What A Farmer Wants You to Know About Food

by Dennis Bulani

Do you brace yourself before you step into the grocery store every week? List in hand, budget in mind, prepared to navigate the minefield of labels and claims in the name of nourishing your family?

"Organic...free-range...grain-fed...local...GMO-free water?? I just want to take care of my family."

Grocery shopping should feel good. You should be able to feed yourself and your family without worrying you chose the wrong product.

You've got questions-good ones, and for good reasons. You're experiencing information overload, getting all sorts of conflicting information every day...and unfortunately, most of the information out there isn't from the people best equipped to the people who grow it.

Until now.

You have questions about how your food is grown. This book gives you a science-based perspective about not only how it's grown, but why, so you can feel good again about the food you and your family eat.

What a Farmer Wants You to Know About Food seeks to add the farmer's voice to the mainstream conversation about where our food comes from. From GMOs to pesticides, from preservatives to fertilizers-and even the ethics of food production, this book answers the questions you have (and probably a few you didn't know you had!).

156 pages, Paperback

Published October 31, 2024

Reviews

[Amy Hauer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed thoughts - what I wanted out of this book was what it promises at face value: cutting through the noise and breaking down simple truths about food production from the people who grow your food. It does some of that, and I appreciate the intention of adding a farmer’s voice to the mainstream discourse about “healthy” and “safe” food because there is so much conflicting and junk science information out there, and I’m especially adverse to social media food scientists and nutritionists who try to convince people that seed oils are bad or that bananas have too much sugar and carbs. I’m strongly in favor of just eating a balanced diet of natural foods, but again there is always that question of what “natural” means. I’ve been interested in that, knowing how many different labels can be slapped on a food at the grocery store and how much of it may be marketing-related, but I was excited about this book to dig even deeper.

I do feel like this farmer in particular was biased and only presented one side of each argument with respect to GMOs, preservatives, organics, and meat consumption in interest of defending his specific farming practices. I would have liked for him to fully explain the pros and the cons to both/all sorts of practices, but I found the chapters to be a little cherry-picky with the science it cited to “debunk” a myth or prove that conventional (non-organic) farming is superior. For example, I’m not someone who advocates for eliminating all meat from the food supply, but we do objectively know there are environmental benefits to reducing red meat consumption. He opted not to acknowledge or rather try to dismiss that claim. I’m definitely taking away some knowledge (e.g. why GMOs are not always necessarily a bad thing like the rep they have gotten) and I appreciate his perspective of providing for a global food supply chain and not just feeding a few, which does make a difference in priorities for some of these issues. However it could have been twice as impactful if it presented more balanced research so we - the average reader/consumer - can get a whole understanding of what’s what.

[Jess Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is not a small feat to communicate how food is grown in a world where there is so much misinformation and confusion and down right opinion- everyone eats so everyone has thoughts on food. The author- a Canadian Farmer, does an incredible job of teaching us how food is grown. He describes the love and pride that goes into farming and teaches us a lot about the science and effort that goes into growing safe food. I hope every person will read this book, a glimpse into farming that most of the world population has never seen. And I hope that after reading this book you will go thank a farmer- I certainly will!

[Tom Zalatnai · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid read for anyone interested in learning more about how our food gets to our tables, that clarifies in no uncertain terms the difference between “organic” and “non-organic” food, the safety of pesticides and GMOs, and the myriad ways that commercial agriculture is doing its best to keep us fed and healthy. Bulani is not a masterful writer, but he makes up for it with passionate delivery and deep knowledge.