Purchase
Houghton Mifflin
June 2008
On Sale: June 4, 2008
416 pages
ISBN: 0618606238
EAN: 9780618606238
Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction
Paul Roberts, best-selling author of The End of Oil, turns
his attention to the modern food economy and finds that the
system entrusted to meet our most basic needs is failing
dramatically.
In this carefully researched, vividly recounted narrative,
Roberts lays out the stark economic realities beneath
modern food—and shows how our system for making, marketing,
and moving what we eat is growing less and less compatible
with the billions of consumers that system was built to
serve.
At the heart of The End of Food is a grim paradox: the rise
of large-scale, hyper-efficient industrialized food
production, though it generates more food more cheaply than
at any time in history, has reached a point of dangerously
diminishing returns. Our high-volume factory systems are
creating new risks for food-borne illness—from E. coli to
avian flu. Our high-yield crops and livestock generate
grain, vegetables and meat of declining nutritional
quality. Overproduction is so routine that nearly one
billion people are now overweight or obese worldwide—and
yet those extra calories are still so unevenly distributed
that the same number of people—one billion, roughly one in
every seven of us—can't get enough to eat. In some of the
hardest-hit regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa, the lack
of a single nutrient—vitamin A—has left more than 5 million
children permanently blind.
Meanwhile, the shift to heavily mechanized, chemically
intensive farming has so compromised the soils, water
systems, and other natural infrastructure upon which all
food production depends that it's unclear how long such
output can be maintained. And just as we've begun to
understand the limits of our industrialized superabundance,
the burgeoning economies of Asia, where newly wealthy
consumers are rapidly adopting Western-style, meat-heavy
diets, are putting new demands on global food supplies.
Comprehensive and global, with lucid writing, dramatic
detail and fresh insights, The End of Food offers readers
new, accessible way to understand the vulnerable miracle of
the modern food economy. Roberts presents clear, stark
visions of the future and helps us prepare to make the
decisions -- personal and global -- we must make to survive
the demise of food production as we know it.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
| 
© 2003-2024 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy