I finished another good book last week titled "The End of Food", it went well with another book I had read earlier "Starved and Stuffed". Starved and Stuffed however got a little bit conspiracy theory for my taste, I dislike conspiracy theory spins on things because I think that is actually detrimental to finding a real solution to real problems.
So anyway, "the end of food" was quite good and presented a much more balanced view of the world, always presenting the counter-argument to each argument, and tempering the fear mongering.
All right, first some background; an overarching theory of human population growth (as with any animal population growth) is that population will grow until it exceeds the resources available and then disease, starvation, predation will run amok, crashing the population until they are at the levels (or below) what the resources can support. Pretty simple actually, and was first proposed for humans by Malthus and is therefore called Malthusian theory.
It would seem however, that humans, with the ability to develop technological and medical aids, have beaten Malthus theory and can indeed grow populations beyond what the planet could naturally provide, through first agriculture, then super-agriculture. Leaving aside the extinction of other species for the moment, it would appear that we have "won" the battle, and that we will continue to "win" the battle even as population grows, the assumption being that human technological development can keep ahead of the Malthusian crash.
However, the author would suggest that as we stretch the technological advances, we create bigger problems in the long run, creating an upward climb that eventually will result in an even bigger fall. Massive monocultures on unprecedented scales - not hard to see that one virulent disease that attacks corn could bring the food industry (and all of us ) down - corn is used as a base in many foods, and is the main food source to beef, poultry and swine. Even a modest rise in gas prices could cause havoc, raising food prices beyond the reach of vast numbers of the population, so dependant are we on foods not only coming from far far away, but on being processed for us in energy-burning plants. Crops so dependent on fertilizers and heavy watering that water tables in India (as one example) are bottoming out, and are heavily polluted - in areas that sustained organic farm production for 1000s of years, before the West intervened to "help", all with the best of intentions.
He talks about how subsidies affect the economics of farming, and how they prevent the development of new crops, essentially squashing diversity and innovation of food. If you are guaranteed to get $5 a bushel for corn, whether the market value is $1 or $5, who in their right mind would grow something that isn't guaranteed $5 (because it is not subsidised)?
The rise of obesity, transgenic crops, over processing of food, political influence and starvation in developing countries are all touched on, with fascinating theories. The chapter on organic food was really interesting - the authors writes that the organic market, according to some, has become as bureaucratic and insensible rule based as the industry they broke away from, such that new innovative ideas that don't fit the rules can't be labelled "organic" therefore can't enter the organic market and as small scale farms, most certainly cannot compete with the monstrous mega farms.
Well as with all book reviews there is no way I can cover all the concepts in a few short paragraphs, but if this topic interests you, I highly recommend this book.