”The End of Food”: Setting fewer plates at the world’s table

When the next administration is confronted with tough decision-making on the crucial issue of how to feed the planet’s 6.5 billion people, it will come as no surprise to anyone who has read “The End of Food.” by Paul Roberts.

…With his prescient 2004 book, “The End of Oil,” Paul Roberts proved his ability to sift through the complexities of an overwhelming issue and present prognostications that are both comprehensive and comprehensible.

Call him a professional Cassandra if you will, but this time out the Leavenworth author, who also is a regular contributor to Harper’s, tackles the troubling future of human food consumption.
He starts by touring us through the history of mankind’s quest for food, from hunting and gathering, to the advent of agriculture, to the mechanized production lines of today. Roberts pinpoints the flaws of the current situation as “so focused on cost reduction and rising volume that it makes a billion of us fat, [and] lets another billion go hungry.”

The situation is especially surreal in this country. Despite our wealth, we have lengthening food-bank lines and children who are chronically hungry. Yet at the same time, for another segment of the American population, eating has devolved into a practice fraught with psychological implications and physical afflictions. On the whole, we’re an increasingly fat-marbled society, with all of the attendant health risks and diet fads.

And the phenomenon is spreading. As developing countries play catch-up and consumer expectations rise worldwide, local food cultures from China to India — even proud France is succumbing — are being usurped by global food-production models that emphasize mass production at low cost, but that also glorify meat consumption.

Seattle Times