Bet the Farm

Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being Food by Frederick Kaufman

Oh man…this is a really interesting book about food, money, hunger and power. It explores the implications of big corporations and their need to develop low-cost globally distributed food, what is going on with genetic manipulation of food, how peasant movements and eco-minded groups impact food production, what’s happening to local producers and underdeveloped countries and regions. This is not really a book promoting a plant-based diet per se, but there are quite a few references if you’re paying attention. There are some staggering statistics about hunger world-wide and about how much we put into keeping cows producing. Never before had I thought so much about what it means that big pizza companies compete globally and need consistent taste at every location.

Description from Amazon.com:
In 2008, farmers grew enough to feed twice the world’s population, yet more people starved than ever before—and most of them were farmers. In Bet the Farm, food writer Kaufman sets out to discover the connection between the global food system and why the food on our tables is getting less healthy and less delicious even as the the world’s biggest food companies and food scientists say things are better than ever. To unravel this riddle, he moves down the supply chain like a detective solving a mystery, revealing a force at work that is larger than Monsanto, McDonalds or any of the other commonly cited culprits—and far more shocking.

Kaufman’s recent cover story for Harper’s, “The Food Bubble,” provoked controversy throughout the food world, and led to appearances on the NBC Nightly News, MSNBC, Fox Business News, Democracy Now, and Bloomberg TV, along with features on National Public Radio and the BBC World Service.

• Visits the front lines of the food supply system and food politics as Kaufman visits farms, food science research labs, agribusiness giants, the United Nations, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and more
• Explains how food has been financialized and the powerful consequences of this change, including: the Arab Spring, started over rising food prices; farmers being put out of business; food scientists rushing to make easy-to-transport, homogenized ingredients instead of delicious foods
• Explains how the push for sustainability in food production is more likely to make everything worse, rather than better—and how the rise of fast food is bad for us, but catastrophic for those who will never even see a McNugget or frozen pizza