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In Agricultural and Food Controversies: What Everyone Needs to Know, agricultural researchers present both sides of heavily debated agricultural and food issues. They answer questions and explain scholarly and scientific research on topics such as organic food, the safety of pesticides, livestock living conditions, the use of antibiotics in livestock intended for consumption, the effect of agriculture on the environment, and more.
The world is more interested in issues surrounding agricultural and food issues than ever before. Are pesticides safe? Should we choose locally grown food? Why do some people embrace new agricultural technologies while others steadfastly defend traditional farming methods? In the debates about organic food, genetically modified organisms, and farm animal welfare, it's not always clear what the scientific studies are actually telling us. To understand these controversies and more, the authors of Agricultural and Food Controversies: What Everyone Needs to Know begin by encouraging readers to develop an understanding of how two well-educated people can form radically different opinions about food. Sometimes the disputes are scientific in nature, and sometimes they arise from conflicting ethical views. This book confronts the most controversial issues in agriculture by first explaining the principles of each side of the debate, guiding readers through the scientific literature so that they can form their own educated opinions. Questions asked: - Are organic foods truly better for your health? - Are chemical fertilizers sustainable, or are we producing cheap food at the expense of future generations? - What foods should we eat to have a smaller carbon footprint? - Does buying local food stimulate the local economy? - Why are so many farm animals raised indoors? - Should antibiotics be given to livestock? - Is genetically-modified food the key to global food security, and does it give corporations too much market power? - Is the prevalence of corn throughout the food system the result of farm subsidies? Providing a combination of research and popular opinions on both sides of the issue, Agricultural and Food Controversies: What Everyone Needs to Know allows readers to decide for themselves what they personally value and believe to be important when it comes to their food.
The politics of food is changing fast. In rich countries, obesity is now a more serious problem than hunger. Consumers once satisfied with cheap and convenient food now want food that is also safe, nutritious, fresh, and grown by local farmers using fewer chemicals. Heavily subsidized and underregulated commercial farmers are facing stronger push back from environmentalists and consumer activists, and food companies are under the microscope. Meanwhile, agricultural success in Asia has spurred income growth and dietary enrichment, but agricultural failure in Africa has left one-third of all citizens undernourished - and the international markets that link these diverse regions together are subject to sudden disruption. Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know? carefully examines and explains the most important issues on today's global food landscape, including international food prices, famines, chronic hunger, the Malthusian race between food production and population growth, international food aid, "green revolution" farming, obesity, farm subsidies and trade, agriculture and the environment, agribusiness, supermarkets, food safety, fast food, slow food, organic food, local food, and genetically engineered food. Politics in each of these areas has become polarized over the past decade by conflicting claims and accusations from advocates on all sides. Paarlberg's book maps this contested terrain, challenging myths and critiquing more than a few of today's fashionable beliefs about farming and food. For those ready to have their thinking about food politics informed and also challenged, this is the book to read. What Everyone Needs to Know? is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.
By the year 2050, Earth's population will double. If we continue with current farming practices, vast amounts of wilderness will be lost, millions of birds and billions of insects will die, and the public will lose billions of dollars as a consequence of environmental degradation. Clearly, there must be a better way to meet the need for increased food production. Written as part memoir, part instruction, and part contemplation, Tomorrow's Table argues that a judicious blend of two important strands of agriculture--genetic engineering and organic farming--is key to helping feed the world's growing population in an ecologically balanced manner. Pamela Ronald, a geneticist, and her husband, Raoul Adamchak, an organic farmer, take the reader inside their lives for roughly a year, allowing us to look over their shoulders so that we can see what geneticists and organic farmers actually do. The reader sees the problems that farmers face, trying to provide larger yields without resorting to expensive or environmentally hazardous chemicals, a problem that will loom larger and larger as the century progresses. They learn how organic farmers and geneticists address these problems. This book is for consumers, farmers, and policy decision makers who want to make food choices and policy that will support ecologically responsible farming practices. It is also for anyone who wants accurate information about organic farming, genetic engineering, and their potential impacts on human health and the environment.
About one-third of all food grown for human consumption is lost or discarded every year, despite financial, environmental, and ethical reasons not to waste food. We grow enough food to adequately feed everyone on the planet, yet hundreds of millions of people suffer from hunger, malnutrition, or food insecurity. Together, this food waste accounts for about eight percent of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions. So, if wasting food is such a patently bad idea, why do we discard so much? In Why Waste Food?, Andrew F. Smith investigates one of today’s most pressing topics, examining the causes of avoidable food waste across the supply chain and highlighting the ways in which everyone can do something to tackle this global concern.
