Feed the Planet: A Photographic Journey to the World's Food

by Joel K. Bourne Jr. (Contributor), George Steinmetz (photographer)

Genres: Natural History, Food

256 pages, Hardcover

Published November 12, 2024

Reviews

[ツツ]

I'm borderline offended by this book's constant downplaying of the bleakness of the food industrial complex, with languages like "it's like Star Wars," "it's getting better," and the implication that "they need the work." Halfway through the book, I gave up reading the text.

I wonder if the editor felt it was important to maintain the idyllic fantasy (especially in the oLd wOrld) and therefore included many outliers, such as a French aristocratic garden. (p80) Worse still is the exoticism and curious consumption attributed to the Global South, with the most extreme example being an Indonesian clan "believed to be the last known culture to practice cannibalism."(p84) What do those have to do with "Feed the Planet"?

Many if not most of the photos appeal to spectacle. Sure, any large-scale thing is intrinsically spectacular, but in this collection the spectacle seems to be used to redirect attention away from the underlying structure and meaning behind it. I don't think the text was crafted with care (the f is the sentence “Since many sharks don't reach sexual maturity until their teens, shark populations plummeted” ??????p112), it doesn't answer anything remotely close to questions like: pineapples take three years to mature, produce only one fruit in the plant's lifetime, must be harvested by hand, transported in refrigerated cargo, and yet how does it end up as almost the cheapest fruit in my local market.

[Kate]

Feels wrong to give a star rating to a book of photographs where the text is long detailed captions – so I won’t. Instead, here are some random thoughts I had:

• All meat eaters should be required to read the chapter on meat and dairy
• Kind of shocking how many massive industrial farms are owned, not by farmers, but investment firms optimizing for investor returns
• The scale of the global food system is staggering and honestly kind of beyond mental comprehension
• We ask many millions of people to do back-breaking, sometimes truly disgusting, low-paid work that we wouldn’t do ourselves in order to sustain our daily eating habits

While many other food books have made these points, well, a picture is worth a thousand words. Great and interesting photography; I wholeheartedly recommend getting this from your library and keeping it on the table to flip through for a few weeks.

[Miriam Smirnov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful pics and interesting writing - I learned a lot - my one complaint is that the beauty of the pics obscure the reality of the damage we are doing to our planet

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous photography and a fascinating view into who, where and how our food is grown.

[Syrah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible book— stunning photos and sobering data on our global food systems and the exquisite complexity of the interconnectedness of it all. It’s all so much bigger than any of us and yet, “We all vote with a fork three times a day, and the decision you make will have a significant impact on the planet we share.”

[Sharron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent photography and well-written text concerning an all-important topic that effects every one of us. .

[Shelby Fleischer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous photography supplemented with poignant descriptive captions forces you, the reader, to begin to appreciate your food. And to think where and how it will come forth in the future.

[Sgkatcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book!