Perilous Bounty
The Looming Collapse of American Farming and How We Can Prevent It
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
An unsettling journey into the disaster-bound American food system, and an exploration of possible solutions, from leading food politics commentator and former farmer Tom Philpott.
More than a decade after Michael Pollan's game-changing The Omnivore's Dilemma transformed the conversation about what we eat, a combination of global diet trends and corporate interests have put American agriculture into a state of "quiet emergency," from dangerous drought in California--which grows more than 50 percent of the fruits and vegetables we eat--to catastrophic topsoil loss in the "breadbasket" heartland of the United States. Whether or not we take heed, these urgent crises of industrial agriculture will define our future.
In Perilous Bounty, veteran journalist and former farmer Tom Philpott explores and exposes the small handful of seed and pesticide corporations, investment funds, and magnates who benefit from the trends that imperil us, with on-the-ground dispatches featuring the scientists documenting the damage and the farmers and activists who are valiantly and inventively pushing back.
Resource scarcity looms on the horizon, but rather than pointing us toward an inevitable doomsday, Philpott shows how the entire wayward ship of American agriculture could be routed away from its path to disaster. He profiles the farmers and communities in the nation's two key growing regions developing resilient, soil-building, water-smart farming practices, and readying for the climate shocks that are already upon us; and he explains how we can help move these methods from the margins to the mainstream.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Philpott debuts with an illuminating and distressing examination of how climate change and poor natural resource management threaten America's food supply. Focusing on California's Central Valley, where irrigated farms supply a quarter of the nation's food, and the Midwest, which produces much of America's meat, corn, and soybeans, Philpott documents how agribusinesses in these regions are "actively consuming the ecological foundations that support agriculture itself." In arid California, warmer temperatures have diminished the Sierra Nevada snowpack on which Central Valley farms rely, leading to fewer crops and smaller yields. Communities in the region have also been forced to buy bottled water to avoid water supplies contaminated by farm runoff. In the former prairie lands of the Midwest, industrialized farming, genetically modified crops, and climate change have impoverished both the soil and farmers themselves. Philpott's proposed solutions draw from organic farming methods, including crop rotation, planting cover crops to suppress weeds and reduce soil erosion, and "pasture-based meat production." He concludes by endorsing the Green New Deal and legislative efforts to curb the excesses of agribusiness. Lucidly written, well-researched, and laced with profiles of farmers and communities fighting against the odds, this is a persuasive call for sweeping changes to the American food system.
