Deeply Rooted Evaluation

Deeply Rooted is a nonfiction novel written by Lisa Hamilton. Hamilton decided to write a book on farming in today's society. She choose to tell the stories of three farmers, Harry Lewis a dairy farmers, Virgil Trujillo a rancher and the Podoll family who are plant farmers. All these farmers are different, but they all connected in the end to have the same goal for farming and its future.

Deeply Rooted is a novel that shows the struggle small farmers face during this day and age. Hamilton shares her experiences she had with each of these farmers to show how today’s food industry is going downhill. These experiences show how hard it is for small farms to compete in the agriculture industry and the moral issues that are in the industrial agriculture these days. In this book the farmers fell like a lot of the industrial agriculture does not have any connection to the land and this causing a moral problem, because they do not care about how the animals and land are treated. They use machine and keep the animals in small pacted areas. The dairy farmer, Harry has a big moral standing, he lets his cows roam in the pasture freely, because that's what he believes is right to do in farming.  Harry describes the cows in big industrial farms as being “in a penitentiary”(Hamilton 42), because they are not allowed to roam freely. Deeply Rooted is a heavy book to read because of all of the information Hamilton puts into the book, but it’s because  “She gets into a lot more than just the day-to-day activities on the farms, careful to cover the history and ideology behind the farmers’ choices.” (Sustainable Kentucky). The way Hamilton writes this book, definitely helps show her overall message.

All and all I think Deeply Rooted was a good read, it is very informational about the farming industry. It was a little dragged out at points but I definitely like how Lisa Hamilton choose to write this book, based on her experiences with three farmers. I would recommend this to people who are interested in farming and the food industry.