Who Really Feeds the World? : The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology

Debunking the notion that our current food crisis must be addressed through industrial agriculture and genetic modification, author and activist Vandana Shiva argues that those forces are in fact the ones responsible for the hunger problem in the first place. __Who Really Feeds the World?__ is a powerful manifesto calling for agricultural justice and genuine sustainability, drawing upon Shiva’s thirty years of research and accomplishments in the field. Instead of relying on genetic modification and large-scale monocropping to solve the world’s food crisis, she proposes that we look to agroecology—the knowledge of the interconnectedness that creates food—as a truly life-giving alternative to the industrial paradigm. Shiva succinctly and eloquently lays out the networks of people and processes that feed the world, exploring issues of diversity, the needs of small famers, the importance of seed saving, the movement toward localization, and the role of women in producing the world's food. Debunking the notion that our current food crisis must be addressed through industrial agriculture and genetic modification, author and activist Vandana Shiva argues that those forces are in fact the ones responsible for the hunger problem in the first place. Who Really Feeds the World' is a powerful manifesto calling for agricultural justice and genuine sustainability, drawing upon Shiva's thirty years of research and accomplishments in the field. Instead of relying on genetic modification and large-scale monocropping to solve the world's food crisis, she proposes that we look to agroecology'the knowledge of the interconnectedness that creates food'as a truly life-giving alternative to the industrial paradigm. Shiva succinctly and eloquently lays out the networks of people and processes that feed the world, exploring issues of diversity, the needs of small famers, the importance of seed saving, the movement toward localization, and the role of women in producing the world's food. From the Trade Paperback edition "The main focus of this book is on the causation of starvation in general and of famines in particular. The author develops the alternative method of analysis--the 'entitlement approach'--concentrating on ownership and exchange, not on food supply. The book also provides a general analysis of the characterization and measurement of poverty. Various approaches used in economics, sociology, and political theory are critically examined. The predominance of distributional issues, including distribution between different occupation groups, links up the problem of conceptualizing poverty with that of analyzing starvation." -- Publisher Agroecology feeds the world, not a violent knowledge paradigm Living soil feeds the world, not chemical fertilizers Biodiversity feeds the world, not toxic monocultures Small-scale farmers feed the world, not large-scale industrial farms Seed freedom feeds the world, not seed dictatorship Localization feeds the world, not globalization Women feed the world, not corporations The way forward. The main focus of this book is on the causation of starvation in general and famines in particular. The traditional analysis of famines concentrates on food supply. This is shown to be defective and Sen develops an alternative method of analysis which concentrates on ownership and exchange "An in-depth look at agroecology, an alternative to the world's current food crisis"--Provided by publisher