Short book reviews
Food Shock
Food Shock
The truth about what we put on our plates ... and what we can do to change it.
Dianne Loughnan
2012
RRP $29.99
ISBN 978-1-921966-09-5
exislepublishing.com.au/Food_Shock.html
The vast majority of food in Australia is mass-produced in an industrialised system and the results are not as palatable as the everyday shopper might imagine. Our fruit and vegetables are sprayed with pesticides and herbicides, many of which have been banned overseas for years. Our beef is more often than not produced in feedlots, where thousands of cattle stand in their own faeces, regularly dosed with antibiotics to prevent the diseases that are an inevitable result of these conditions. Our chickens are 'spin chilled' in a dilute chlorine solution to help preserve them, and also to whiten the meat. The list goes on.
And if you combine all this with the as-yet-unknown effects of genetically modified crops, the growing water crisis, the continued sale of valuable farming land to foreign interests, and the constant struggle Australian farmers face to survive in a 'free-market' economy where 'big business' makes the profit and their overseas competitors are subsidised yet they are not, it soon becomes evident that food production in Australia faces a very uncertain future.
Food Shock investigates these issues and encourages us to ask some important questions: what are the alternatives to our current system? How do we get there? And what can we, the consumer, do to change things?
The book has chapters on pesticide and herbicide use; food processing and preservation; the use of hormones and antibiotics in meat production; factory farming; genetic modification; farmers' returns and supermarkets' profits; Australia's farming future; globalisation and food production; environmental impacts of food production; Australia's place in food-insecure world; and food sovereignty.
The Coming Famine
The Coming Famine
The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid It
Julian Cribb
ISBN: 9780643100404
$29.95
CSIRO Publishing
publish.csiro.au/pid/6447.htm
Over the coming half-century the world's farmers will be asked to double global food production − using less water, less land, less energy, less fertiliser and less technology than they have today. In The Coming Famine, Julian Cribb describes how a dangerous confluence of scarcities − of water, good land, energy, nutrients, technology, fish and stable climates – are coming into play as the world's population grows and its demand for nutritious food grows even faster.
Cribb explains how the food system interacts with armed conflict, poverty, society, climate and the environment. He explains how regional shortages send shockwaves into the global community, with potential impacts on every nation and person on the planet as we approach the mid-century.
Cribb says: "This book is a wake-up call, intended for anyone who eats or plans to in future. The abundance of food in the past generation has created a false sense of security and we have taken our eye off what is possibly the most critical issue to the human future of all – certainly the most pressing: how we feed our vast population sustainably. While global food demand is set to double, just about everything needed to satisfy it is becoming much more scarce and costly. And while well-off consumers enjoy the cheapest food in history – they are throwing half of it away and paying farmers for it at rates that destroy large parts of global agriculture and its resource base."
Our Dying Planet: An Ecologist's View
Our Dying Planet
An Ecologist's View of the Crisis We Face
Peter Sale
2012
RRP A$49.95
University of California Press
Distributed in Australia by Inbooks inbooks.com.au
www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520274600
Coral reefs are on track to become the first ecosystem actually eliminated from the planet. So says leading ecologist Peter F. Sale in this crash course on the state of the planet. Sale draws from his own extensive work on coral reefs, and from recent research by other ecologists, to explore the many ways we are changing the earth and to explain why it matters. Weaving into the narrative his own first-hand field experiences around the world (half his career has been spent in Australia), Sale brings ecology alive while giving a solid understanding of the science at work behind today's pressing environmental issues.
He delves into topics including overfishing, deforestation, biodiversity loss, use of fossil fuels, population growth, and climate change while discussing the real consequences of our growing ecological footprint. Most important, Sales emphasises that a gloom-and-doom scenario is not inevitable, and he explores alternative paths. Some of his prescriptions − such as a one-child-per-family policy − are controversial.
Sales is also author of The Ecology of Fishes on Coral Reefs, Coral Reef Fishes, and Marine Metapopulations.
Green Australia: A Snapshot
Green Australia: A Snapshot
Steve Lancaster
2012
Wakefield Press
336 pages
ISBN 9781743050132
$34.95
Extract: wakefieldpress.com.au/product.php?productid=917
Green Australia: A Snapshot examines the ways in which Australians are attempting to reduce their ecological footprint at home and at work.
In 2009, the CO2 Energy Emissions Index found that Australia had overtaken the USA to become the largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases in the world − a legacy of dependence on coal-fired power stations, the widespread adoption of conventional farming techniques, heavy reliance on vehicles powered by fossil fuel, 'dirty' industrial practices and a growing mountain of waste. Yet, in recent years, there has been a growing awareness that climate change is beginning to bite, the recent drought and devastating floods suggesting that more extreme weather patterns are likely unless significant steps are taken to combat global warming.
Using case studies and up-to-date research, this book demonstrates that, although much more needs to be done if Australia is to secure a carbon-neutral future, some green shoots are beginning to emerge.
The book has chapters on energy production and consumption; green building techniques; green transport; food production and consumption; waste and recycling; clothing and furnishing; chemicals in the home; water conservation; the green workplace; and environmental activism.
Other books by Steve Lancaster, an Adelaide resident since 2006, include British Politics in Focus; Britain and the World; The Modern World; The Era of the Second World War; and The Roman Empire.
