Food Politics
What Everyone Needs to Know
ISBN13: 9780195389609ISBN10: 0195389603
Hardback,
240 pages
Also available:
Paperback
Mar 2010,
In Stock
Price:
$74.00 (06)See more from the series
Description
The politics of food is changing fast. In rich countries, obesity is now a more serious problem than hunger. Consumers once satisfied with cheap and convenient food now want food that is also safe, nutritious, fresh, and grown by local farmers using fewer chemicals. Heavily subsidized and underregulated commercial farmers are facing stronger push back from environmentalists and consumer activists, and food companies are under the microscope. Meanwhile, agricultural success in Asia has spurred income growth and dietary enrichment, but agricultural failure in Africa has left one-third of all citizens undernourished - and the international markets that link these diverse regions together are subject to sudden disruption.Food Politics carefully examines and explains the most important issues on today's global food landscape, including international food prices, famines, chronic hunger, the Malthusian race between food production and population growth, international food aid, "green revolution" farming, obesity, farm subsidies and trade, agriculture and the environment, agribusiness, supermarkets, food safety, fast food, slow food, organic food, local food, and genetically engineered food.
Politics in each of these areas has become polarized over the past decade by conflicting claims and accusations from advocates on all sides. Paarlberg's book maps this contested terrain, challenging myths and critiquing more than a few of today's fashionable beliefs about farming and food. For those ready to have their thinking about food politics informed and also challenged, this is the book to read.
Features
- Concise, straightforward introduction to the range of phenomena the media has dubbed "food politics"
- Will act as a counterpoint to the overwhelmingly alarmist literature on the food crisis
- Paarlberg is an expert on food policy, a viewpoint underrepresented in the current popular literature
- Lively writing, highly readable Q&A format; part of the popular What Everyone Needs to Know series
About the Author(s)
Robert Paarlberg is the B.F. Johnson Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College and Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. A leading authority on food policy, his books include Starved for Science, Policy Reform in American Agriculture, and Fixing Farm Trade.
