Food - Grand Format

We all need food to survive, and 40 percent of the world's population relies on agriculture for a livelihood. Yet control over food is concentrated in relatively few hands. Turmoil in the world food economy in recent decades has highlighted a number of vulnerabilities and contradictions inherent in the way we currently organize this vital sector. Extremes of both undernourishment and over-nourishment affect a significant proportion of humanity.
And attempts to increase production through the spread of an industrial model of agriculture have resulted in serious social and ecological consequences. The fully revised and expanded 3rd edition of this popular book explores how the rise of industrial agriculture, corporate control, inequitable agricultural trade rules, and the financialization of food have each enabled powerful actors to gain fundamental influence over the practices that dominate the world food economy and result in uneven consequences for both people and planet.
Resistance movements are making important progress in establishing alternative food systems, but, as Clapp's penetrating analysis ably shows, significant challenges remain.