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The Grand Food Bargain: and the Mindless Drive for More
When it comes to food, Americans seem to have a pretty great deal. Our grocery stores are overflowing with countless varieties of convenient products. But like most bargains that are too good to be true, the modern food system relies on an illusion. It depends on endless abundance, but the planet has its limits. So too does a healthcare system that must absorb rising rates of diabetes and obesity. So too do the workers who must labor harder and faster for less pay.
Through beautifully-told stories from around the world, Kevin Walker reveals the unintended consequences of our myopic focus on quantity over quality. A trip to a Costa Rica plantation shows how the Cavendish banana became the most common fruit in the world and also one of the most vulnerable to disease. Walker’s early career in agribusiness taught him how pressure to sell more and more fertilizer obscured what that growth did to waterways. His family farm illustrates how an unquestioning belief in “free markets” undercut opportunity in his hometown.
By the end of the journey, we not only understand how the drive to produce ever more food became hardwired into the American psyche, but why shifting our mindset is essential. It starts, Walker argues, with remembering that what we eat affects the wider world. If each of us decides that bigger isn’t always better, we can renegotiate the grand food bargain, one individual decision at a time.
Through beautifully-told stories from around the world, Kevin Walker reveals the unintended consequences of our myopic focus on quantity over quality. A trip to a Costa Rica plantation shows how the Cavendish banana became the most common fruit in the world and also one of the most vulnerable to disease. Walker’s early career in agribusiness taught him how pressure to sell more and more fertilizer obscured what that growth did to waterways. His family farm illustrates how an unquestioning belief in “free markets” undercut opportunity in his hometown.
By the end of the journey, we not only understand how the drive to produce ever more food became hardwired into the American psyche, but why shifting our mindset is essential. It starts, Walker argues, with remembering that what we eat affects the wider world. If each of us decides that bigger isn’t always better, we can renegotiate the grand food bargain, one individual decision at a time.
- GenresFoodScienceNonfiction
344 pages, Hardcover
Published March 26, 2019
4 people are currently reading
97 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 23, 2020
This sermon is a rehash of the christian doctrine, which probably predates christianity: repent you sinners for what you have done to the planet god gave you. It is also, although probably unintended, a deeply racist sermon, now that the whites have it all, humanity should cut down production and damn the darkies as they are irrelevant.
August 19, 2019
I'm surprised to find this doesn't have as many reads as it should. It's extremely informative, fact based from an insider's point of view. Profit, greed, gluttony, and ignorance have put us asleep at the wheel. Seduced by comfort and convenience we've entrusted big businesses to manage the long term sustainability of life on the planet & it's not going well for future generations. Perhaps the relativistic short-term of our personal lives plays a part in our disregard. Future generations will look back and point to the historical red-flags and be dismayed by inaction. We are watching it all in real-time now, just like Climate Change (please read The Sixth Extinction by Kolbert).
I wanted to park some excerpts here for my future reference:
"When compared with sixteen peer countries, the United States is near the top in terms of wealth but near the bottom in terms of health. Per person, we spend more on health care, and less on food. We also consume more calories per person than any other country. And we are dead last in chronic maladies like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, the leading cause of death.
In the United States, almost seven out of 10 adults are overweight, with more than half obese. ... The disconnect between nutrition and food production has not served America well. "
Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do. --Wendell Berry
The UN estimates that the global population will rise to 9.8 billion by 2050.
"For those wanting to turn out more food, these statistics provide the perfect justification: more people means more food is needed, which calls for greater food production. To disagree is to line up on the wrong side of humanity. Researchers seeking grants, countries wanting loans from international banks, and NPOs seeking donations all fall back on this assumption.
In addition, agribusiness use it to rationalize new fertilizer plants or to market more pesticides. Politicians leverage it to secure more votes or defend taxpayer subsidies. Farmers use it to reinforce existing production practices. When it comes to propping up modern food systems around the world, the question is not so much who relies in such statements as fact, but who doesn't."
