A major new book
that shows the world already has the tools to feed itself, without
expanding industrial agriculture or adopting genetically modified
seeds, from the Small Planet Institute expert
Few challenges are
more daunting than feeding a global population projected to reach 9.7
billion in 2050—at a time when climate change is making it
increasingly difficult to successfully grow crops. In response,
corporate and philanthropic leaders have called for major investments
in industrial agriculture, including genetically modified seed
technologies. Reporting from Africa, Mexico, India, and the United
States, Timothy A. Wise’s Eating Tomorrow discovers how in country
after country agribusiness and its well-heeled philanthropic
promoters have hijacked food policies to feed corporate interests.
Most of the world,
Wise reveals, is fed by hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers,
people with few resources and simple tools but a keen understanding
of what and how to grow food. These same farmers—who already grow
more than 70 percent of the food eaten in developing countries—can
show the way forward as the world warms and population increases.
Wise takes readers to remote villages to see how farmers are
rebuilding soils with ecologically sound practices and nourishing a
diversity of native crops without chemicals or imported seeds. They
are growing more and healthier food; in the process, they are not
just victims in the climate drama but protagonists who have much to
teach us all.