Paul Mcmahon

Feeding Frenzy (eBook, ePUB)

The New Politics of Food

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

This subject is as big as they come: the world's food supply.

Written for a popular audience, Feeding Frenzy traces the history of the global food system and reveals the underlying causes of recent food shortages and price spikes - what the media has labelled a 'world food crisis'. As the tectonic plates of the world food system shift, forces are being unleashed that threaten the security of billions. Food-producing countries are banning exports to benefit their own citizens, even if this means that other countries starve. Most worryingly, they are acquiring huge areas of under-utilised farmland in poorest countries to grow crops for export, often at the expense of local communities. Some of the trends identified in this book are unstoppable. But McMahon also outlines actions that can be taken to lower the risks of conflict and to produce fairer outcomes. It is possible to envisage a more benign scenario, associated with a shift to a sustainable and productive form of agriculture. Which path will the world choose?

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Profile
• Erscheinungstermin: 14. März 2013
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781847658791
• Artikelnr.: 52972646

Autorenporträt

Paul McMahon pursues a varied career in academia, finance and environmental policy. He has also worked as an advisor to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation and spent eighteen months in Indonesia helping the government to plan reconstruction after the tsunami. He recently co-founded SLM Partners LLP, a business that invests in sustainable agriculture across the world. He therefore understands this subject from the inside.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction 1. A brief history of food: The origins of agriculture, how it
developed and the huge gaps that exist between farmers today. 2. On the
brink: Who feeds the world? A taxonomy of the global food system on the eve
of crisis. 3. The world food crisis: Richer diets, biofuels, wild weather
and ecological limits-the true causes of high food prices. 4. Was Malthus
right? Population growth and carrying capacity-a stock-take of the planet's
food resources. 5. This time is different: Is this the end of cheap food?
Structural shifts, price volatility and the "new normal.” 6. Starve thy
neighbour: Export bans, panic purchases and why countries are stuck in a
Prisoner's Dilemma. 7. Trading in the wind: Are financial speculators to
blame for higher food prices? Shadows and reality in futures markets. 8.
Stirring the alphabet soup: The ABCD of commodity trading-established
companies, new competitors and the race to secure supply chains. 9. Land
grabs: Foreign investment in farmland and the new scramble for Africa.
Win-win or dangerous folly? 10. How this story might end: Dangerous trends,
nightmare outcomes and the geopolitics of food in the twenty-first century.
11. Better ways to feed the world: Mapping out routes to a more sustainable
and just food system. Acknowledgements Sources Index