Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food

by Timothy A. Wise

A major new book that shows the world already has the tools to feed itself, without expanding industrial agriculture or adopting genetically modified seeds, from the Small Planet Institute expertFew challenges are more daunting than feeding a global population projected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050—at a time when climate change is making it increasingly difficult to successfully grow crops. In response, corporate and philanthropic leaders have called for major investments in industrial agriculture, including genetically modified seed technologies. Reporting from Africa, Mexico, India, and the United States, Timothy A. Wise's Eating Tomorrow discovers how in country after country agribusiness and its well-heeled philanthropic promoters have hijacked food policies to feed corporate interests.

Most of the world, Wise reveals, is fed by hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers, people with few resources and simple tools but a keen understanding of what and how to grow food. These same farmers—who already grow more than 70 percent of the food eaten in developing countries—can show the way forward as the world warms and population increases. Wise takes readers to remote villages to see how farmers are rebuilding soils with ecologically sound practices and nourishing a diversity of native crops without chemicals or imported seeds. They are growing more and healthier food; in the process, they are not just victims in the climate drama but protagonists who have much to teach us all.

Genres: Food, Nonfiction, Economics, Climate Change

335 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 5, 2019

About the author

Timothy A. Wise is a Senior Researcher at the Small Planet Institute where he directs the Land and Food Rights Program. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute. A widely published commentator on food and agriculture, Wise offers a unique combination of economic journalism, international development, and academic research. A prestigious fellowship from the Open Society Institute supported the research for his recent book, Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food (The New Press 2019). He is the co-author of Confronting Globalization: Economic Integration and Popular Resistance in Mexico (Kumarian 2003) and A Survey of Sustainable Development (Island Press 2001).

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poverty and hunger are manufactured crises. Studies have shown that we have the ability to feed the world so sustainably, but powerful interests get in the way. Timothy Wise analyzes the struggle for economic, social, and cultural rights that characterizes the food system today with case studies from the US, Mexico, and multiple countries in Africa. One is left outraged by the actions of governments and agribusiness to expropriate land, increase profits, and maintain a hierarchical food system that too often leaves people with the twin problems of under- and overconsumption, but one is also left hopeful given the myriad activists and small farmers across the world charting a better path and ready to fight to keep moving forward.

[Erica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was just a little dry, so I didn't give it 5 stars, BUT it was jam-packed with good information that I had not seen elsewhere. I was especially interested in the biofuels sections because that was stuff I hadn't known about as much as say the GMO sections, so that's what I focused on. There was also plenty of GMO stuff too if you are interested in that though, including a whole chapter talking about Mexico and how GMO corn might affect genetic purity of the hundreds of native and biodiverse maize strains. Here are just a few tidbits that I wrote down because I thought they were interesting and wanted to refer to them again.

The EU uses palm oil in biodiesel. It is supposed to be phased out in 2021 but at levels that allow additional expansion up to then. Biodiesel is a great idea at least in theory- but using PALM OIL and cutting down the rainforest to grow it completely negates those benefits

It talked about global food price shocks in 2010-2011 that were thought to be linked to unrest in Arab spring due to rising wheat prices. Additionally, the IMF reforms in the 90s forced indebted countries to open up agricultural imports while reducing support for domestic farmers (effectively forcing them off the land and favoring transnational conglomerates). Now that global food prices are increasing due to biofuel diversion (in addition to climate change affecting crop yields already), it is really affecting many of those countries.

In Iowa, ethanol went from 5% of corn in the late 90s to 40% today. Lots of marginal/edge lands are being used for expansion removing water-filtering deep-rooted prairie grasses and leading to more water pollution (especially hog farms and excess fertilizer going into the water). ALSO we apparently often ship corn ethanol to Brazil and import their relatively superior sugarcane-based biofuels, in order to meet advanced biofuels mandate. Again, good idea, but terrible implementation. All that shipping back and forth wastes fuel too!

There was a lot of information on the various land grabs and rampant corruption in Africa. For example: Sun biofuels planned to plant jatropha, which was thought to be a biofuel miracle crop, and grow on marginal lands, etc. They cleared 5,000 acres of forest of the 20,000 they bought, and promised jobs/to build schools/roads/clinics/etc. BUT, it took 3-4 years to get a crop, and investors were impatient. Also, it needed more water than they thought, and growing on marginal lands gave marginal yields. They flipped it to another company (Mtanga foods) which had overlapping board of directors. The new company didn't have the same obligations to the villagers. Land was now under guard and "all they had was a graveyard of scraggly, untended jatropha trees" and were unable to farm or get basic needs met.

The book has TONS and tons of information like this. So, if you are interested in the "future of food" you might find it interesting too!

[Alex Furst · Rating 2 out of 5]

Book #60 of 2024. "Eating Tomorrow" by Timothy Wise. 2/5 rating. 278 p.

As someone who is really interested in the future of food and agriculture, even I found this book long, and at points tedious to read. Though it did have a TON of information just proving the horrendous place we are in where agribusinesses are in total control. Running the show at the detriment of local farmers, soil health, and the future of food.

"I had a hard time finding any evidence of government action to follow that new consensus on sustainable smallholder farming. On the contrary, most governments have eschewed sensible, low-cost, pro-poor initiatives in favor of expensive programs that channeled scarce public funds into corporate-dominated value chains. Corporations captured most of the value."

Agribusiness has sold modern farmers on buying hybrid seed and inorganic fertilizer as their savior. The issue is that if we had instead invested the same time and money into improving open-pollinated seeds, we probably could have similar (or dependent on who you ask, higher?) yields, and not have to buy the proprietary seed or fertilizer that ends up taking nutrients out of the ground and making soils even less healthy. Great for everyone except the agribusinesses, and therefore, a complete non-starter in a society bent on capitalism over anything else.

Monsanto is truly a company that you couldn't even make up half of the evil actions they've taken. In case you need any more proof about how awful, you can see the negative impact that their influence has had in Malawi. They bought out the national seed company with the heirloom seeds from generations of maize, then discontinued these varieties that they didn't own patents to, and instead sold hybrid seeds that you couldn't save seeds from, need immense fertilizer inputs, and have barely higher yields.

"'It is a chilling revelation that the [Malawi] seed policy was authored by an ex-Monsanto employee,' said Blessings Chinsinga, Chancellor College professor, when I told him the news. Indeed. It is difficult to imagine a more egregious conflict of interest than allowing a seed company executive to write a government policy that threatens to outlaw farmers' saving and exchanging of seeds, which clearly would open new markets for his company."

Timothy also talks about the swell of land grabs from foreign investors around the world buying up land in poorer countries. These areas are often already occupied and farmed, but "Very few of the people farming there have any formal title to that land even if their families have been farming it for generations." The biggest issue in so many of these places is that everyone tends to be at the table....besides the most important person! The small-scale farmer. They have been left behind, patronized, used, and had everything except their positions heard by those who could help them achieve their goals.

Finally, the other major issue is the damage that many free-trade agreements packaged with subsidies and poor supply-side-planning have had on many countries. NAFTA has destroyed a lot of the traditional maize varieties in Mexico. Because of a glut of cheap US corn available for less than the cost of production from US subsidies, Mexican farmers are unable to sustain their farms at the low cost they're receiving for crops. What's worse, is while the idea is that they will just shift to other employment, there is no support for this. There AREN'T the number of jobs to support so many poor rural people, which means that they are just struggling in ever-more poverty as cheap, unhealthy US food is shipped in; while traditional maize varieties fade away because the local farmers can no longer sustain growing them with the cheap US corn available.

The below quotes just continually saddened me and blew my mind!

"Most of the climate-smart initiatives being hailed at the conference as 'win-win' solutions, I realized, had only one consistent winner: agribusiness, the conglomerates that dominate the production of seeds, fertilizers, and other farm inputs. There, as elsewhere in the various halls of power, farmer initiatives that grew more food while reducing dependence on multinational agribusiness were marginalized in favor of business-friendly programs that boosted corporations' profits, increased corporate control of our food systems, and deepened farmers' dependence while undermining the very resource base on which they - and the hungry world - depend for food."
"The first drugs are often free, I thought. In this case they were just heavily subsidized."
"'Our findings show meet transfers away from farming households to agribusinesses,' said Greenberg."
"'Why not distribute some of those national seeds developed by Malawian breeders? Why not revive the national seed company?' He smiled and shook his head, clearly pained to deliver bad news to a naïve U.S. researcher. 'Don't you know?' he asked. I shook my head. 'Monsanto bought the national seed company fifteen years ago.'"
"Indeed, after Monsanto took over the National Seed Company of Malawi (NSCM) in 1998, it discontinued the distribution of the popular hybrid, MH18. The stated reason was a leaf blight that harmed many hybrid maize varieties, but the real reason was that Monsanto didn't own the patent and profits were therefore lower than for its less popular patients varieties. Monsanto hadn't discontinued production of MH18 because it was unproductive. It had done so because it +was+ productive."
"'It is a chilling revelation that the [Malawi] seed policy was authored by an ex-Monsanto employee,' said Blessings Chinsinga, Chancellor College professor, when I told him the news. Indeed. It is difficult to imagine a more egregious conflict of interest than allowing a seed company executive to write a government policy that threatens to outlaw farmers' saving and exchanging of seeds, which clearly would open new markets for his company."
"Very few of the people farming there have any formal title to that land even if their families have been farming it for generations."
"Either way, villagers had little protection. Chief Ndake told us that he and other chiefs did not want to see the kinds of formal land titles the national government initially proposed as part of its new land policy. It wasn't just that the chiefs would lose much of their power, he said. If one's land can be freely bought and sold, it is likely that financial pressures, such as unpaid debts after a bad harvest, would cause many to lose their land. Indeed, research highlights precisely that danger."
"Is there a loss of productivity? Just the opposite, she said. In one two-year peoject, they found that organic farmers using improved open-pollinated maize seeds that they had multiplied themselves got double the yields compared to conventional farmers using green-revolution inputs, 2.4 tons per hectare compared to 1.2. With input costs lower, their farms were far more profitable. And those advantages increased over time as soil quality improved."
"'With more diversity on the farm, they can compensate for a bad year for maize,' she told me, and their diets were far healthier even in good years."
"Ethanol consumes roughly 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop, up from just 5 percent in the early 2000s. To be fair, a small portion of that gets returned to animal feed markets as the 'dried distiller grain' left over after the sugar is extracted in the ethanol refinery. So the net diversion is probably closer to 30 percent."
"Bruce Babcock, at Iowa State, took a more conservative modeling approach, comparing actual prices to what they would have been if biofuel production had not increased over its 2004 levels. He estimated that by 2010 prices would have been 21 percent lower without the policy-fueled ethanol expansion."
"Researchers estimated that some 20 percent of the U.S. gasoline price drivers paid at the pump in 2011 was due to speculation in oil markets."
"Both causes of [food] price increase[s in 2007-08 and 2010], speculative investment and ethanol conversion, are promoted by recent regulatory changes - deregulation of the commodity markets, and policies promoting the conversion of corn to ethanol."
"'Mexican maize is a gift from Mesoamerica to the world, which they are trying to provatize with patented GM seeds,' said San Vicente."
"Bris said she was glad the class action suit focused on the threat to native maize and not concerns about human health. 'I see the ownership of patents over seeds as more horrific than the issue of health.' She was right. Not only would farmers not be allowed to replant GM maize, any presence of transgenes in their own crops would subject them to legal action for patent infringement. Monsanto had certainly demonstrated its willingness to unleash its fierce legal department on unsuspecting farmers, even those who had not intentionally infringed on the company's patents."
"That growth, of course, is a complete fantasy. A 2016 National Academy of Sciences report found 'there was little evidence' that introduction of genetically modified crops in the United States has led to yield gains beyond those seem in conventional crops."
"The National Food Security Act (NFSA) of 2013 legislated a wide range of nutrition and health measures [after a myriad of starvation deaths], including the expanded government purchase of basic food crops from Indian farmers for distribution at nominal prices to India's poir. The goal was to provide basic food rations to more than 800 million people, a remarkable two-thirds of the population. More remarkable still, this humanitarian program had recently run afoul of trade rules at the World Trade Organization (WTO), where the U.S. government had accused India of unfairly subsidizing its farmers by paying a purchase price higher than market prices. I'd seen this conflict play out at the WTO's 2013 summit in Bali, Indonesia. I'd written then about the hypocrisy of my own government, notorious for its high farm subsidies and cheap exports, accusing the country with the most poor people on earth of unfairly paying a higher price to its poorest farmers."
"In my research, I had a hard time finding any evidence of government action to follow that new consensus on sustainable smallholder farming. On the contrary, most governments have eschewed sensible, low-cost, pro-poor initiatives in favor of expensive programs that channeled scarce public funds into corporate-dominated value chains. Corporations captured most of the value. Drought-tolerant replantable seeds? No thanks, try our hybrid or GMO varieties that you have to buy every year. Soil-building, home-grown compost? No thanks, but some more synthetic fertilizer. Intercropping a variety of food crops, to diversify nutrient-poor diets, rebuild soils, and reduce dependence on synthetic fertilizers? Nope, keep those monocultures, and buy more, not less, of our chemical inputs."
"Even before the recent wave of mergers - Bayer-Monsanto, ChemChina-Syngenta, Dow-DuPont - three seed companies controlled 50 percent of the commercial market. Seven multinational fertilizer companies accounted for nearly all sales, while five companies captured two-thirds of the agro-chemical market. Just four firms had 90 percent of global grain trade. The top five global meat and dairy conglomerates threaten to undermine any meaningful commitment to address climate change; according to a recent report just those five firms are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than Exxon-Mobil, Shell or BP."