This book offers a broad introduction to food policies in the United States. Real-world controversies and debates motivate the book's attention to economic principles, policy analysis, nutrition science and contemporary data sources. It assumes that the reader's concern is not just the economic interests of farmers, but also includes nutrition, sustainable agriculture, the environment and food security. The book's goal is to make US food policy more comprehensible to those inside and outside the agri-food sector whose interests and aspirations have been ignored. The chapters cover US agriculture, food production and the environment, international agricultural trade, food and beverage manufacturing, food retail and restaurants, food safety, dietary guidance, food labeling, advertising and federal food assistance programs for the poor. The author is an agricultural economist with many years of experience in the non-profit advocacy sector, the US Department of Agriculture and as a professor at Tufts University. The author's well-known blog on US food policy provides a forum for discussion and debate of the issues set out in the book.
This two-volume set is a broad compendium of the law, policies, and legal influences that affect the food on our plates today. As food increasingly impacts our health and our wallets, we need to understand the enormous effect of law—both U.S. law and international regulations—on the safety and availability of the food we eat. The A-Z Encyclopedia of Food Controversies and the Law was compiled to help readers do just that. The most comprehensive work covering food and law, the encyclopedia surveys laws related to organics, obesity, and fair trade. It tackles the intersection of law and religious belief, for example with kosher and halal foods, as well as controversies over labeling practices and consumer protection in general. And it looks at the relationship of class to food, exposing poor urban areas that possess few sources of fresh food so that residents are forced to rely on convenience stores and fast food for nutrition. As background, the set also presents a basic history of food-related law to show us how we got where we are.
The single most influential culinary trend of our time is fast food. It has spawned an industry that has changed eating, the most fundamental of human activities. From the first flipping of burgers in tiny shacks in the western United States to the forging of neon signs that spell out “Pizza Hut” in Cyrillic or Arabic scripts, the fast food industry has exploded into dominance, becoming one of the leading examples of global corporate success. And with this success it has become one of the largest targets of political criticism, blamed for widespread obesity, cultural erasure, oppressive labor practices, and environmental destruction on massive scales. In this book, expert culinary historian Andrew F. Smith explores why the fast food industry has been so successful and examines the myriad ethical lines it has crossed to become so. As he shows, fast food—plain and simple—devised a perfect retail model, one that works everywhere, providing highly flavored calories with speed, economy, and convenience. But there is no such thing as a free lunch, they say, and the costs with fast food have been enormous: an assault on proper nutrition, a minimum-wage labor standard, and a powerful pressure on farmers and ranchers to deploy some of the worst agricultural practices in history. As Smith shows, we have long known about these problems, and the fast food industry for nearly all of its existence has been beset with scathing exposés, boycotts, protests, and government interventions, which it has sometimes met with real changes but more often with token gestures, blame-passing, and an unrelenting gauntlet of lawyers and lobbyists. Fast Food ultimately looks at food as a business, an examination of the industry’s options and those of consumers, and a serious inquiry into what society can do to ameliorate the problems this cheap and tasty product has created.
With contributions from internationally recognized experts, Food Safety of Proteins in Agricultural Biotechnology comprehensively addresses how toxicology testing of proteins should be accomplished and how protein safety assessments should be carried out. Beginning with a background on protein biology, the book delineates the fundamental difference
Policy Issues in Genetically Modified Crops: A Global Perspective contains both theoretical and empirical evidence of a broad range of aspects of GM crop policies throughout the world. Emphasizing world agriculture production and ethics of GM crops, the book balances insights into the various discussions around the use of GM crops including soil health, effects on animals, environmental sustainability impact, and ethical issues. The book presents aspects of GM crop policies and prevailing controversies throughout the world, in 5 sections containing 23 chapters. Beginning with the discussion of the policies related to GM crops, the book dives deep into issues related to food insecurity, agricultural sustainability, food safety, and environmental risks. Section 5 also captures the recent advances in agricultural biotechnology encompassing research trends, the nano-biotech approach to plant genetic engineering, and other transformation techniques in crop development. The contributors of the book represent different backgrounds, providing a holistic overview of diverse approaches and perspectives. Policy Issues in Genetically Modified Crops: A Global Perspective is a valuable resource for researchers in agricultural policy and economics, agricultural biotechnology, soil science, genetic engineering, ethics, environmental management, sustainable development, and NGOs. - Discusses ethics, varieties, research trends, success, and challenges of genetic modification - Addresses both crop production and potential health impacts - Includes extensive theoretical research and studies