Full Description
There is growing popular fear over possible pesticide contamination of food and the microbiological safety of the food supply. This work explains why corporate agribusiness is a rising threat to farmers, the environment, and consumers. Ranging in subject from the politics of hunger to the new agricultural biotechnologies, the book addresses the reasons for the expansion of hunger despite the increase of world food supplies, and points the way toward organic, sustainable solutions to the problems of food supply and distribution.
Contents
The agrarian origins of capitalism, Ellen Meiksins Wood; Liebig, Marx, and the depletion of soil fertility - relevance for today's agriculture, John Bellamy Foster, Fred Magdoff; agriculture and monopoly capital, William D. Heffernan; ecological impacts of industrial agriculture and the possibilities for sustainable farming, Miguel A. Altiery; the maturing of capitalist agriculture - farmer as proletarian, R.C. Lewontin; new agricultural biotechnologies - the struggle for democratic choice, Gerard Middendorf et al; global food politics, Philip McMichael; rebuilding local food systems from the grassroots up, Elizabeth Henderson; want amid plenty - from hunger to inequality, Janet Poppendieck, alternative agriculture works - the case of Cuba, Peter M. Rosset; the importance of land reform in the reconstruction of China, William Hinton; the great global enclosure of our times - peasants and the agrarian question at the beginning of the 21st century; farmworkers in the United States - from unionization to immigration, Linda C. Majka, Theo J. Majka