Grand Food Bargain
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A01=Kevin D Walker
acute illness
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
antibiotic resistance
Author_Kevin D Walker
automatic-update
Bayer-Monsanto
CAFOs
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=JBCC4
Category=JFCV
chronic diseases
consumerism
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
DowDupont
empty calories
environmental resilience
EPA
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=0
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
farm bill
FDA
fertilizer and pesticide
finite resources
food assistance
food safety
food waste
foodborne outbreaks
free markets
FSIS
global markets
global warming
GMOs
Goldman Sachs
individual choices
industrial food production
international trade
Language_English
laws of nature
malnutrition
market society
monoculture
monopoly power
natural selection
obesity
PA=Available
political influence
Price_€20 to €50
processed foods
PS=Active
pseudoscience
regulatory capture
resource depletion
runoff
Smithfield
SNAP
social norms
societal benefits
softlaunch
stewardship
supermarkets
sustainability
taxpayer subsidies
unexpected consequences
vulnerable communities
vulnerable populations
Product details
- ISBN 9781610919470
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 26 Mar 2019
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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When it comes to food, Americans seem to have a pretty great deal. Our grocery stores are overflowing with countless varieties of convenient products. But like most bargains that are too good to be true, the modern food system relies on an illusion. It depends on endless abundance, but the planet has its limits. So too does a healthcare system that must absorb rising rates of diabetes and obesity. So too do the workers who must labor harder and faster for less pay. Through beautifully-told stories from around the world, Kevin Walker reveals the unintended consequences of our myopic focus on quantity over quality. A trip to a Costa Rica plantation shows how the Cavendish banana became the most common fruit in the world and also one of the most vulnerable to disease. Walker's early career in agribusiness taught him how pressure to sell more and more fertilizer obscured what that growth did to waterways. His family farm illustrates how an unquestioning belief in "free markets" undercut opportunity in his hometown.
By the end of the journey, we not only understand how the drive to produce ever more food became hardwired into the American psyche, but why shifting our mindset is essential. It starts, Walker argues, with remembering that what we eat affects the wider world. If each of us decides that bigger isn't always better, we can renegotiate the grand food bargain, one individual decision at a time.
Kevin D. Walker grew up farming, worked in agribusiness, at the US Department of Agriculture, internationally with not-for-profit organizations, and as a professor at Michigan State University. He has served on two committees with the National Academies Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, and collaborates with foreign governments and the World Trade Organization on meeting health requirements in international trade.
