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Food Economics: Agriculture, Nutrition, and Health
- GenresEconomics
504 pages, Paperback
Published May 1, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 7, 2024
Hello Goodreads folks,
This is a not-review by one of the authors, with five stars because it's really great!
The first thing you should know is that the book is open access, so anyone can read it freely online here: https://link.springer.com/book/978303....
For Kindle users, the free version is not available directly from Amazon, but you can download the ePUB and then use their Send-to-Kindle service: https://www.amazon.com/sendtokindle.
About content, this is primarily a textbook for college and university classes, or people working to improve agriculture, food and nutrition in the U.S. and internationally. But the book is designed so that a general reader could skim and skip around to see how we explain each topic of interest. Title chapters and section headings allow you to start anywhere, and jump back or forward in the book to connect the dots from farm production to retail markets and diet quality.
The first half of the book is a gentle introduction to how economists explain, predict and assess change in farming methods, food businesses, and consumer behavior. Economic principles are presented graphically, covering almost everything in a typical Econ 101 class, using only lines and curves to represent the available options from which people have chosen. Each kind of choice is described using food-related examples.
The second half of the book describes how the U.S. and global food system works, using tables and charts linked to data sources. We've made many original data visualizations to show patterns and trends that would not otherwise be possible to see. For example, to show who gets how much money from each dollar of consumer spending, we converted USDA data into a convenient chart that's clearly explained here:
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf...
Our goal for this book is to share an accessible summary of what specialist researchers have learned about the economics of food. We aimed for a friendly style you can skim quickly, like a tourist's guide to a big city, and then dig in if you like to see a lot of rich detail -- in this case about agriculture, nutrition and health in the U.S. and globally.
All readers knows something about our topic, but you'll be surprised at what you can learn on your own by speed-reading a textbook, then digging in to whatever catches your eye. The book itself does not cite any references other than data sources, but academically-inclined readers who want to see citations can see the huge recent literature review we did just before the textbook:
Masters, W.A., A.B. Finaret and S.A. Block, 2022. The Economics of Malnutrition: Dietary Transition and Food System Transformation. Handbook of Agricultural Economics, vol. 6: 4997-5083. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Institutional subscriptions at https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.hesagr.202..., or individuals can use a PDF preprint here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2202.02579.
Free access to this textbook was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, under a grant to Tufts University for support of the Agriculture, Nutrition and Health Academy. You can see their announcement of this here: https://www.anh-academy.org/community...
We hope you enjoy the book, and use Goodreads to share what you think of it!
--Will Masters and Amelia Finaret
This is a not-review by one of the authors, with five stars because it's really great!
The first thing you should know is that the book is open access, so anyone can read it freely online here: https://link.springer.com/book/978303....
For Kindle users, the free version is not available directly from Amazon, but you can download the ePUB and then use their Send-to-Kindle service: https://www.amazon.com/sendtokindle.
About content, this is primarily a textbook for college and university classes, or people working to improve agriculture, food and nutrition in the U.S. and internationally. But the book is designed so that a general reader could skim and skip around to see how we explain each topic of interest. Title chapters and section headings allow you to start anywhere, and jump back or forward in the book to connect the dots from farm production to retail markets and diet quality.
The first half of the book is a gentle introduction to how economists explain, predict and assess change in farming methods, food businesses, and consumer behavior. Economic principles are presented graphically, covering almost everything in a typical Econ 101 class, using only lines and curves to represent the available options from which people have chosen. Each kind of choice is described using food-related examples.
The second half of the book describes how the U.S. and global food system works, using tables and charts linked to data sources. We've made many original data visualizations to show patterns and trends that would not otherwise be possible to see. For example, to show who gets how much money from each dollar of consumer spending, we converted USDA data into a convenient chart that's clearly explained here:
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf...
Our goal for this book is to share an accessible summary of what specialist researchers have learned about the economics of food. We aimed for a friendly style you can skim quickly, like a tourist's guide to a big city, and then dig in if you like to see a lot of rich detail -- in this case about agriculture, nutrition and health in the U.S. and globally.
All readers knows something about our topic, but you'll be surprised at what you can learn on your own by speed-reading a textbook, then digging in to whatever catches your eye. The book itself does not cite any references other than data sources, but academically-inclined readers who want to see citations can see the huge recent literature review we did just before the textbook:
Masters, W.A., A.B. Finaret and S.A. Block, 2022. The Economics of Malnutrition: Dietary Transition and Food System Transformation. Handbook of Agricultural Economics, vol. 6: 4997-5083. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Institutional subscriptions at https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.hesagr.202..., or individuals can use a PDF preprint here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2202.02579.
Free access to this textbook was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, under a grant to Tufts University for support of the Agriculture, Nutrition and Health Academy. You can see their announcement of this here: https://www.anh-academy.org/community...
We hope you enjoy the book, and use Goodreads to share what you think of it!
--Will Masters and Amelia Finaret
November 19, 2024
I read four or five chapters which interested me most. Very clear and informative (and it's free to read online) 👍
July 25, 2024
Hi folks - another not-review from one of the authors of this book. See Will's note for a detailed picture of what's in the book, and also instructions on how to access it for free on various platforms and devices.
The link to download individual chapters or the whole book at once is here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.100...
And as Will mentioned, you can download the ePUB from SpringerLink above, and use send-to-kindle to read it on Kindle for free, although this is not immediately obvious from the Amazon listing for the book.
Huge thanks to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for supporting the Open Access publication of this book through the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Health Academy. We hope it is useful for students, lifelong learners, and scholars around the world.
Please let us know what you think!
The link to download individual chapters or the whole book at once is here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.100...
And as Will mentioned, you can download the ePUB from SpringerLink above, and use send-to-kindle to read it on Kindle for free, although this is not immediately obvious from the Amazon listing for the book.
Huge thanks to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for supporting the Open Access publication of this book through the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Health Academy. We hope it is useful for students, lifelong learners, and scholars around the world.
Please let us know what you think!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews