Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food

by Timothy A. Wise

Overview

"A powerful polemic against agricultural technology."
—Nature

A major new book that shows the world already has the tools to feed itself, without expanding industrial agriculture or adopting genetically modified seeds, from the Small Planet Institute expert

Few challenges are more daunting than feeding a global population projected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050—at a time when climate change is making it increasingly difficult to successfully grow crops. In response, corporate and philanthropic leaders have called for major investments in industrial agriculture, including genetically modified seed technologies. Reporting from Africa, Mexico, India, and the United States, Timothy A. Wise's Eating Tomorrow discovers how in country after country agribusiness and its well-heeled philanthropic promoters have hijacked food policies to feed corporate interests.

Most of the world, Wise reveals, is fed by hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers, people with few resources and simple tools but a keen understanding of what and how to grow food. These same farmers—who already grow more than 70 percent of the food eaten in developing countries—can show the way forward as the world warms and population increases. Wise takes readers to remote villages to see how farmers are rebuilding soils with ecologically sound practices and nourishing a diversity of native crops without chemicals or imported seeds. They are growing more and healthier food; in the process, they are not just victims in the climate drama but protagonists who have much to teach us all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620974230
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	02/05/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	524,346
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Timothy A. Wise is a senior researcher at the Small Planet Institute, where he directs the Land and Food Rights Program. He is also a senior research fellow at Tufts University's Global Development and Environment Institute, where he founded and directed its Globalization and Sustainable Development Program. He previously served as executive director of the U.S.-based aid agency Grassroots International. He is the author of Confronting Globalization:Economic Integration and Popular Resistance in Mexico. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Timothy A. Wise is a senior researcher at the Small Planet Institute, collaborating with director Frances Moore Lappé to start its new Land and Food Rights Program. He is also a senior research fellow at Tufts University's Global Development and Environment Institute. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Timothy A. Wise is a senior researcher at the Small Planet Institute, where he directs the Land and Food Rights Program. He is also a senior research fellow at Tufts University's Global Development and Environment Institute, where he founded and directed its Globalization and Sustainable Development Program. He previously served as executive director of the U.S.-based aid agency Grassroots International. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Timothy A. Wise is a senior researcher at the Small Planet Institute, where he directs the Land and Food Rights Program. He is also a senior research fellow at Tufts University's Global Development and Environment Institute, where he founded and directed its Globalization and Sustainable Development Program. He previously served as executive director of the U.S.-based aid agency Grassroots International. He is the author of Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food (The New Press) and Confronting Globalization: Economic Integration and Popular Resistance in Mexico. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Foreword vii

1 Introduction 1

Part I Into Africa: The New Colonialism 11

2 The Malawi Miracle and the Limits of Africa's Green Revolution 15

3 The Rise and Fail of the Largest Land Grab in Africa 49

4 Land-Poor Farmers in a Land-Rich Country: Zambia's Maize Paradox 83

Part II The Roots of Our Problems 111

5 Iowa and the Cornification of the United States 115

6 Fueling the Food Crisis 149

7 Monsanto invades Corn's Garden of Eden in Mexico 175

Part III Trading Away the Right to Food 207

8 NAFTA's Assault on Mexico's Family Farmers 211

9 Trading in Hypocrisy: India vs. World Trade Organization 241

10 Conclusion: The Battle for the Future of Food 269

Acknowledgments 279

Notes 283

Index 313

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Eating Tomorrow:
"A powerful polemic against agricultural technology."
—Nature

"Read Eating Tomorrow. . . . This book promises to outrage and inform you to say no to agribusiness. It's well-written, inspiring, and incisive."
—Counterpunch

"Wise does see hope in the small-plot farmers of the world who are rising in protest. His report will interest readers concerned about human rights and the environment."
—Booklist

"A grave and timely look at the future of feeding the planet."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Eating Tomorrow is a wake-up call about the future of food."
—Vandana Shiva, author of Who Really Feeds the World-yet and Soil Not Oil

"Wise exposes our consuming obsession with corporate agriculture."
—Frances Moore Lappé, author of Diet for a Small Planet

"I recommend Eating Tomorrow to anyone who wants to understand how the industrial food system is destroying our health, biosphere, and food culture."
—Million Belay, coordinator, Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa

"Wise's writing is riveting."
—Ricardo J. Salvador, director and senior scientist, Food & Environment Program, Union of Concerned Scientists

"Eating Tomorrow is a tour de force on the global struggle for economic, social, and cultural rights, guided by a writer who takes us into corporate boardrooms and farmers' fields."
—Salil Shetty, former secretary general, Amnesty International, and currently senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy

"Tim Wise's Eating Tomorrow reveals the stunning disconnect between what is needed to address future food shocks and the scheme by multinational corporations to squeeze every penny from the poorest people in the world."
—Wenonah Hauter, author of Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America and executive director of Food & Water Watch

"There is a battle for the future of food, and Eating Tomorrow shifts the frontlines."
—Oliver De Schutter, co-chair, International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, and former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food

From the Publisher

2018-12-17

The ravages of climate change come into sharp focus in this exhaustive report from the front lines.

It is a scientific fact that the planet is warming. But how bad is climate change really? Based on the information in this country-hopping exploration of genetically modified seeds, vast land grabs in developing nations, the biofuel boom, and agribusiness overreach, we are in trouble. From Malawi to Mexico, Iowa to India, Wise, the senior researcher at the Small Planet Institute and director of its Food Rights Program, examines the complicated and confusing decisions that have brought us to the current situation: "hunger amid plenty." The author argues convincingly that the main culprit is large-scale, industrial agribusiness. "Everywhere I traveled in researching this book," he writes, "agribusiness interests were being promoted, to the detriment of family farmers, the environment, and the food and nutritional security of the world's poor." In Mexico he illustrates this point by writing about the fight of La Demanda Colectiva, a small group of farmers, consumers, and environmentalists who petitioned a ban on GM corn because they believed it would threaten the country's maize diversity. Against all odds, Wise reports, an injunction remains in place, and the "Sin Maíz no hay País" (Without Corn There Is No Country) campaign has been able to continue its fight against Monsanto and other multinational agro-chemical conglomerates. However, that doesn't mean GM corn hasn't already left its mark, be it through American crop exports to the country or contamination. Regardless, the author believes that even in the midst of climate change and food insecurity, there's reason to remain hopeful. "In the battle for the future of food," he writes, "farmer resistance is strong, and so are their alternatives, many advanced under the banner of ‘food sovereignty.' "

At times overwhelming in its scope, the book is a grave and timely look at the future of feeding the planet.

Kirkus Reviews