Farming Books

1. This book is good for those that want to obtain general vocabulary words and survey of USA accounting methods. 2. This is not the book for someone who is already an accountant from another country who needs to translate accounting vocabulary or jargan beyond generalities for a US job. 3. This is a good primer but only that -- a starter.

This book covers everything you should know as a quantum chemist. It would be a great reference, except that it is totally unclear about what it's talking about. To understand what McWeeny means, you need to look up every reference. Things that should take 2 hours to understand will take you 2 weeks.

I have focused largely on his treatment of response functions, and let me say: what a mess! He actually calls certain operations A(w) even though A is indpt of w. It's terribly confusing and very unnecessarily so. I ended uphaving to white out parts of it and make many corrections just to understand what in the world he was talking about. There are also lots of mistakes...

Very confusing information. No order on the subject. I believe the author is probably a poultry fancier but not a game fowl authority. Just a second star for some good pictures.

I bought this book seeking for practical information on how to successfully raise ratites, mainly Rheas and Ostriches. However, it deals mainly on Ostriches and Emus (has 2 to 3 paragraphs on Rheas and no pictures about this bird). Its section on reproduction focuses on artificial incubation in a serious and straight forward veterinarian vocabulary (as does the whole book) but it virtually ignores the natural incubation process, which is used by most small ratite farmers. I do recommend the book if you are interested in the feed composition area, it brings lots of tables, graphs and tips on ratite feeding. Its section on ratite anesthesiology is also very complete. I do not recommend the book if you are an average farmer who didn't graduate in veterinary medicine and are looking for rpractical advice on ratite breeding as it is written in a technical vocabulary directed for Vets and therefore carries the technical terms and conditions necessary for a serious (but not practical for the average farmer) veterinary assistance at a ratite farm operation. The only chapter written in an average vocabulary is the one on Anatomy of Ratites, including drawings of the internal organs of all ratite birds, again, if you are not a Vet you may find it pretty difficult going beyond this point of the book.

The main problem with this book is that it requires too much technical vocabulary to even begin to comprehend it. Before buying it get a University degree majoring in Chemistry with minors in Botany and Genetics. This book is only for the scientifically educated .

Wow what a mammoth with over 1000 pages with very little information in it. This book has so many categories that it doesn't have much information on any 1 thing. I was so excited to get this book I was hoping that it would have information on how to build different things needed around the farm and how to care for animals yet when I started reading it I found the information lacking for my uses and refereance All this book does is collect dust on my shelf.

This book provides several examples of making transgenic crops - weat, triticale, rice, corn, barley, peanut, etc. For some reason, examples published are not always best of the field. I have an impression, the examples are chosen pretty randomly. They do not include simpler novel technologies like apex shoot transformation and flower dip, although by the time of the publication these technics were available. The review of the material is poor, authors mostly just present their data published somewhere else. For the book super high price I expected much more, and pretty much disappointed.

This is the third Steiner book I have tried to read and I had the same experience as the first two books (Egyptian Myths and Mysteries and The Fourth Dimension). I have come to the conclusion that the information published from Stieners lectures has too much wandering around and not getting to the point to be very useful.

Steiner was definately ahead of his time. He possessed great esoteric and astral vision. But, his problem seems to be that his audiences were very dense and his presentation style is just too sparse for the modern reader.

When he is able to convey information it is based on ideas that he has perceived and is not adequately able to explain. For instance, in this book he goes into the etheric energies which come into a cow through it's horns which help it digest its food with supporting energy release through the hooves. Thus for his biodynamic preparations a cows horn needs to be used to let the core mixture sit within the horn underground for six months. Then you can only use a horn 4-6 times before the energy is used up.

So you are left wondering first, where are you going to get a horn (not from a slaughter house he says)? What exactly about the horn gives it the magic? If it is the shape of the horn then why would it get used up? And he says if you have an airy barn you can store the horn in there because its better. Without some additional explanation, which he never really makes clear, none of this makes any sense.

I think that most of the people I know of in metaphysical circles who can think will no longer accept information from anyone without it having some basis either in a related science or something directly experiential or both. We are moving away from accepting things based alone on faith. Even the sacred writings tell us we have to test what we hear. With most of Steiners writings, or I should say the books transcribed from his lectures, there is no way for you to trace Steiners path and come to the same observations yourself. Clearly in metaphysical traditions such as shamanism self experience, or gnosis, is essential. Without this ability to really get into Steiners words what he says remains woo-woo.

It's a shame that these respected Agricultural Economists would allow such a poor example of a textbook to be published under their names. While there may be some meagre updates, the book is so watered down that it is probably more appropriate to a high school class than college. In addition, at 54 cents a page, its price far exceeds the price of most other quality books dealing with agriculture. A decent faculty member would never, in good conscience, require that students purchase this book.

The 4th edition of this text was a truly outstanding edition. It fit the needs of a wider vairety of courses ranging from the traditional Ag Policy course to courses focusing on the environment and rual development. Unfotunately, this is 5th edtion. If the reader wants a "CLiff-Notes" version then this is the text. It lacks the depth and breadth of a decent college textbook. The authors would have served the academic community much better by giving this watered down fifth edition a totally new title while leaving the 4th edition in print.

I have taught Agricultural Policy for a number of years. Count me out on adopting this edition.

All I can say is be careful when purchasing this book. My sister ordered this book and when the package arrived, it was the appendix version (gray cover) - Not the blue cover version of the book. So I ordered the book also to see if I would get the actual blue version of the book, and I got the appendix version too. So it ended up costing us money because we had to return it, and amazon doesn't have a selection for "not the book ordered"

I am sorry to say that I am disappointed in this book. While other editions may have been better, this one is riddled with typos, grammatical errors, and disorganized chapters while fail to focus on the nutrition and feeding aspect of their sections.