[Vaidya · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my fav reads this year. Talks about Big Ag and how the process of "Feeding the world" works from their perspective. Mostly argues to let small farmers feed themselves by growing what they eat instead of for the market, and then sell the surplus. Along the way help them with manure, compost and practices that can maximize yield. And of course, the key thing: soil. You can't do much if you keep ruining your soil, which is what blindly following BigAg does. Yes, there are ways to incorporate fertilizers that can help increase yields, but not at the scale that is demanded by BigAg.

And then there's the whole deal about biodiversity and food sovereignty and how losing that will come back to bite you big time in future. A detour takes him to India, where the Food security Act gets discussed and how it is setting WTO on fire, for no real reasons at all.

And yes, GMO. Yes, it is safe. And no, just because it is "safe" does not mean all farmers have to just adopt it. There's more to seeds, crops, food, markets, farmers, sustainability, soil, etc than just "safe". Grow up Silicon Valley Americans and NRIs!

[David Kessler · Rating 4 out of 5]

The business of agriculture is dominated by large companies. How do you build a level playing field to quality foods can be produced with diverse crops in terms of genetics and at the same time allow some land to be natural?
It can be done for a slightly higher price paid for crops. Included in the cost of doing business must be the cost of recapturing all the chemicals which run off the land and into the streams and rivers. Without some change in the laws of a country, large corporations will dominate.
Considerable thought was put into how to draft trades rules which will not force food(sold under market value) which is grown in bulk and sometimes using GM crops to overproduce and allow large corps to push their excesses off onto markets in India and Mexico as an example.
The effects were stark in Mexico and India when that happened.

[Rebekah Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit of a slow go as there is ALOT of information inside. Every time I tried to read it, I would take nearly 20 minutes to plow through 5 pages because every word is relevant. It IS an interesting book, but needed to be parred down a bit more. I didn't finish it this time, but plan to give it another go this winter. Totally reads like an academic research paper.

[Rashel · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you want an expose on the political agricultural environment world wide, read this book. It really doesn't go into detail about how local practices produce better results than the corporate ideals. Which I was really wanting. But not to belittle the importance of understanding how megaconglomerate corporations control the world.

[Lisa Konet · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book had a lot of discussion about big agriculture, poverty and much more. Every chapter has cited real and ethical problems the entire planet needs t be concerned about. Some of the reading was a little dry but the information is definitely a wake up call.

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

apparently there was a food shortage approximately 2008(?) created by american policy to shift to ethanol derived from corn. mainly explores third world countries and sustainable vs agribusiness. the author's biases heavily in foreground

[Leyna Doerr · Rating 3 out of 5]

for a class fall 2023. it was good, just kinda boring