The End of Food by Paul Roberts

The End of Food by Paul Roberts

Paul Roberts, the best-selling author of The End of Oil, turns his attention to the modern food economy and finds that the system entrusted to meet our most basic need is failing.

In this carefully researched, vivid narrative, Roberts lays out the stark economic realities behind modern food and shows how our system of making, marketing, and moving what we eat is growing less and less compatible with the billions of consumers that system was built to serve.

At the heart of The End of Food is a grim paradox: the rise of large-scale food production, though it generates more food more cheaply than at any time in history, has reached a point of dangerously diminishing returns. Our high-volume factory systems are creating new risks for food-borne illness, from E. coli to avian flu. Our high-yield crops and livestock generate grain, vegetables, and meat of declining nutritional quality. While nearly one billion people worldwide are overweight or obese, the same number of people--one in every seven of us--can't get enough to eat. In some of the hardest-hit regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa, the lack of a single nutrient, vitamin A, has left more than five million children permanently blind.

Meanwhile, the shift to heavily mechanized, chemically intensive farming has so compromised soil and water that it's unclear how long such output can be maintained. And just as we've begun to understand the limits of our abundance, the burgeoning economies of Asia, with their rising middle classes, are adopting Western-style, meat-heavy diets, putting new demands on global food supplies.

Comprehensive in scope and full of fresh insights, The End of Food presents a lucid, stark vision of the future. It is a call for us to make crucial decisions to help us survive the demise of food production as we know it.

Paul Roberts is the author of The End of Oil, which was a finalist for the New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award in 2005. He has written about resource economics and politics for numerous publications, including the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Harper's Magazine, and Rolling Stone, and lectures frequently on business and environmental issues.

Paul Roberts is Professor of Criminal Jurisprudence at the University of Nottingham, UK. Paul has been visiting professor or invited lecturer at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), the University of Warsaw, the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, the University of Gottingen, the University of New South Wales (UMSW), Sydney, and the University of Natal (Pietermaritzburg), RSA. He is editorial board member of four academic journals: International Commentary on Evidence (ICE); Criminal Law & Philosophy; Law, Probability and Risk and Law and Philosophy. He was also a founding editorial board member of The International Journal of Evidence and Proof (E & P), serving as Reviews Editor (1995-2005) and General Editor (2005-9).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780618606238
ISBN 10	0618606238
Title	The End of Food
Author	Paul Roberts
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Houghton Mifflin
Year published	2008-04-06
Number of pages	390
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.