|
| 
 enlarge | Author: Paul Roberts
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
Buy New: $16.61
You Save: $9.39 (36%)
New (42) Used (13) from $12.45
Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 5361
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 0618606238
Dewey Decimal Number: 363.8
EAN: 9780618606238
ASIN: 0618606238
Publication Date: June 4, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Customer Reviews:
 No end to hysteria and fear July 30, 2008
3 out of 13 found this review helpful
THe funny thing about the modern era is how it has consistantly been shaped by the idea of the coming doomsday. The method (nuclear war, overpopulation, climate change) shifts with the wind, but the constant is a belief in the inevitable fall of our "evil" civilization unless we sign up for one political agenda or another.
Paul Roberts is making a career in trading on fear. He was crowned as a genius for writing a book about an energy crisis (the end of oil) shortly before the crisis arrived. As a followup, he is selling on fears about food.
This book is poorly researched, badly organized and doesn't quite understand what point it wants to make. It can't decide if it wants to be whiny book about how walmart for social changes in America because it sells cheap food or if it wants to trade in hysteria about rising food prices and diminishing food resources. He can't decide if he wants to complain about the efficiency of a meat diet or global warming or family social dining habits.
And in the end, the book doesn't lead anywhere. It ends with Roberts putting out a political agenda about food. Ironically (in a sad sense),
Roberts perscription for fixing his food "crisis" in the end are all the things that the world has been doing for the last 50 years. Bluntly, we need to apply brute force science to food production with a goal of increasing production regardless of consequences or costs.
He pushes genetic modification as one answer. He pushes the elimination of meat production in favor of factory farmed fish as another. And he wants international planning to drive food production.
In summary, he doesn't make his case or lay the groundwork for the changes he is suggesting. He can't construct an argument to save his life and depends on a shotgunning facts out as a substitute.
Malthus Won't Die July 27, 2008
3 out of 16 found this review helpful
Since Ehrlich and the Club of Rome, we've seen a number of attempts to resurrect the dire, zero-sum predictions of Thomas Malthus. And yet the world enjoys more food and less hunger each year as human beings learn to trade and cooperate over greater distances. That old bugbear, "overpopulation" rears its head again in an effort that reveals an author that is, himself, malnourished when it comes to economics.
Readers will find familiar scapegoats in big box stores that in reality increase the availability of food to everyone -- especially the poor. Agricultural subsidies and trade barriers are the real culprits when it comes to price spikes and food shortages. But the "End of Food" is yet another attempt to roll back the gains made by globalization -- gains that have filled more bellies than any nostalgia for local growers and rehashed Malthusianism.
Sadly, books like this are an intellectual drought in the garden of plenty. Reflective and open-minded types will turn their eyes to the works of Julian Simon, the ingenuity of Norman Borlaug, and greater understanding of the ecosystem of prices and incentives that enable food markets adapt and change to meet the demands of a healthier, better-fed global population.
Sorry, Mr. Malthus. No more cause for pessimism, today, than in the 18th Century.
 Super-concentrated and pretty fun to read too July 1, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
I am really enjoying this book. The current rice shortage and e-coli outbreaks were topics I wanted to better understand, and that's what got me interested (and it has certainly helped illuminate those topics for me). But I'm finding the whole thing fascinating. Each chapter is a carefully-constructed, highly-readable nugget of history, research and personal accounts. Roberts' descriptions of his visits to China, Africa, pig farms, chicken ranches, etc. make the historical narrative all the more persuasive. He is deft at zeroing in on the ironic and bizarre. One of my favorite chapters is a walk through the evolution of human food consumption. He manages to cover thousands of years of eating history in a few concise, satisfying pages (not a small task). Glad I bought this book.
food problems June 25, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I have been concerned with our food supply. I found this book an excellent source of information. Here is a short summary of what I got from reading it:
Our concentration on money as the only really important thing in our lives had led us to ignore all the other problems facing us.
To a greater and greater extent, our food comes from large, monoculture farms using heavy applications of synthetic fertilizer. This results in deterioration of the topsoil, which leads to decreasing crops and eventually changes arable land to a desert. This style of farming is heavily dependent on oil, and we face an imminent oil shortage.
In addition, the world is also facing a serious water shortage; and farmers are reluctant to save water when it will either cost money or reduce the crop.
If food were distributed equitably, there is enough in the world to feed the present population. But, with the population explosion and the decreasing food supply this situation will not last unless something drastic is done.
As a result of our focus on money, there is widespread corruption in our government, which is not willing to do anything about the problem that will hurt the big corporations, the source of big money. And in general, those corporations like things the way they are.
Paul Roberts lists a number of disasters that would precipitate the situation. The question is, which will come first.
This book is not for those who believe "everything is for the best in this best of possible worlds".
But for the rest of us, it is an excellent account of our food problems and what causes them.
 More alarmism June 22, 2008
3 out of 33 found this review helpful
Paul Roberts' End of Food is plagued by the same problems found in his previous book, The End of Oil.
Parts of both books are interesting as they shed light on some immediate concerns.
But ultimately both books suffer from his obvious lack of understanding of technological innovation (we have heard 'the end of food' in the 60s, 70s and 80s as well) and simple economics.
This book is only for those on the far left who have been convinced we are running out of everything for over 40 years.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
