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Review
'Patel's range is impressive, and there is much that is original - a book full of insight, and makes an important contribution to understanding the politics of food.' Felicity Lawrence 'This is one book above all I'd love to see at the top of the bestseller lists: an important subject brilliantly handled by Patel. I hope it will be remembered as long as Small is Beautiful has been and gains as much influence.' Sue Baker, Publishing News 'Patel's broad treatment helps the layman connect the dots, as well as hear the voices of those who occupy the lower rungs of the global food chain.' Time Magazine 'Exhaustively researched... Patel writes with a precision and clarity that make his suitcase of statistics accessible.' New Statesman 'This critique of the world food system could not be better timed - Patel writes with passion and commitment.' Bill Jamieson, Scotland on Sunday
Book Description
The hidden complexities and terrifying simplicities of a planet squeezing itself dry in order to make half its citizens obese and the other half malnourished. This work is for lovers of Fast Food Nation, No Logo and Not on the Label, and of Supersize Me and Jamie's Dinners. We have so much choice over what we eat today because rural communities the world over have had their choices taken away. To understand how our supermarket shopping makes us complicit in a system that routinely denies freedom to the world's poorest, and how we ourselves are poisoned by these choices, we need to think about the way our food comes to us. "Stuffed and Starved" takes a long and wide view of food production, to show how we all suffer the consequences of a food system cooked to a corporate recipe. This is also the story of the fight against the unthinking commerce that brings it to us. In the wrecked paddy fields of India, in the soy deserts of Brazil, in the maize ejidos of Mexico, the supermarket aisles of California, French McDonald's and Italian kitchens, there's a worldwide resistance against unhealthy control of the food system.
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Most helpful customer reviews
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Looming Global Food Crisis,
By Ian Gordon Malcomson (Victoria, BC) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME) (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Stuffed And Starved (Hardcover)
Do you want to know why this world is presently in a serious fix as to supporting the future needs of its swelling population? Read Patel and you'll see that the growing inability of many nations to feed their people can be traced to the same Western greed and chicanery that is likely driving the present financial crisis on Wall Street. Put simply, Patel presents some fairly compelling evidence that shows that western nations have, over the years, seized the capacity of developing nations to feed themselves. This has all been in name of agribusiness, where large multi-national corporations expand into poorer countries to buy up farmland, put small farmers out of business, and control the price of the product by restricting its distribution. Shortages in vital food commodities are due in no small part to big corporate speculators, working through hedge funds, buying large future positions on things like wheat, rice and corn. Their control of the supply allows them to hold back in the interests of getting a higher price. To get to that point, the Cargills and ADM of this world entered a countries like Mexicoand Brazil on the pretense of some international food-aid program that amounts to free food in exchange for a market presence. Western nations such as the USA are infamous for dumping their food surpluses in developing countries, which has the undesirable effect of immediately creating a drop in domestic farm prices, leading to a collapse in the farm industry. Once this dependency on food-aid has been solidified, the big corporations move in as middle men ready to form their own distribution systems and force out any local competition. As of today, we have a dire situation forming in Southeast Asia where the average person cannot afford to buy a main staple like rice because it has tripled in price due to artificial shortages. Since governments like India are powerless to release food to a needy public because of their initial complicity with the corporations, mass starvation could likely occur. As for how to fight this growing problem of economic congestion where prices rise to unaffordable levels in response to curtailing of supply, Patel's answer is simple: form collectives and marketing boards to protect the price for the producer at the local level. The kind of leveraging that these two economic bodies could produce might be enough to restore a semblance of competition to the market so that local farmers could produce food that was affordable to local consumers. This is a book that raises all kinds of geopolitical concerns that can only be resolved if bigtime capitalism steps back from its efforts to effect world domination in the interests of Western greed.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
stuffed and starved,
By
This review is from: Stuffed And Starved (Paperback)
Finally an intellectual ..but readable..probing into our food system, with not only the nuts and bolts mechanics of said system but also it's progenitors and inter-relationship to other aspects of our societies and our lives. Raj Patal disects implications and effects of our global headlong rush to cheap and trendy....according to the purveyors of such products...foodstuffs( a generous label acknowledging that through processing and manipulations a lot of those foodstuffs do not resemble their parentage in the least) We go to rural farms in India and America to feel the grass and partially understand how corporatization of the food system has dehumanized one of our basic pleasures and rights...good nutritious food from a caring and nurturing source to board rooms of the global food empires and how their headlong plummet towards their profit motive has entwined us all..how the WTO is about profitable trade,first, perhaps free trade..second. With just the right mix of the various contituents and architects of the food matrix we get a fair and succinct view of how our eating affects and consumes our world...We have choices in our daily bread..not everyone on our planet has that option..and we should exercise our franchises in individual and collective ways. What and how we eat we become...SCARY..WELL DONE RAJ...
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