Hungry for Profit : The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food, and the Environment

by Magdoff, Fred

• ISBN13: 9781583670156
• ISBN10: 1583670157
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-09-01
• Publisher: Monthly Review Press

Summary

Millions go hungry every year in both poor and rich nations, yet hundreds of thousands of peasants and farmers continue to be pushed off the land. Applied in increasing volumes, chemical pesticides and synthetic fertilizers deplete the soil, pollute our food and water, and leave cropsmorevulnerable to pest outbreaks. The new and expanding use of genetically engineered seeds threatens species diversity.This penetrating set of essays explains why corporate agribusiness is a rising threat to farmers, the environment, and consumers. Ranging in subject from the politics of hunger to the new agricultural biotechnologies, and in time and place from early modern Europe to contemporary Cuba, the contributions toHungry for Profitexamine the changes underway in world agriculture today and point the way toward organic, sustainable solutions to problems of food supply.

Table of Contents

An Overview	p. 7
The Agrarian Origins of Capitalism	p. 23
Liebig, Marx, and the Depletion of Soil Fertility: Relevance for Today's Agriculture	p. 43
Concentration of Ownership and Control in Agriculture	p. 61
Ecological Impacts of Industrial Agriculture and the Possibilities for Truly Sustainable Farming	p. 77
The Maturing of Capitalist Agriculture: Farmer as Proletarian	p. 93
New Agricultural Biotechnologies: the Struggle for Democratic Choice	p. 107
Global Food Politics	p. 125
The Great Global Enclosure of Our Times: Peasants and the Agrarian Question at the End of the Twentieth Century	p. 145
Organizing U.S. Farm Workers: A Continuous Struggle	p. 161
Rebuilding Local Food Systems from the Grassroots Up	p. 175
Want Amid Plenty: From Hunger to Inequality	p. 189
Cuba: A Successful Case Study of Sustainable Agriculture	p. 203
The Importance of Land Reform in the Reconstruction of China	p. 215
Appendix	p. 231
Contributors	p. 235
Index	p. 239
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