"But the idea that more people require greater production presumes there is barely enough food in the world as is. The related presumption is that food is already efficiently produced, distributed, and consumed. Backers of this idea show us images of starving children, not the 2 billion+ who are overweight or obese where the food is readily abundant and needlessly wasted.
Indeed, food waste is chronic. Across the world, from one-third to one-half of food grown is never consumed at all. In developing countries, more than 40% of loss happens near the farm at storage, transportation, and processing. In countries like the United States, less food is lost on the front end, while more is wasted in stores, restaurant tables, and home refrigerators, where up to 40% is never eaten."
Governments do not lead, they follow. The power to change does not reside with self-serving legislators and profit driven businesses. The greatest power rests in our ability to change the definition of reasonable behavior. -David Kessler.
I wanted to park some excerpts here for my future reference:
"When compared with sixteen peer countries, the United States is near the top in terms of wealth but near the bottom in terms of health. Per person, we spend more on health care, and less on food. We also consume more calories per person than any other country. And we are dead last in chronic maladies like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, the leading cause of death.
In the United States, almost seven out of 10 adults are overweight, with more than half obese. ... The disconnect between nutrition and food production has not served America well. "
Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do. --Wendell Berry
The UN estimates that the global population will rise to 9.8 billion by 2050.
"For those wanting to turn out more food, these statistics provide the perfect justification: more people means more food is needed, which calls for greater food production. To disagree is to line up on the wrong side of humanity. Researchers seeking grants, countries wanting loans from international banks, and NPOs seeking donations all fall back on this assumption.
In addition, agribusiness use it to rationalize new fertilizer plants or to market more pesticides. Politicians leverage it to secure more votes or defend taxpayer subsidies. Farmers use it to reinforce existing production practices. When it comes to propping up modern food systems around the world, the question is not so much who relies in such statements as fact, but who doesn't."
"But the idea that more people require greater production presumes there is barely enough food in the world as is. The related presumption is that food is already efficiently produced, distributed, and consumed. Backers of this idea show us images of starving children, not the 2 billion+ who are overweight or obese where the food is readily abundant and needlessly wasted.
Indeed, food waste is chronic. Across the world, from one-third to one-half of food grown is never consumed at all. In developing countries, more than 40% of loss happens near the farm at storage, transportation, and processing. In countries like the United States, less food is lost on the front end, while more is wasted in stores, restaurant tables, and home refrigerators, where up to 40% is never eaten."
Governments do not lead, they follow. The power to change does not reside with self-serving legislators and profit driven businesses. The greatest power rests in our ability to change the definition of reasonable behavior. -David Kessler.
April 1, 2020
Written with tons of passion, The Grand Food Bargain is a call to reason. A call to come back to a healthy relationship with food, which is not the same as the food system, as the author calls the big industry that produces food today and has produced it for many decades in the past. The book is very well written, probably a big responsibility here falls on the editors. It's very readable and catches the eye of the reader. Sometimes I have this impression I tend to have with American non-fiction books (well, with fiction as well) that the same could have been said in fewer sentences. That the same idea comes back in different colours and presentations, as to better convince the reader. But the ideas are good, in my view, one reads them again and again. A very valuable contribution to the debate on sustainability, diversity, obesity, cheap calories and unbalanced diets.
May 17, 2019
I would give this 3.75 stars. It provided some interesting and scary information about how our food is raised/grown and the different impacts on both the consumers and the farmers. It did seem a little long, and perhaps a bit politically focused, which were negatives. It also didn't spend much time on offering real solutions to the serious problems that dominated the book. Still, it's an eye-opener to what is going on behind the scenes that is important to know. Perhaps if more people were aware, there would be a chance to improve the situation. But I think needed changes are not just in the food industry, but in our government and our unfortunate lobby system.
May 26, 2022
A solid contribution to the library of good food books, exploring or broken system. Walker details several examples and general principles of how we imperil ourselves with the waste that comes from the way we do food in modern society. He starts with a simple lesson, revisited at the end, about the necessity to take what we need and leave something for regeneration.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews