Stuffed and Starved

by Patel, Raj

• ISBN13: 9781612191270
• ISBN10: 1612191274
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-06-05
• Publisher: Melville House

Summary

How can starving people also be obese? Why does everything have soy in it? How do petrochemicals and biofuels control the price of food? It's a perverse fact of modern life: There are more starving people in the world than ever before (800 million) while there are also more people overweight (1 billion). To find out how we got to this point and what we can do about it, Raj Patel launched a comprehensive investigation into the global food network. It took him from the colossal supermarkets of California to India's wrecked paddyfields and Africa's bankrupt coffee farms, while along the way he ate genetically engineered soy beans and dodged flying objects in the protestorpacked streets of South Korea. What he found was shocking, from the false choices given us by supermarkets to a global epidemic of farmer suicides, and real reasons for famine in Asia and Africa. Yet he also found great cause for hopein international resistance movements working to create a more democratic, sustainable and joyful food system. Going beyond ethical consumerism, Patel explains, from seed to store to plate, the steps to regain control of the global food economy, stop the exploitation of both farmers and consumers, and rebalance global sustenance. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Author Biography

Raj Patel, a fellow at Food First, is a visiting scholar at the UC Berkeley Center for African Studies. He has worked for the World Bank, WTO, and the UN, and he's also been tear-gassed on four continents protesting them. He is the author of The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Edition	p. 1
Introduction	p. 9
Our Big Fat Contradiction	p. 9
Arcadia Lost	p. 14
About Joe	p. 16
An Hourglass Figure	p. 19
Ways of Being Free	p. 23
The Menu of Chapters	p. 26
A Rural Autopsy	p. 29
And on That Farm He Had a Wife	p. 29
Crooked Fictions	p. 35
Debtward Ho	p. 39
After Despair	p. 42
Did the WTO Kill Lee Kyung Hae?	p. 45
Some Farmers Are Pushed	p. 49
But Where Does It Stop?	p. 51
You Have Become Mexican	p. 55
NAFTA and After	p. 56
Corn for the Rich Men Only	p. 62
Once Were Farmers	p. 66
Beyond a Border	p. 70
The Wrong Explanation	p. 73
Bringing Agriculture to the City of Angels	p. 79
Lee Again	p. 81
'Just a Cry for Bread'	p. 83
A Secret History of Refreshment	p. 84
Rhodes' Conundrum	p. 92
The Cold War for Food	p. 96
After Food Aid	p. 99
The World Trade Organization	p. 104
The Customer is Our Enemy: A Brief Introduction to Food System Business	p. 107
Permanent Banana Republic: The United Fruit Company	p. 107
Varieties of Consolidation	p. 110
The Market for Political Favour	p. 116
Dwayne Andreas and the Currying of National Interest	p. 119
Better Living through Chemistry	p. 129
The Knowledge and the Initiative	p. 130
Who Knows What	p. 141
Corporations Address the Needs of the Poor	p. 145
I'd Like to Thank the Academy	p. 151
For Africa!	p. 156
Making up Makhathini	p. 162
Better Through Living Chemistry	p. 167
Glycine Rex	p. 173
Secret Ingredient	p. 173
A Whole Hill of Beans	p. 176
Learning the Soy Samba	p. 181
The Perfect Storm	p. 188
Blairo Maggi-Poster Soy	p. 194
The View from Afar	p. 201
The Perils of National Development	p. 208
The World's Most Important Social Movement	p. 211
Bringing It Home	p. 219
Checking out of Supermarkets	p. 221
The Self-Serving Store	p. 222
Almost Orwell	p. 229
666 and All That	p. 232
Discipline in the Aisles	p. 236
Walmart	p. 237
Supply Chain-gangs	p. 242
The Contradictions of Convenience	p. 243
Every Cloud Has a Redlining	p. 248
Shelves of Love	p. 250
In the Garden of the Black Panthers	p. 253
Chosen by Bunnies	p. 259
On Places and Taste and Food	p. 259
Food Is from Mars	p. 261
Wheat is Murder	p. 265
Hooked on TV Dinners	p. 268
The Now of Chow	p. 272
War on the Obese	p. 278
Feeling the Burn	p. 283
Your Pace or Mine?	p. 286
Anti-Malbouffe	p. 292
Conclusion	p. 299
Inside the Hourglass	p. 299
It's Just We, Ourselves and Us	p. 306
Follow the Leader	p. 321
Notes	p. 325
References	p. 367
Acknowledgements	p. 403
Permissions	p. 409
Index	p. 411
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