Never out of season : how having the food we want when we want it threatens our food supply and our future / Rob Dunn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dunn, Rob, author.

Contributor:

James Samuel Blank Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Food supply.

Food crops.

Food consumption.

Agricultural ecology.

Physical Description:

vii, 323 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

How having the food we want when we want it threatens our food supply and our future

Place of Publication:

New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2017.

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.

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?

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-310) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the James Samuel Blank Fund.

ISBN:

9780316260725

031626072X

OCLC:

974636738