- Format: Kindle Edition
- File Size: 773 KB
- Print Length: 182 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1783608226
- Publisher: Zed Books; 1 edition (15 August 2016)
- Sold by: Amazon Australia Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B01JSKAKNE
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray: - Word Wise: Not Enabled
- Screen Reader: Supported
- Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
- Customer Reviews: Be the first to review this item
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #384,158 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
Review
'If humans survive this century, it will be in no small measure due to the work of Vandana Shiva, one of today's most important writers, thinkers, and activists. Her work is relentlessly compassionate, courageous, and bitingly clear. This profound book should be required reading for anyone who grows - or eats - food.' Derrick Jensen, author of The Myth of Human Supremacy 'This is a tour de force that will stimulate and inspire readers to be part of the positive changes towards a better way of living, growing and eating.' Organic NZ 'One of the world's most prominent radical scientists.' The Guardian 'A world leading expert on food sustainability.' Refinery 29 'The South's best-known environmentalist.' New Internationalist
Product Description
'One of the world's most prominent radical scientists.'
The Guardian
'A star among environmental, activist, and anti-corporate circles.'
Vice
The world’s food supply is in the grip of a profound crisis. Humanity’s ability to feed itself is threatened by a wasteful, globalized agricultural industry, whose relentless pursuit of profit is stretching our planet’s ecosystems to breaking point. Rising food prices have fuelled instability across the world, while industrialized agriculture has contributed to a health crisis of massive proportions, with effects ranging from obesity and diabetes to cancers caused by pesticides.
In Who Really Feeds the World?, leading environmentalist Vandana Shiva rejects the dominant, greed-driven paradigm of industrial agriculture, arguing instead for a radical rethink of our relationship with food and with the environment. Industrial agriculture can never be truly sustainable, but it is within our power to create a food system that works for the health and well-being of the planet and all humanity, by developing ecologically friendly farming practices, nurturing biodiversity, and recognizing the invaluable role that small farmers can play in feeding a hungry world.
BARBARA
4.0 out of 5 stars Good enough to buy a second for a friendReviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 May 2018
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Very informative certainly makes you think. A bit repetitive in places. Good enough to buy a second for a friend.
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Cliente Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars BrilliantReviewed in Italy on 5 August 2019
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Shiva is the most brilliant feminist out there and this book is one of her best!
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Milena Cardoso
5.0 out of 5 stars Adorei!Reviewed in Brazil on 9 February 2020
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Excelente visão da autora sobre a agroecologia, biodiversidade e sustentabilidade, que contrariam o modelo do agronegócio atual.
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Steven H Propp
5.0 out of 5 stars THE INDIAN ACTIVIST DISTILLS THREE DECADES OF WORK IN THIS BOOKReviewed in the United States on 25 January 2020
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Vandana Shiva is an Indian scholar, environmental activist, food sovereignty advocate, and anti-globalization author and activist; she won the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood Award) in 1993. She is also the founder of Navdanya, an Indian-based non-governmental organization which promotes conservation, biodiversity, organic farming, etc.
She wrote in the Introduction to this 2016 book, “We are facing a deep and growing crisis rooted in how we produce, process, and distribute our food. The planet’s well-being, people’s health, and societies’ stability are severely threatened by an industrial globalized agriculture driven by greed and profits… [Food] is today the single biggest health problem in the world: nearly one billion people suffer from hunger and malnutrition, two billion suffer from diseases like obesity and diabetes, and countless others suffer from diseases, including cancer, caused by the poisons in our food…. Food has been transformed into a commodity: something to be speculated on and profiteered from. This leads to rising food prices and creates social instability everywhere. Since 2007 there have been fifty-one food riots in thirty-seven countries… Today, an alternative has become an imperative for our survival, so let us begin asking the question, ‘Who feeds the world?’” (Pg. ix)
She continues, “The dominant paradigm is industrial and mechanized, which has led to the collapse in our food and agricultural systems… At the heart of this paradigm is the Law of Exploitation, which sees the world as a machine and nature as dead matter… But there is another, emerging paradigm, one that … is governed by the Law of Return. Under this law, all living beings give and take in mutuality. This ecological paradigm of agriculture is based on life and its interconnectedness… Adhering to the Law of Return, there is no waste: everything is recycled.. Today, the industrial paradigm is in deep conflict with the ecological paradigm… There are paradigm wars of economics, culture, and knowledge, and they frame the very basis of the food crisis we are facing today.” (Pg. x-xi)
She adds, “The future of food depends on remembering that the web of life is a food web. This book is dedicated to this remembering, because forgetting the ecology of food is a recipe for famine and extinction… [This book] is a distillation of three decades of research and action, and a call for a global shift.” (Pg. xv, xxi)
