End Of Food

The global population is expected to reach 9 billion people by the year 2050 and scientific projections indicate that world is on a trajectory towards an environmental and global food crisis. World Leaders, environmental enthusiasts and aid agencies have cause for alarm as they support urgent policies for change, for without them mankind will face unprecedented food insecurity. In 2015 estimates were that there were “some 795 million people” [World Food Programme, 2015], experiencing food insecurity and 3.1 million children under 5 died through malnutrition, while Australians continue to waste an estimated 361 Kg’s of food per person per yr [PMSEIC, 2010, p.44] All the while the earth groans under the weight of Greenhouse Gas Emissions [GHG], deforestation, soil degradation and

The three contingencies of Patel’s plan include changing the governing laws of agribusiness, improving the conditions of and supporting rural areas, and changing the role of eating in society. Before much progress can be made, the ways in which businesses are required to operate must change. Without any new legislations to stand in their way, nothing will alter the ways in which they operate or the ways they look to further solidify their dominance. Next, rural growers simply need more help. In current conditions, they barely scrape by due to the increasing demands from their purchasers and the decreasing amounts of compensation collected. Contrary to the original perception, crop subsidies, most associated with corn, provide no help to these smaller farmers. They can’t compete with the mass-growers and their enormous swathes of land. It drives the rural farmers out of those particular markets, and it often prevents them from growing crops their land is most suitable for. Finally, Pollan pushes the idea that there must be a revamp of the meaning of food to consumers. As it stands, people view eating as a task rather than an enjoyable experience. This leads the consumer to think little of the food, especially in ways Michael Pollan insist they must think about the food. This anti-cooking architecture of society is, nonetheless, a self-perpetuating cycle of

Throughout the book “Stuffed and Starved”, Raj Patel, the author, makes connections between the current state of the world food system, and the Malthusian and Rhodes dilemmas, the first, proposing that the world population is growing exponentially, but the resources to feed this growing population are finite, whereas the second suggests that hunger leads to unrest, hence as long as people are kept fed, they won't revolt. Patel sections the system and points out to the defects at all levels—starting from the fundamental unit—the seed, going broader touching upon redistributors, consumers, corporations, and, above all, governments and policies. The five major areas Patel criticizes I would like to emphasize are: prevalent selection of desirable

In Slaughterhouse Blues, anthropologist Donald Stull and social geographer Michael Broadway explore the advent, history, and implications of modern food production. The industrialized system behind what we eat is one of the most controversial points of political interest in our society today. Progressions in productive, logistical, retail, and even biological technologies have made mass produced foods more available and more affordable than ever before. This being said, the vague mass production of ever-available cheap “food” carries with it several hidden

In Garrett Hardin’s essay “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor,” Hardin asks readers if every person on earth has an equal share of resources and then argues why he takes the position against helping the poor. Hardin uses the metaphor of a lifeboat that is almost filled to capacity, floating in an ocean where the “poor of the world” are overboard. This metaphor appeals greatly to one of humanities greatest instincts, survival. The main focus of Hardin’s essay and metaphor is to strip all morals, take the fault from the rich nations and place the responsibilities and blame on the poor. There are a few rebels who seem to think that the blame and responsibilities are incorrectly placed. One of these rebels is Alan Durning who presents his argument in his essay “Asking How Much is Enough.” Durning argues that overpopulation does not threaten the world’s resources. He believes the real culprit is overconsumption by the rich. Joseph K. Skinner is another rebel who argues against Hardin in his essay “Big Mac and the Tropical Forests.” Skinner argues that wealthy nations, including the United States, are responsible for the world’s resource problem because they use poor nations as main producers of goods they expend. The arguments made in the essays’ by Durning and Skinner make readers alert of Hardin’s rhetorical strategies and how he uses his

Alongside the growth of large farms, crops are being subsidized which leads to the prices of the goods being kept at a low price (Toews). For a family farm, this means producing a crop that is not cost effective which eventually drives the family farms out of business. Once these large corporations produce the crop, it is then shipped to the manufacturers

Chapter 9 of Environmental Science by William and Mary Ann Cunningham begins with discussing the excess amount of food there was but despite that people are still hungry, there is a scarcity of resources like food. This chapter also discusses about 870 million people that do not have enough resources and this is causing them to be hungry and have a lot of diseases.

