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Title details for The End of Food by Paul Roberts - Available

The End of Food

by Paul Roberts
ebook
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Paul Roberts, the best-selling author of The End of Oil, turns his attention to the modern food economy and finds that the system entrusted to meet our most basic need is failing.
In this carefully researched, vivid narrative, Roberts lays out the stark economic realities behind modern food and shows how our system of making, marketing, and moving what we eat is growing less and less compatible with the billions of consumers that system was built to serve.
At the heart of The End of Food is a grim paradox: the rise of large-scale food production, though it generates more food more cheaply than at any time in history, has reached a point of dangerously diminishing returns. Our high-volume factory systems are creating new risks for food-borne illness, from E. coli to avian flu. Our high-yield crops and livestock generate grain, vegetables, and meat of declining nutritional quality. While nearly one billion people worldwide are overweight or obese, the same number of people—one in every seven of us—can’t get enough to eat. In some of the hardest-hit regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa, the lack of a single nutrient, vitamin A, has left more than five million children permanently blind.
Meanwhile, the shift to heavily mechanized, chemically intensive farming has so compromised soil and water that it’s unclear how long such output can be maintained. And just as we’ve begun to understand the limits of our abundance, the burgeoning economies of Asia, with their rising middle classes, are adopting Western-style, meat-heavy diets, putting new demands on global food supplies.
Comprehensive in scope and full of fresh insights, The End of Food presents a lucid, stark vision of the future. It is a call for us to make crucial decisions to help us survive the demise of food production as we know it.
Paul Roberts is the author of The End of Oil, which was a finalist for the New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award in 2005. He has written about resource economics and politics for numerous publications, including the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Harper’s Magazine, and Rolling Stone, and lectures frequently on business and environmental issues.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 21, 2023

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780547524849

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780547524849
      • File size: 1333 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      April 14, 2008
      This potentially interesting investigation into the challenges of global food production and distribution is marred by the burial of its argument at the end of the book. Beneath a history of food (old news to any reader of Michael Pollan), factoid avalanches and future-tense fretting, Roberts (The End of Oil
      ) makes a familiar plea for rethinking food systems. When the author illustrates his points with actual players, the narrative becomes affecting and memorable: a French meat packer shows how retail powerhouses dictate prices; a Kenyan farmer demonstrates how “hunger-ending” technologies are often poorly suited to the climates, soils and infrastructures in malnourished regions. Unfortunately, these anecdotes are overshadowed by colorless recitations of Internet research and data culled from interviews. Roberts worries about our “vast and overworked system” and proffers the usual solutions: eat less (land-based) meat, farm more fish, support regional (not just local) agriculture and pressure food policy makers to fund research into more sustainable farming methods (including genetic modification). Despite the undeniable urgency of the issue, Roberts’s arguments are as commonplace as his prescriptions.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 2, 2008
      Food shouldn't be handled like other market economies and if it continues to do so, the system will self-destruct. With detailed information and extensive anecdotal evidence, Roberts provides an intriguing account of food that works well in illustrating the evolution, the problems, and the subtleties of today's food industry. Unlike other food-writers, his assessment of the food industry is not entirely scathing but rather recognizes the inability of many within the industry to make significant changes. William Dufris is thorough in his delivery and excellent with his tone, timing, and emphasis during Roberts' more complicated prose (of which there is plenty). His quoting voice doesn't always match up with the speaker in terms of projection and personality. He maintains his rhythm and projection for most of the production with less than a handful of vocal shifts in the recording. A Houghton Mifflin hardcover (Reviews, Apr. 14).

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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