The Lace Makers of Narsapur
The Lace Makers of Narsapur
Maria Mies
1982 / 2012
$32.95
ISBN: 9781742198149
Spinifex Press
spinifexpress.com.au/Bookstore/book/id=231
Maria Mies speaks about the book: informyourself.com.au/Maria%20Mies.mp3
Spinifex Press has re-released Maria Mies' 1982 book, The Lace Makers of Narsapur, as part of its Feminist Classics series. The Lace Makers is a sensitive and groundbreaking study of women at the beginning of the process of globalisation. Mies looks at the way in which women are dispossessed by producing luxury goods for the Western market and simultaneously not counted as workers or producers in their fragmented workplaces. Instead they are defined as 'non-working housewives' and their work as 'leisure-time activity'. The rates of pay are far below acceptable levels resulting in accelerating pauperisation and a rapid deterioration in their position in Indian society.
Before the latest 'economic boom' in India were a number of processes of dispossession − the dispossession of farmers through the 'green revolution' and alongside it, the dispossession of women, the lace makers of Narsapur in the state of Andhra Pradesh.
Voices from the Global Fight for Women's Rights
The Unfinished Revolution: Voices from the Global Fight for Women's Rights
Minky Worden (ed.)
2012
$36.95
ISBN: 9781742198224
The Unfinished Revolution tells the story of the global struggle to secure basic rights for women and girls, including in the Middle East where the Arab Spring raised high hopes, but the political revolutions are so far insufficient to guarantee progress. In many countries, women are second-class citizens by law. In others, religion and traditions block freedoms such as the right to work, study or access health care.
More than 30 writers − Nobel Prize laureates, leading activists, top policy makers, and former victims − have contributed to this anthology. Drawing from their rich personal experiences, they tackle some of the toughest questions and offer bold new approaches to problems affecting hundreds of millions of women.
As Media Director of Human Rights Watch, editor Minky Worden monitors crises, wars, human rights abuses, and political developments in more than seventy countries worldwide.
Honeycomb Kids: Big Picture Parenting for a Changing World
Honeycomb Kids: Big Picture Parenting for a Changing World
Anna M Campbell
2012
Cape Able Publishers
$27.95
ISBN: 9780980747508
http://honeycombkidsparentingbook.com
Honeycomb Kids is a book about making the most of the day-to-day while preparing children for likely impacts on their world including global population growth, peak oil, competition for resources, increasing costs of living (food, electricity), health issues and plenty more. It's about raising contributors not just consumers.
The book explores the various big picture scenarios today's children may face as adults, and offers more than 300 proactive suggestions as to how you can help children meet, rise above and contribute positively to the challenges coming their way.
"It's about empowering our kids, rather than just driving them around," writes author Anna Campbell.
Making Peace with the Earth
Making Peace with the Earth: Beyond Resource, Land and Food Wars
Vandana Shiva
2012
Spinifex Press
spinifexpress.com.au/Bookstore/book/id=237/
$36.95
ISBN: 9781742198385
In her latest book, Sydney Peace Prize recipient Vandana Shiva finds that a series of wars have been declared against the Earth: wars about land, water, climate, forests and biodiversity. She examines the root causes of these wars against the backdrop of the current crisis in food supply. A radical scientist and ecofeminist, Shiva is not afraid to tackle corporate giants that are polluting, degrading and ultimately destroying the natural world. She imagines a world that could be sustainable; a world in which food security, justice and peace are all aligned.
The book has chapters on Eco-aparthied as War; The Great Land Grab; Water Wars and Water Peace; Climate Wars and Climate Peace; Forest Wars and Forest Peace; Synthetic Biology and Biodiversity Wars; Hunger by Design; Food Wars as Wars Against the Earth; Hunger via Corporate-Controlled Trade; Re-Designing the Food System for Sustainability, Food Justice and Food Peace; and Beyond Growth: Making Peace with the Earth.
Shiva begins Making Peace with the Earth with these words:
"When we think of wars in our times, our minds automatically turn to Iraq and Afghanistan, but the bigger war is the on-going war against the earth. In fact, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya can be seen as wars for the earth's resources, especially oil. The war against the earth has its roots in an economy which fails to respect ecological and ethical limits – limits to inequality, to injustice, to greed and to economic concentration. Even though both economy and ecology have their roots in oikos, our home, the planet, the economy has separated itself from ecology in our minds, even as the intensity of exploitation and dependence on nature has increased."
"The global corporate economy based on the idea of limitless growth has become a permanent war economy against the planet and people. The means are instruments of war; coercive free trade treaties used to organise economies on the basis of trade wars; and technologies of production based on violence and control, such as toxins, genetic engineering, geo-engineering and nano-technologies."
Bio-Dynamics in the Backyard
Bio-Dynamics in the Backyard and Beyond: A Practical Guide for Gardeners and Others
Ute Mueller
2012
Resource Publications
ISBN: 9780980827828
Review by Louise Sales
Ute is a passionate gardener and has managed a small bio-dynamic beef and lamb property in Northern Tasmania for the last 30 years. This book draws extensively from her experiences and will probably be most useful for people growing vegetables in cooler climes. The book provides a good introduction to bio-dynamic principles and contains a number of handy tips about mulching, companion planting and crop rotation. It also includes a helpful list of resources for people wanting to find out more.
The Introduction states: "This little book is aimd at a variety of individuals: those that want to grow the healthiest and most nutritious food for their families, those that have a passion for gardening and those that want to give something lasting to their soils and the environment... Even though the book is addressing gardeners, the bio-dynamic principles as laid out in an easy to understand way in Part One (Chapters one to four) are universal and can be applied to any situation from a few square metres to broad-acre farming. Part two of the book gives sound advice on the daily work in the garden, from crop rotation and green manure, mulch, companion planting, seed choices, seed saving and seed viability to well established veggie varieties and useful garden tools."