Forest Farming

J. Sholto Douglas, Robert Hart

The integration of tree and other farming can establish a sounder ecological balance and greater productivity of food and materials for clothing, fuel and shelter. The book suggests planting and cropping methods, and a range of potentially useful trees.

Fruit and Vegetable Processing

Offers the non-specialist an insight into the ranges of methods and equipment available for preserving products, increasing the quality and range of foodstuffs and indicating where the hazards are when setting up a small food processing concern.

Challenging the Professions

Robert Chambers

Challenging the Professions questions the dominant approaches of professions, disciplines and bureaucracies concerned with rural development. The theme is that 'we', who call ourselves professionals, are much of the problem, and to do better requires reversals of much that we regard as normal. The c...

Basic Blacksmithing

David Harries, Bernhard Heer

Starting with only an anvil and a few basic tools, almost all the tools needed by a blacksmith can be made from commonly found materials. With clear instructions this book gives step by step instructions on basic blacksmithing.

The Blacksmithing Instructors Guide

David Harries

This guide is designed to help skilled blacksmiths who have little or no teaching experience to train others in forge work techniques, using easily obtainable equipment and scrap metal to produce tools such as hoes, sickles, hammers and axes.

Carpentry Toolmaking

Aaron Moore

This guide for carpentry instructors includes detailed plans for practical demonstrations, and important theoretical aspects of the craft. The tools include planes, clamps, workbench and vice. There is also a section on basic blacksmithing techniques.

Fabric Manufacture

Alan Newton

Aimed at small, rural communities this book offers an introduction to simple methods of making textile fabrics which are used throughout the world. Includes sections on weaving, knitting, fibre entanglement, lace-making, braiding and knotting (Published in the Small-scale Textiles series).

Made in Africa

Janet Leek, Andrew Scott, Matthew Taylor

This book examines the pros and cons of the local production of carpentry hand-tools as opposed to their importation. In seeking the best strategy to adopt it also outlines the previous methods adopted by VSO and Intermediate Technology who have much experience in this area. Published in the VSO ECO...

Women in Brazil

Duncan Green, Terry Bond

Brazilian women are fighting back against machismo and racism, and against exploitation in factory and farm, in a myriad of grassroots organisations. This mosaic of articles, poems and interviews paints a vivid picture of life for women in Brazil's shanty towns and peasant villages.

Out of The Shadows

Jo Fisher

Since the early 1970s the lives of South America's women have been transformed by military rule. In Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay, women were at the forefront of the opposition to dictators such as Chile's General Pinochet and Paraguay's Alfredo Stroessner. New "social movements" of shanty...