishing fleet should significantly reduce instances of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. In areas beyond national jurisdiction not only is market denial the most effective means of undermining the IUU fleet, it is, for most practical purposes, the only way to do so. To what extent, however, do the laws of the sea and international trade allow groups of States to close their markets to non-compliant fishing vessels?

If you care about food security in Asia and particularly rice and world trade, buy this book. The best authors in the business (legal, academic and private sector) have contributed to its success with 12 treatises on core issues. I complement the editors of this compendium, Michael Ewing-Chow and Melanie Vilarasau Slade, for their intellectual courage in bringing these experts to contribute to one book. The technical side of these issues have been kept at a minimum wherever possible for the general reader. Each chapter relates to the others and guides us to some conclusions and a call to action.' - Milo Hamilton, Firstgrain, US'This is a complete recipe for global food security as the most credible way forward in a world of continuously uncertain food supplies. Today the overall intact agricultural production potential appears mainly threatened by location-specific climate change challenges and by both national and international food policy governance failures. Hence, the role of trade and of trade rules is all the more important, as credibly emphasised by the authors' consequent advocacy for a removal of food trade barriers as part of a more coherent poverty strategy and towards collective food security.' - Christian Haberli, Bern University, Switzerland 'Food security is one of the key challenges the world faces. The demand for food will increase as our population goes up from 7 billion to 9 billion. Global warming and an increasingly erratic weather pattern will have an impact on food production. It is in this context that I welcome this important book. The editors have rightly invited us to refocus our minds from self-sufficiency to collective food security.' - Tommy Koh, Chairman of the Governing Board Centre for International Law, National University of Singapore Food security is one of the greatest challenges of our time. The food price crisis of 2008 exposed the vulnerabilities of the global food system. Governments across Asia acerbated the crisis by imposing export restrictions based on a policy of self-sufficiency. This book assesses whether self-sufficiency is an adequate response to the food security challenges we face. Pricing volatility drives isolationism at a time when climate change and increasingly uncertain weather patterns make it difficult for any single nation to guarantee adequate food production for itself. Through a collection of commissioned studies which draw upon the experience of leading experts and scholars in trade, investment, law, economics, and food policy, this book analyses the impact of this trend on the most essential crop in the Asian region rice. It suggests that food security policy should be reconceptualised: from the national to the regional and even the global level. It also provides its own proposals as to how this new paradigm of collective food security should be understood and developed. The book calls for a new conversation in the region, acknowledging that the challenges we face are global and the solutions must be found in collective action. This state-of-the-art study will appeal to lawyers, economists and political scientists, as well as trade and food security specialists by providing expert analyses and enlightening solutions for the future. Contributors: C. Boonekamp, R.M. Briones, R. Clarete, D. Dixit, M. Ewing-Chow, L.A. Jackson, J. Jackson Ewing, J. McVitty, E. Rogerson, J. Tijaja, C.P. Timmer, M. Vilarasau Slade

The emergence of China as a global economic powerhouse, the uncertain path of Russia towards a market economy, and the integration of ten Central and Eastern European countries into the European Union (EU) have occupied the minds and agendas of many policy-makers, business leaders and scholars from around the world at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century. Twenty years ago these developments were unimaginable. The impact of these changes is so vast that the importance of understanding the forces that unleashed this process, how these changes became possible, and what the lessons are for other developing countries, cannot be overestimated. This book is the first effort to analyze the economics and politics of agricultural reforms by comparing the reform processes, their causes and their effects across this vast region. The authors draw on a vast set of studies and new data, which compare reforms and economic impacts in more than 25 countries, to come up with a series of conclusions and implications on the role of economic reforms in growth, and the importance of initial conditions and political constraints in explaining the choices that were made and their effects. The book analyzes some of the most successful sets of agricultural policies in history that have lifted people out of poverty, raising productivity and incomes by staggering amounts. At the same time the book explains the reasons behind dramatic failures in policy processes and reforms that caused hunger, poverty and which had devastating effects on economic growth and development for millions of other people.

This visionary book takes stock of the urgent challenges facing food chains globally and provides a critical evaluation of radical new thinking and perspectives on agricultural and food policy. Wyn Grant investigates the principal drivers of change in food and agriculture, including globalization, climate change, the structure of the industry, changing patterns of consumer demand and new technologies. Rethinking Agricultural and Food Policy provides a comprehensive account of the contemporary challenges impacting the food chain. Chapters explore the various barriers towards positive progress, exposing the deficiency of institutional architecture at a domestic and international level and examining how attempts to reform and revitalize it encounter inertia, embedded production structures, defenders of the status quo and vested interests. Proposing that a holistic, interdisciplinary approach is essential in making progress towards revitalizing policy and encouraging innovation in international governance, Wyn Grant calls for a new agenda to deliver real and necessary change and offer hope for the planet and its people. Using critical insights from natural and social science to uphold its calls for a holistic, integrated approach to agricultural and food policy, this timely book will be an essential read for policy makers, as well as students taking undergraduate or postgraduate courses in agriculture, food and the environment.

In recent decades, Canada's agricultural industry, one of the world's largest, has had to adjust to global trade developments such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization. Internationalization and Canadian Agriculture examines the patterns of continuity and change in Canadian agricultural policy making in important areas like farm income support programs, prairie grain marketing, supply management, animal and food product safety, and the regulation of genetically modified crops and foods.

Arguing that the effects of internationalization have been mediated by Canada's political institutional framework, Grace Skogstad demonstrates how the goals and strategies of authoritative political actors in Canada's federal and parliamentary systems have been decisive to policy developments. Skogstad details the interaction between agriculture and the political economy of Canada, shows how international and domestic trade shape Canadian agricultural policies, and argues that while agricultural programs have changed, the post-war state assistance agricultural paradigm has persisted.

A thorough political analysis and history of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Canadian agricultural policy and policy-making, Internationalization of Canadian Agriculture is an important contribution to political economy and public policy.

"Beyond previous more simplistic approaches, this book takes a giant step towards understanding and translating into people-centered policies the actual position and complexity of fish production in Southeast Asian economies. Tackling how fi sheries and aquaculture are embedded in local and household economies and linked through dynamic supply chains to more distant, even global markets, the book makes essential policy and analytical recommendations. SEARCA and ISEAS have made a major contribution to the intellectual debate and action agenda for Southeast Asian fisheries." Dr Meryl Williams, Chair of the Commission of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research