Now the unwanted effects are overtaking the wanted ones, even undermining them. The technical treadmill has emptied the descendants of European settlers from the prairies, in favour of giant monocultural fields of wheat, maize and soy.
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The machines and chemicals that replaced animal and human energy brought dependence on oil. Fossil fuels eventually became central to agricultural production, food manufacturing and transportation. We are eating oil.
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Contemporary oil scarcity, in addition to making grain and meat more expensive, has led governments to encourage another diversion of grain as fuel for cars and airplanes. Book Reviews prices.
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Humans without enough money to eat are as compromised as the land on which grain is grown. Agriculture has to be at the centre of human relations to nature Duncan Somehow this existential and historical — even prehistorical Descola ; Cronon — reality has escaped even most envi- ronmentalists.
Weis shows that the single most destructive aspect of the deeply industrial, intensely concentrated corporate agrofood system is livestock production. On the one hand, it has and from a species perspective, we have caused a shift in population biology towards astounding numbers of cows, pigs and chickens whose flesh has become increasingly central to human diets, and animals whose lives exist in conditions tolerant only of those physiological needs consistent with profitable conversion of grain into flesh.
The diets of these animals in turn divert grain from the poor, who cannot afford meat despite all the hidden subsidies, and press against forests and marine ecosystems, as well as displacing farming systems which incorporate animals sustainably. In this chapter the focus shifts from production systems to political history of struggles over land.
Here the great revolutions and national liberation struggles of the twentieth century are located in relation to land reform. These are particularly interesting in the contrast between China and India — large and strategic countries both in the Cold War and in the present shifts in economic weight in all sectors, including agrofood, towards Asia, but with entirely different legacies of landholding and industrialization of agriculture. The legacy of colonial policies is still, or once again, apparent in neglect of domestic food production and promotion of exports.
Weis gives a brief tour of the period after independence, with its contradictory complements to strong government regulation, of food import dependency, Green Revolution versions of agricultural industrialization, and declining returns to plantation crops. Weis departs from the ecocentrism of the grain—livestock chapter, however, in focusing on political struggles and challenges to livelihoods in the global South.
He continues that move in chapter four, which focuses on the WTO. This chapter brilliantly charts a clear course through the details of inter-governmental conflicts and rise of civil society resistance, particularly the unprecedented formation of transnational peasant and indigenous alliances.
However, Weis may be over-emphasizing the WTO. It is clear, and to me clearly very significant, that the Agreement on Agriculture is at the crux of many disputes and ultimately of the impasse of the WTO as a whole. But the significance is twofold: Second, apparently new issues, such as environment and health in the sense related to negative effects of industrial agrofood systems , have only recently turned attention to the obvious connections to food and agriculture — once again, the IAASTD is controversial partly because it links agriculture in North and South to climate change, natural resource management, remediation of damaged soils, waters and forests and cascading species extinctions.
Weis discusses concentration of wealth and power, which continue regardless of stymied progress at the WTO, particularly through projection of US intellectual property rules. He emphasizes the chaotic global politics that have led to impasse at the WTO and show little way to exit — although I think he may give too little weight to intra-North disputes in bringing that impasse about Friedmann By shifting focus towards the political in the South, and then towards the WTO, Weis fails to draw out the implications of the ecological perspective with which he began.
He has a contribution to make in explaining if environmental agreements matter, how ecological problems get social and political expression in the context of inter-governmental impasse and social mobilizations, and so on.
The Global Food Economy: The Battle for the Future of Farming
He is better equipped than I to pose the questions. These are greatly needed now, and I trust he will provide them in future. Some elements that could usefully be addressed are the rise of supermarket-led supply chains and displacement of local commercial net- works. Weis has a fine concluding chapter. He makes a strong empirical and philosophical case for new measures of value, rationality and efficiency, and through that lens, the well- documented virtues of small, ecologically-embedded farms supported by agro-ecological science.
He links resistance to the corporate trajectory with a moral and political imagination of a world where farmers are respected and respect themselves for the fundamental — and immensely skilful — role of managing human habitats in co-operation with companion species while providing food for themselves and others.
The Global Food Economy: The Battle for the Future of Farming by Tony Weis
The brilliance of his analysis of the problems in earlier chapters is matched in the last by an inspired imagination of an alternative way of knowing, working and living with the rest of nature and ourselves. It is illustrated by real examples; for instance, although forced into localization and low-input food production — Cubans are caught, like the rest of us, in the spell of more and more meat-desire — the Cuban experience is nonetheless instructive about possibilities for reversal and recovery.
There are many more examples throughout the world e. Still, there is a gap between analysis and imagination. My criticism, if it is one, applies to me too — the need to fill the gap. Weis is brave and right to offer the imagination anyway. How else can one get distance from all we have known and are told is right and natural, indeed so much that we desire? Filling the gap between analysis and vision is a collective task, and a political one. It cannot be undertaken alone or pursued by thought alone. Weis has given us some very fine thought to help us along. It helps to link political economy and world ecology.
It is understandably terse: Because of its boldness and comprehensiveness, The Global Food Economy opens profound questions and offers a way to explore and connect multiple issues. I hope teachers and students — that is, all of us — will find in this book a way to reorient our hearts and minds towards fundamental changes we must embrace, however haltingly, together. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England.
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- About this book.
The Biological Expansion of Europe — In the Society of Nature. The Centrality of Agriculture: The intervening years have seen food riots in over thirty countries, an explosion in biofuels and GM crops, and mounting evidence of a looming environmental catastrophe. In this thoroughly updated and expanded new edition guide to the issues affecting world food production, Weis explains how such an unequal and unsustainable system came about, and how it has been facilitated by governments driven by free market dogma.
Ultimately, Weis looks to how we might build a more socially just, ecologically rational and humane food economy, with this new edition serving as timely reminder of just why these struggles are so urgent. The Global Food Economy: Contradictions and Crises 2. Entrenching an Uneven Playing Field: The Multilateral Transnational Regulation of Agriculture 5.
Tony Weis is an associate professor in geography at the University of Western Ontario. He is also the author of The Ecological Hoofprint: About Help Blog Jobs Welcome to our new website. Benton Richard Fortey View All. Go to British Wildlife. Go to Conservation Land Management. Click to have a closer look. About this book Contents Customer reviews Biography Related titles. About this book The global food economy is riven with contradictions. A History of Food.
Trees, Forested Landscapes and Grazing Animals. Pollination Services to Agriculture. Ploughing a New Furrow.