Stuffed and Starved : The Hidden Battle for the World Food System

by Patel, Raj

• ISBN13: 9781933633497
• ISBN10: 1933633492
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2008-04-01
• Publisher: Melville House

Summary

"One of the most dazzling books I have read in a very long time. The product of a brilliant mind and a gift to a world hungering for justice."-Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine Half the world is malnourished, the other half obese-both symptoms of the corporate food monopoly. To show how a few powerful distributors control the health of the entire world, Raj Patel conducts a global investigation, traveling from the "green deserts" of Brazil and protester-packed streets of South Korea to bankrupt Ugandan coffee farms and barren fields of India. What he uncovers is shocking-the real reasons for famine in Asia and Africa, an epidemic of farmer suicides, and the false choices and conveniences in supermarkets. Yet he also finds hope-in international resistance movements working to create a more democratic, sustainable, and joyful food system. From seed to store to plate, Stuffed and Starved explains the steps to regain control of the global food economy, stop the exploitation of farmers and consumers, and rebalance global sustenance. RAJ PATEL, policy analyst for Food First , a leading food think tank, is a visiting scholar at the UC Berkeley Center for African Studies. He has written for the Los Angeles Times and the Guardian, and though he has worked for the World Bank, WTO, and the UN, hers"s also been tear-gassed on four continents protesting them.

Author Biography

RAJ PATEL, former policy analyst for Food First, a leading food think tank, is a visiting scholar at the UC Berkeley Center for African Studies. He has written for the Los Angeles Times and The Financial Times, and though he has worked for the World Bank, WTO and the UN, he's also been tear-gassed on four continents protesting them.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Our Big Fat Contradiction	p. 1
Arcadia Lost	p. 6
About Joe	p. 8
An Hourglass Figure	p. 11
Ways of Being Free	p. 15
The Menu of Chapters	p. 18
A Rural Autopsy	p. 21
And on That Farm He Had a Wife	p. 21
Crooked Fictions	p. 27
Debtward Ho	p. 30
After Despair	p. 33
Did the WTO Kill Lee Kyung Hae?	p. 36
Some Farmers Are Pushed	p. 41
But Where Does It Stop?	p. 43
You Have Become Mexican	p. 47
NAFTA and After	p. 48
Corn for the Rich Men Only	p. 54
Once Were Farmers	p. 58
Beyond a Border	p. 62
The Wrong Explanation	p. 65
Bringing Agriculture to the City of Angels	p. 71
Lee Again	p. 73
'Just a Cry for Bread'	p. 75
A Secret History of Refreshment	p. 76
Rhodes' Conundrum	p. 84
The Cold War for Food	p. 88
After Food Aid	p. 91
The World Trade Organization	p. 96
The Customer is Our Enemy: A Brief Introduction to Food System Business	p. 99
Permanent Banana Republic: The United Fruit Company	p. 99
Varieties of Consolidation	p. 102
The Market for Political Favour	p. 108
Dwayne Andreas and the Currying of National Interest	p. 111
Better Living through Chemistry	p. 119
The Knowledge and the Initiative	p. 120
Who Knows What	p. 131
Corporations Address the Needs of the Poor	p. 136
I'd Like to Thank the Academy	p. 141
For Africa!	p. 146
Making up Makhathini	p. 153
Better Through Living Chemistry	p. 158
Glycine Rex	p. 165
Secret Ingredient	p. 165
A Whole Hill of Beans	p. 169
Learning the Soy Samba	p. 173
The Perfect Storm	p. 180
Blairo Maggi - Poster Soy	p. 187
The View from Afar	p. 194
The Perils of National Development	p. 201
The World's Most Important Social Movement	p. 204
Bringing It Home	p. 212
Checking out of Supermarkets	p. 215
The Self-Serving Store	p. 216
Almost Orwell	p. 224
666 and All That	p. 226
Discipline in the Aisles	p. 230
Wal-Mart	p. 231
Supply Chain-gangs	p. 236
The Contradictions of Convenience	p. 237
Every Cloud Has a Redlining	p. 242
Shelves of Love	p. 244
In the Garden of the Black Panthers	p. 247
Chosen by Bunnies	p. 253
On Places and Taste and Food	p. 253
Food Is from Mars	p. 255
Wheat is Murder	p. 259
Hooked on TV Dinners	p. 262
The Now of Chow	p. 267
War on the Obese	p. 273
Feeling the Burn	p. 277
Your Pace or Mine?	p. 281
Anti-Malbouffe	p. 286
Conclusion	p. 293
Inside the Hourglass	p. 293
It's Just We, Ourselves and Us	p. 301
Follow the Leader	p. 316
Notes	p. 321
References	p. 349
Acknowledgements	p. 383
Permissions	p. 389
Index	p. 391
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