She observes, “We are made of the same five elements---earth, water, fire, air, and space---that constitute the universe… This ecological truth is forgotten in the dominant knowledge paradigm, because industrial agriculture is based on eco-apartheid. It is based on the false idea that we are separate from and independent of the earth.” (Pg. 22-23)
She observes, “Genetic engineering was offered as an alternative to chemical pesticides. However… New pests emerge and old pests become resistant. The result is an increased use of chemical pesticides. GMOs are failing to control pests and weeds. Instead, they have created superpests and superweeds.” (Pg. 34)
She suggests, “The corporate control of seed that has eroded biodiversity is a result of a paradigm of production based on uniformity and monocultures: what I have called ‘Monocultures of the Mind.’ A Monoculture of the Mind imposes one way of knowing---reductionist and mechanistic---on a world with a diversity and plurality of knowledge systems… these monocultures are blind to the evolutionary potential and intelligence of cells, organisms, ecosystems, and communities.” (Pg. 43) Later, she adds, “The paradigm shift we propose is a shift from monocultures to diversity; from chemical-intensive agriculture to ecologically-intensive agriculture… from capital-intensive production to low- or zero-cost production; from yield per acre to health and nutrition per acre; and from food as a commodity to food as a nourishment and nutrition. This shift addresses the multiple crises related to food systems: falling incomes for farmers, rising costs for consumers, and the increasing levels of pollution in our food.” (Pg. 54)
She points out, “From less than 30 percent of the world’s arable land, small-scale farmers produce 70 percent of the food eaten in the world. Agribusiness, on the other hand, uses 70 percent of the world’s arable land to produce a mere 30 percent of the food. So who REALLY feeds the world? The numbers speak loud and clear.” (Pg. 63)
She notes, “The inability to repay past debts---and therefore to access fresh loans---has been widely accepted as the most significant proximate cause of the farmers’ suicides that are widespread in different areas in India. Since 1995, 284,000 farmers in India have killed themselves due to rising input prices and volatile output prices. As government support for farmers declined… they were driven into the hands of potentially more exploitative, usurious relationships. While institutional credit would have left farmers’ land intact, farmers were instead forced to borrow from moneylenders or, worse, agents of the seed and chemical companies, who would give credit against the farmers’ land. And the day the farmer loses the land is the day the farmer commits suicide.” (Pg. 78)
She observes, “Obesity, contrary to popular views, is not the prerogative of the rich, developed countries. Rather, the globalization of a handful of commodities has meant that poor nutrition is being exported worldwide, in what is often known as the McDonaldization of world food.” (Pg. 103-104)
She states, “It is a WASTE to use food to drive cars. It is a WASTE to use 10 kg of grain to produce 1 kg of meat. A food system that focuses on profits, rather than the health and well-being of people or the planet, will waste not only food, but also people and the planet.” (Pg. 107)
She proposes, “How can we make this transition happen? First, countries should give priority in their budgets to support the poorest consumers so that they have access to sufficient food. Second, countries should give priority to their domestic food production in order to become less dependent on the world market. This means an increased investment in peasant- and farmer-based food production. We DO need more intensive food production, but intensive in the use of labor in the sustainable use of natural resources… Third, internal market prices had to be stabilized t a reasonable level for farmers and consumers… Fourth, in every country an intervention system has to be put in place that can stabilize market prices… Finally, to make this happen, land must be distributed equally to the landless and to peasant families through genuine agrarian reforms and land reforms.” (Pg. 109-110)
She says, “The solution to malnutrition lies in growing nutrition, and growing nutrition means growing biodiversity. It means recognizing the knowledge of biodiversity and nutrition among millions of Indian women who have received it for generations as grandmothers’ knowledge. But there is a creation myth that is blind to … the creativity intelligence, and knowledge of women.” (Pg. 122)
She notes, “Organic is not a ‘thing’; it is not a product. It is a philosophy: a way of thought and a way of living, based on the awareness that everything is connected, and everything is in a relationship with everything else. What we eat affects biodiversity, soil, water, climate, and farmers. What we do to the soil and the seed affects our own bodies and our health.” (Pg. 133)
She concludes, “I have built Navdanya over the last three decades to create a food and agricultural system that is at peace with the Earth. Nonviolent farming that protects species also helps grow more food. And it produces better food, thus ending the war against our bodies that has led to the diseases of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and cancers.” (Pg. 138)
Shiva’s books are of tremendous interest to those studying the economic, political, and spiritual ramifications of environmental issues.
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LCD
5.0 out of 5 stars A Wealth of Information!Reviewed in the United States on 3 July 2018
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Dr. Vandana Shiva books are a wealth of information. Her style is articulate, easy to understand, and right to the point. This book is Inspiring, motivating, and a real eye opener! A reading must for every parent and health conscious consumer.
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