| Edition |
First edition. |
| Description |
vii, 323 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-310) and index. |
| Contents |
A banana in every bowl -- An island like ours -- The perfect pathological storm -- Escape is temporary -- My enemy's enemy is my friend -- Chocolate terrorism -- The meltdown of the chocolate ecosystem -- Prospecting for seeds -- the siege -- The grass eaters -- Henry Ford's jungle -- Why we need wild nature -- The Red Queen and the long game -- Fowler's ark -- Grains, guns, and desertification -- Preparing for the flood -- Epilogue: What do I do? |
| Summary |
The bananas we eat today aren't our parents' bananas: We eat a recognizable, consistent fruit that was standardized in the 1960s from dozens into one basic banana. But because of that, the banana we love is dangerously susceptible to a pathogen that might wipe them out. That's the story of our food today: Modern science has brought us produce in perpetual abundance. Once-rare fruits are seemingly never out of season, and we breed and clone the hardiest, best-tasting varieties of the crops we rely on most. As a result, a smaller proportion of people on earth go hungry today than at any other moment in the last thousand years, and the streamlining of our food supply guarantees that the food we buy, from bananas to coffee to wheat, tastes the same every single time. Our corporate food system has nearly perfected the process of turning sunlight, water and nutrients into food. But our crops themselves remain susceptible to nature's fury. And nature always wins. |
| Subject(S) |
Food supply.
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Food crops.
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Food consumption.
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Agricultural ecology.
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Nature -- Natural Resources.
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Science -- Environmental Science.
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Science -- Life Sciences -- Biological Diversity.
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Science -- Life Sciences -- Horticulture.
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| Added Title |
How having the food we want when we want it threatens our food supply and our future |
| ISBN |
9780316260725 |
|
031626072X |
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