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Books
63 books on grazing, soil, water, holistic management, farm business and homesteading, grouped by topic.
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Grazing & livestock Holistic management & planning Soil health Water & keyline Business & marketing Homestead & permaculture
Curious how soil and grazing connect to food quality and health? Our Nutrition page sums up the research, with notes on What Your Food Ate, Nourishment and Sacred Cow.
Grazing & livestock
Planned grazing, pasture, grass-finishing and low-stress handling.
Management-Intensive Grazing: The Grassroots of Grass Farming
A practical manual on rotational grazing: paddock design, stocking rates, water and fencing.
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Kick the Hay Habit
How to cut hay feeding by grazing more days of the year.
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Comeback Farms
Mob grazing, multi-species stocking and restoring rundown leased land.
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No Risk Ranching
Building a grazing business on leased land and custom-grazed cattle, with little debt.
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Salad Bar Beef
Polyface Farm's approach to grass-finished beef, daily moves and direct sales.
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Quality Pasture
Pasture quality and grazing management for better animal performance on grass.
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Grassfed to Finish
A guide to finishing cattle on grass, from forage planning to the eating quality of the beef.
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Grass-Fed Cattle
A broad handbook on raising cattle on grass: herd health, handling, grazing and marketing.
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The Art and Science of Grazing
How grazing management affects plants, soil and livestock, written for organic and grass-based farms.
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Silvopasture
A guide to managing grazing animals, forage crops and trees together on a temperate farm.
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Grass Productivity
The 1950s classic that set out the rest-and-recovery basis of rational grazing.
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Nourishment
A range scientist on how livestock choose what to eat and why diverse forage matters.
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Humane Livestock Handling
Low-stress handling and plans for small-scale corrals, chutes and loading facilities.
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Livestock Handling and Transport (5th ed.)
A technical reference on animal behavior, handling facilities and transport welfare.
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Defending Beef
A rancher and lawyer argues that well-managed cattle can benefit land and diets.
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Sacred Cow: The Case for (Better) Meat
The nutritional, environmental and ethical case for well-raised meat.
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Holistic management & planning
Decision-making frameworks and whole-farm planning.
Holistic Management, Third Edition
The core text on the holistic decision-making framework and planned grazing.
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Holistic Management Handbook, Third Edition
A workbook companion to Holistic Management, with exercises for applying the framework.
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Call of the Reed Warbler
An Australian grazier's account of regenerative farmers and the ideas behind them.
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Grass, Soil, Hope
Profiles of ranchers and land managers using practices that store carbon in soil.
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Regrarians Handbook
Doherty's ten-layer Regrarians Platform for farm planning, released chapter by chapter as an eBook (sold direct, no ISBN).
Soil health
Soil biology, cover crops and the case for rebuilding soil.
Dirt to Soil
A North Dakota rancher's switch to no-till, cover crops and grazing, and the soil-health principles he follows.
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For the Love of Soil
An agroecologist's guide to soil biology, with case studies from farms and ranches.
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Teaming with Microbes (Revised ed.)
An accessible introduction to the soil food web.
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Building Soils for Better Crops (3rd ed.)
SARE's practical soil-health handbook. A free PDF is available from SARE.
Managing Cover Crops Profitably (3rd ed.)
SARE's reference on choosing and managing cover crops. A free PDF is available from SARE.
Neal Kinsey's Hands-On Agronomy
Soil testing and balancing soil minerals using the Albrecht approach.
Growing a Revolution
A geologist visits farms around the world that are rebuilding soil.
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What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health
A geologist and a biologist on how soil health and farming practices affect the nutrients in crops, meat and dairy, and what that may mean for people.
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Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations
A history of how soil loss shaped past societies.
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The Soil Will Save Us
A journalist's tour of soil carbon science and the people trying to rebuild it.
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Cows Save the Planet
A journalist on soil restoration, grazing and the carbon and water cycles.
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The Reindeer Chronicles
Stories of land and ecosystem restoration projects around the world.
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Kiss the Ground
A general-audience introduction to regenerative agriculture and soil carbon.
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The Carbon Farming Solution
A global survey of perennial crops and practices that store carbon, including silvopasture.
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Water & keyline
Keyline design, water harvesting and slowing water on the land.
Water for Every Farm
The original keyline design text on capturing and spreading water across a farm. This link is for the 2008 edition compiled by Ken Yeomans.
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Water in Plain Sight
Water cycles, land management and examples of landscapes holding more water.
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Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Vol. 1 (3rd ed.)
The principles of harvesting rain and runoff with earthworks, basins and swales.
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Water for Any Farm
Keyline-inspired water design for farms of any size.
Restoration Agriculture
Perennial polyculture farming modeled on the oak savanna, with keyline water design.
The Permaculture Earthworks Handbook
How to design and build swales, dams, ponds and other water-harvesting systems.
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Business & marketing
Farm finances, lean systems, direct sales and starting out.
Fields of Farmers
Interns, apprentices and bringing the next generation into a farm business.
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Folks, This Ain't Normal
Salatin's critique of the modern food system and his case for local food.
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Knowledge Rich Ranching
Ranch economics and management lessons from grass-based ranchers.
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The Lean Farm
Lean manufacturing ideas applied to cutting waste on a small farm.
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The Organic Farmer's Business Handbook
Record-keeping, enterprise budgets and pricing for small farms.
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Start Your Farm
A planning guide for new farmers covering money, land, markets and time.
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Homestead & permaculture
Permaculture design, small flocks and resilient homesteads.
Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability
A co-originator of permaculture explains its twelve design principles.
Gaia's Garden (2nd ed.)
A widely used introduction to home-scale permaculture.
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The Resilient Farm and Homestead
Site design, water, perennial crops and animals on a Vermont homestead.
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Permaculture: A Designers' Manual
Mollison's large reference text for permaculture design.
Introduction to Permaculture
Mollison's shorter, practical introduction to permaculture design.
Sepp Holzer's Permaculture
Holzer's methods from his mountain farm in the Austrian Alps.
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The Permaculture City
Regenerative design for urban, suburban and town resilience.
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Edible Forest Gardens, Vol. 1
Ecological vision and theory for temperate-climate food forests.
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The Permaculture Market Garden
A visual guide to a profitable whole-systems farm business.
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The Edible Ecosystem Solution
Growing biodiversity in your backyard and beyond.
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Regenerative Agriculture: A Manual for Making Small Farms Work
Perkins' manual drawn from Ridgedale Farm in Sweden (sold direct, no ISBN found).
Introduction to Permaculture (free open textbook)
Millison's free online textbook for Oregon State's introductory course.
Permaculture Design: Tools for Climate Resilience (free open textbook)
Millison's free online textbook on climate assessment and designing for drought, heat and erratic rainfall.
Pastured Poultry Profit$
Raising broilers on pasture in moveable pens, and selling them.
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The Small-Scale Poultry Flock
Integrating a home or small-farm flock into the land and the garden.
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59 of 63 books have an ISBN-13, checked against Open Library records on October 28, 2026. Cover images courtesy of Open Library, or, where Open Library has none, taken from the publisher's or author's own page for that book. Editions and prices change; check the seller's page before buying. See our affiliate disclosure.