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.
