War in the Country

How the Fight to Save Rural Life Will Shape Our Future

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An award-winning writer's provocative look at rural communities and a passionate call to arms to save them.

Rural life in North America has changed dramatically over the past fifty years. The few remaining family farms now struggle to survive. They have been replaced by corporate-backed factory farms, mining interests, and large-scale tourism developments, all favoured by governments with little understanding of or sympathy for traditional rural life-a life that is sustainable and healthy.

Pawlick, himself a farmer, uses the microcosm of his own rural community in eastern Ontario to portray the groups involved around the world who are waging a war to save their rural way of life. The outcome of these clashes will decide not only the future of rural life globally but also the quality and sustainability of our food, our water, our soil, and our air-of the environment on which we depend for survival. The War in the Country argues, passionately and persuasively, that every one of us must join the fight to secure our food future.

""An impassioned expose of the complicated politics and players behind why our food choices in Canada continue to shrink or are driven into an underground economy."" -- Canadian Geographic

""Journalist Thomas Pawlick knows rural life well...He has seen, first-hand, the tragic transformation of our traditional family farms and the corruption of our food system. Here, Pawlick chronicles how global forces -- from rapacious mining developments to factory farming to poor tax policy -- are affecting the countryside for the worse in his own eastern Ontario backyard. A lament for an agricultural nation -- and a passionate call to arms."" -- Green Living

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