Supply and demand are the rulers of price in the capitalist economy of the United States, and farm goods rely on these factors as much as any other commodity. The demand for food remains relatively stable although slightly increasing year to year, but the supply fluctuates greatly depending on

Raj Patel’s Stuffed and Starved analyzes the paradoxical content in its title statement. Patel demonstrates how the world food system has created two opposite, but inherently linked epidemics: obesity and crippling hunger. Throughout the course of this book, it becomes painfully clear that the majority of the world’s population is being manipulated by our global food system and by the corporations and their CEO’s who control it. Patel encourages his readers to make themselves politically responsible (313) and through Stuffed and Starved, highlights the discrepancies and major imbalances of our world food system, the small percentage of people who benefit from it, and the vast majority of humanity who does not. He does all this while

The End of Food is an competent and comprehensive study on the multiplicity of threats that exist to thwart feeding humans on a global scale. Yet, it is a challenging read due to the repetition of subject matter, moderate voice amidst catastrophic scenarios, and ad hominem attacks on activists. The latter two factors lend to an unprofessional, pejorative and emotive appeal to certain passages, detracting from the urgency of the current and impending crisis. The epilogue creates a “perfect-storm” narrative which begins plausibly but soon overextends into hyperbolic vectors predicting a doomsday scenario (Roberts 301). Given the number of vectors and possibilities, the accuracy of the prediction becomes statistically improbable. Ending his book

In the midst of a failing telecommunication start up, and stumbling into a problem like any mundane individual. Robert Rhinehart, was posed with quite the dilemma on the verge of going belly up on his initial telecommunication project and scrapping by looking in any which direction to subsidize his cost to be solely invested in the new telecommunication market; Soylent was born: out of necessity and intuition, creating a low cost, nutrient rich concoction that could feed any man for less than thirty cents a serving; but, does this product prove to be the end of food as we know it, or the beginning for something more advance as a total replacement as eating is known and more of a nightmare than a heaven to feed everyone

The focus of this essay is how water shortages in the future can produce worldwide food shortages. “Only if we act to improve water use in agriculture will we meet the acute freshwater challenges facing humankind over the coming 50 years” [4]. As the world changes over the next fifty years, the water struggles that we endure will be seen in the food production around the world. There are many factors that contribute to this occurring, including global climate change, the increase in water security vulnerability, and the phenomenon that the world has hit peak water. The world’s population has also changed their average diet over the past 50 years, to consuming more meat and more calories in general [4]. This dietary change means that each person requires more water to produce their food than in previous generations.

“We’ve got complacency,” he sums up. “So for those reasons, I believe the next food crisis – when it comes – will be a bigger shock than $150 oil.”

At the moment, it is hard to tell whether the world has sufficient food supplies or not.Most of developed countries claim to have people who are still not able to access food while at the same time, still report of more food wastage than the third world, developing nations. That indicates a big mishap in the food cycle as it so happens that most of the food either finds itself in the dumpster or on the plates of the very rich. China, USA, Canada, South Eastern Asia, and Europe have been amongst the countries hit by this storm of food wasting. While Britain is said to be throwing away about thirteen pounds of food per week, Canada is struggling with same problem. The United States is not spared either. Food and Agriculture

Holding on to these fundamental concerns an examination of world hunger and population growth illustrates the problematic nature of this program. The connection between hunger and overpopulation is the notion that the world cannot produce enough food to feed the number of human beings alive. However, the "world produces enough grain alone to provide every man, woman, and child on Earth with 3,000 calories a day" (Hartmann 1995: 16), illustrating this "fact" as profoundly false. Hartmann further states, "at least on a global scale their is not shortage of food"(Hartmann 1995: 16), which insinuates that the concern is not production, but rather distribution. The unequal distribution and consumption of resources by the West (Hartmann 1995: