Who Really Feeds the World?
The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"One of the world’s most formidable environmentalists" —The Guardian
"A star among environmental, activist, and anti-corporate circles" —Vice
Who Really Feeds the World? is a powerful manifesto and a call-to-action for the solutions we need and the steps we need to take to survive in an era of climate collapse, threatened foodways, and urgent unsustainability.
The book is a rallying cry for agricultural justice, resilience, and genuine sustainability, and draws upon revolutionary environmental activist Vandana Shiva’s 30+ years of research and accomplishments in the field. Instead of relying on genetic modification and large-scale monocropping to solve the world’s food crisis, she proposes that we look to agroecology—the knowledge of the interconnectedness that creates food—as a truly life-giving alternative to the harmful industrial paradigms of Big Ag.
Shiva succinctly and eloquently lays out the networks of people and processes that feed the world, exploring issues of diversity, the needs of small farmers, the importance of seed saving, the movement toward localization, and the role of women in producing the world's food.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Shiva (Soil Not Oil), noted environmental activist and physicist, relays the emphatic message that "industrial globalized agriculture driven by greed and profits" direly threatens the wellbeing of Earth and all its inhabitants, and that "ecological and just alternatives have become an imperative." Shiva's "agroecological" manifesto identifies several distressing social and environmental trends stemming from industrialized agricultural practices, including the rampancy of malnutrition and food-based diseases, critical endangerment of pollinators such as bees, pollution of Earth's water and atmosphere by industrial farms, displacement and impoverishment of small-scale farmers, and privatization of seeds. Into this ominous commentary Shiva incorporates feminist thought, arguing that "when women control the food system, everyone gets their fair share to eat," as well as warnings against the prevalence of genetically modified monocultures that threaten the biodiversity necessary to sustain a healthy planet. While this urgent critique of "agribusiness" seems unlikely to persuade those readers not already in agreement with its author, it takes a productively interdisciplinary approach to the modern-day food crisis and plots a tentative route toward "a food and agricultural system that is at peace with the Earth."
