Agricultural Industries, Agriculture & Food Supply Policies, Agricultural Management & Techniques, Agricultural Economics

Hungry For Profit

Name: Hungry For Profit
Author: Fred Magdoff
ISBN: 9781583670163

by Fred Magdoff (Editor), John Bellamy Foster, Frederick Buttel

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Overview

Hungry for Profit presents a historical analysis and an incisive overview of the issues and debates surrounding the global commodification of agriculture. Contributors address the growing public concern over food safety and controversial developments in agricultural biotechnology including genetically engineered foods. This book also examines the extent to which our environmental, social, and economic problems are intertwined with the structure of global agriculture as it now exists.

Synopsis

Millions go hungry every year in both poor and rich nations, yet hundreds of thousands of peasants and farmers continue to be pushed off the land. Applied in increasing volumes, chemical pesticides and synthetic fertilizers deplete the soil, pollute our food and water, and leave crops more vulnerable to pest outbreaks. The new and expanding use of genetically engineered seeds threatens species diversity.

This penetrating set of essays explains why corporate agribusiness is a rising threat to farmers, the environment, and consumers. Ranging in subject from the politics of hunger to the new agricultural biotechnologies, and in time and place from early modern Europe to contemporary Cuba, the contributions to Hungry for Profit examine the changes underway in world agriculture today and point the way toward organic, sustainable solutions to problems of food supply.

About the Author, Fred Magdoff

Fred Magdoff taught at the University of Vermont in Burlington, is a director of the Monthly Review Foundation, and has written on political economy for many years. He is most recently the author (with John Bellamy Foster) of The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences (Monthly Review Press).

John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review. He is professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and author of Naked Imperialism, Ecology Against Capitalism, Marx's Ecology, and The Vulnerable Planet.

Frederick Buttel is Professor of Rural Sociology and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author or editor of several books, including Environment and Modernity (1999).