Review of Good Growing: Why Organic Farming Works by Leslie A. Duram

As an extension vegetable specialist with a strong interest in organic farming and in assisting farmers to make a living, I relished this book. Leslie Duram is a geographer at Southern Illinois University Carbondale who has her roots in Kansas and is motivated by a love for Plains agriculture. The book, which she describes as a piece of advocacy scholarship, is at once scholarly, informative, and entertaining. In six well-organized chapters Duram provides an overview of organic farming within the context of overall U.S. agriculture and society (with our growing demand for organic food), reviews research describing organic farms and farmers , presents and analyzes the stories of five successful organic family farms, and offers a vision of a future American agriculture based on medium-sized organic family farms.