Five new books and an essential magazine! Science for People; Katrina’s History; Small Farm Future; Mass Migration; Energy and Work; China’s Environmental Crisis
Reading Matters
Archive | Food and Farming
Red & green reading
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, August 2020
New books on fungi, climate & capital, food, bluefin tuna, & Cuban agriculture. PLUS new translations of Facing the Anthropocene, and two recent C&C book reviews
Metabolic Rifts
Dead Zones: Industrial Agriculture versus Ocean Life
Worldwide, there are now over a thousand coastal areas where fish can’t breathe. The nitrogen that makes crops grow is also destroying offshore ecosystems.
Agrochemical pollution
Pesticides speed the spread of deadly parasites
Even low concentrations of pesticides can increase transmission and weaken efforts to control the second most common parasitic disease
Reading matters
Ecosocialist Bookshelf: Mid-July, 2020
Six new books … Greta Thunberg’s story; Fighting corporate food systems; Revolutionaries on climate; Food and revolution; A case for meat; Our carbon world
Film review
Is lab-grown meat the future of food?
Documentary on ‘clean meat’ fails to question the technology’s rationale and blindly accepts dubious claims made by its promoters
Time to change course
False Promises: The ‘Green Revolution in Africa’ is failing on its own terms
The Gates Foundation’s billion dollar project is a vicious circle that drives small-scale food producers further and further into poverty
Covid kills
Not just meat: All farm and food workers are in peril
The profit-driven food system endangers the lives of millions of low-paid workers. It’s time to adopt more humane and robust methods of feeding humanity.
Xenophobia weakens the fight
Banning wild animal sales won’t prevent another pandemic
‘If wildlife-oriented solutions distract from the weaknesses that COVID-19 has exposed in global health security, the next pandemic will levy a higher toll.’
Insect Atlas 2020
Agribusiness drives severe decline of essential insects
Four million tonnes of poison a year, most produced by four agribusiness giants, are killing essential insects everywhere. One-third of species face extinction.
Interview with Fred Magdoff
Pandemic: ‘This is a time for bold programs from the left’
Covid-19 exposes capitalism’s gross inability to meet human needs. We must demand immediate measures to help people survive and recover.
Does Pandemic = Famine?
Covid-19 disrupts food systems; global hunger crisis looms
Global food price increases could be worse than in the 2008 crisis, causing major shortages and increased malnutrition in the global south.
Reading, red and green
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, March 2020
Six new books to read while maintaining social distance. Yellow Earth; Socialist Practice; Friedrich Engels; Chicken History; Traveling Plants; Coal and Empire
Agribusiness kills
Capitalist agriculture and Covid-19: A deadly combination
A socialist biologist explains the tight links between new viruses, industrial food production, and the profitability of multinational corporations.
Rainforest Resistance
Indigenous people may be the Amazon’s last hope
“We are protecting our land and the life on it. We have to preserve this life for our children’s future.”
Real action needed
Record climate disasters hit Africa … and worse is coming
Nnimmo Bassey: Africa will face calamitous roasting unless radical social and ecological transformation starts soon
Cutting Pollution
In Cuba, greener farming means cleaner rivers
Joint Cuba-U.S. study finds sustainable agriculture in Cuba keeps river pollution far below levels in U.S. waterways
Industrial Disease
Coronavirus: Agribusiness breeds another deadly epidemic
Once again, authorities are scrambling to deal with a fast-spreading disease after the fact, while the systemic causes remain in place.
Deadly gains
A system that steals from our future
“We have been mortgaging the health of future generations to realize economic and development gains in the present”
Healing a metabolic rift
Urban farming as a response to climate-driven food crises: Cuba shows the way
Cuba’s experience suggests that urban farming can help stave off potential famine when the climate crisis cuts food production