Betting on Famine
Why the World Still Goes Hungry
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- £10.99
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- £10.99
Publisher Description
“The seminal book on global poverty and hunger . . . How rapacious speculators and complicit bureaucrats are starving a billion people” (Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch and author of Foodopoly).
Few people know that world hunger was very nearly eradicated in our lifetimes. In the past five years, however, widespread starvation has suddenly reappeared, and chronic hunger is a major issue on every continent.
In an extensive investigation of this disturbing shift, Jean Ziegler—one of the world’s leading food experts—lays out in clear and accessible terms the complex global causes of the new hunger crisis. Ziegler’s wide-ranging and fascinating examination focuses on how the new sustainable revolution in energy production has diverted millions of acres of corn, soy, wheat, and other grain crops from food to fuel. The results, he shows, have been sudden and startling, with declining food reserves sending prices to record highs and a new global commodities market in ethanol and other biofuels gobbling up arable lands in nearly every continent on earth.
Like Raj Patel’s pioneering Stuffed and Starved, Betting on Famine will enlighten the millions of Americans concerned about the politics of food at home—and about the forces that prevent us from feeding the world’s children.
“In this devastating book, [Ziegler] describes the horrors of food insecurity, the callousness of ‘crusaders of neoliberalism’ who control food and land access, and the individuals and grassroots organizations fighting for subsistence farmers and the right to food.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Passionate, well-researched, objective, and illuminating . . . When we close this book, indignant, we know that those who die of hunger are victims of money and power.” —L’Express
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
During his 2000 2008 tenure as U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, Zeigler (The Swiss, the Gold and the Dead) traveled worldwide to understand hunger and the international policies that he believes cause it (including those that promote the use of crops for biofuels). In this devastating book, he describes the horrors of food insecurity, the callousness of "crusaders of neoliberalism" who control food and land access, and the individuals and grassroots organizations fighting for subsistence farmers and the right to food. Interspersed with statistics and policy critiques are vivid depictions of victims of this crisis, giving readers a visceral sense of the reality of the "mass destruction" caused by hunger and malnutrition. Zeigler criticizes biofuels, speculation, and land grabs, as well as corrupt politicians and organizations that influence the global commodities market, such as the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank. Zeigler's scathing criticism of multinational corporations and U.S. policy, his heartrending descriptions of diseases caused by hunger, his disdain for capitalism and unapologetic alignment with socialists, and his descriptions of poverty may be a rude awakening for American readers.