The end of plenty : the race to feed a crowded world / Joel K. Bourne Jr.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bourne, Joel K., Jr., author.

Series:

Norton paperback

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Food supply--Forecasting.

Food supply.

Food consumption forecasting.

Food security.

Physical Description:

408 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm

Edition:

First Norton Paperback Edition.

Other Title:

Race to feed a crowded world

Place of Publication:

New York, New York : W. W. Norton & Company, 2016.

Summary:

Overview: An urgent and at times terrifying dispatch from a distinguished reporter who has given heart and soul to his subject. Hampton Sides When the demographer Robert Malthus (1766-1834) famously outlined the brutal relationship between food and population, he never imagined the success of modern scientific agriculture. In the mid-twentieth century, an unprecedented agricultural advancement known as the Green Revolution brought hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers, and improved irrigation that drove the greatest population boom in history-but left ecological devastation in its wake. In The End of Plenty, award-winning environmental journalist Joel K. Bourne Jr. puts our race to feed the world in dramatic perspective. With a skyrocketing world population and tightening global grain supplies spurring riots and revolutions, humanity must produce as much food in the next four decades as it has since the beginning of civilization to avoid a Malthusian catastrophe. Yet climate change could render half our farmland useless by century's end. Writing with an agronomist's eye for practical solutions and a journalist's keen sense of character, detail, and the natural world, Bourne takes readers from his family farm to international agricultural hotspots to introduce the new generation of farmers and scientists engaged in the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. He discovers young, corporate cowboys trying to revive Ukraine as Europe's breadbasket, a Canadian aqua-culturist channeling ancient Chinese traditions, the visionary behind the world's largest organic sugar-cane plantation, and many other extraordinary individuals struggling to increase food supplies-quickly and sustainably-as droughts, floods, and heat waves hammer crops around the globe. Part history, part reportage and advocacy, The End of Plenty is a panoramic account of the future of food, and a clarion call for anyone concerned about our planet and its people.

Contents:

Part 1:

Introduction : The erstwhile agronomist

Curse

Famine's lethal lessons

The green revolution: food, sex, and war

The plight of the Punjab

China: landraces and Lamborghinis

Food, fuel, and profit

The gauntlet

Part 2:

The blue revolution

Back in the USSR

The blooming desert

Magic seeds: feeding shareholders or the world?

Organic agriculture: feeding the rich or enriching the poor?

The Malawi miracle

The Grand Desiderata

Acknowledgments

Notes

Selected bibliography

Illustration credits

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 379-392) and index.

ISBN:

039335296X

9780393352962

OCLC:

921868944