By 2050, the world population is expected to reach nine billion. And the
challenge of feeding this rapidly growing population is being made
greater by climate change, which will increasingly wreak havoc on the
way we produce our food. At the same time, we have lost touch with the
soil--few of us know where our food comes from, let alone how to grow
it--and we are at the mercy of multinational corporations who control
the crops and give little thought to the damage their methods are
inflicting on the planet. Our very future is at risk. In Consumed,
Sarah Elton walks fields and farms on three continents, not only
investigating the very real threats to our food, but also telling the
little-known stories of the people who are working against time to
create a new and hopeful future. From the mountains of southern France
to the highlands of China, from the crowded streets of Nairobi to the
banks of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, we meet people from all walks
of life who are putting together an alternative to the omnipresent
industrial food system. In the arid fields of rural India we meet a
farmer who has transformed her community by selling organic food
directly to her neighbors. We visit a laboratory in Toronto where
scientists are breeding a new kind of rice seed that they claim will
feed the world. We learn about Italy's underground food movement; how
university grads are returning to the fields in China, Greece, and
France; and how in Detroit, plots of vacant land planted with kale and
carrots can help us see what's possible. Food might be the problem, but
as Elton shows, it is also the solution. The food system as we know it
was assembled in a few decades--and if it can be built that quickly, it
can be reassembled and improved in the same amount of time. Elton here
lays out the targets we need to meet by the year 2050. The stories she
tells give us hope for avoiding a daunting fate and instead help us to
believe in a not-too-distant future when we can all sit at the table.
