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

by Magdoff, Fred

• ISBN13: 9781583670163
• ISBN10: 1583670165
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-09-01
• Publisher: Monthly Review Pr

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	7	(16)
Fred Magdoff
John Bellamy Foster
Frederick H. Buttel
The Agrarian Origins of Capitalism	23	(20)
Ellen Meiksins Wood
Liebig, Marx, and the Depletion of Soil Fertility: Relevance for Today's Agriculture	43	(18)
John Bellamy Foster
Fred Magdoff
Concentration of Ownership and Control in Agriculture	61	(16)
William D. Heffernan
Ecological Impacts of Industrial Agriculture and the Possibilities for Truly Sustainable Farming	77	(16)
Miguel A. Altieri
The Maturing of Capitalist Agriculture: Farmer as Proletarian	93	(14)
R.C. Lewontin
New Agricultural Biotechnologies: The Struggle for Democratic Choice	107	(18)
Gerad Middendorf
Mike Skladny
Elizabeth Ransom
Lawrence Busch
Global Food Politics	125	(20)
Philip McMichael
The Great Global Enclosure of Our Times: Peasants and the Agrarian Question at the End of the Twentieth Century	145	(16)
Farshad Araghi
Organizing U.S. Farm Workers: A Continuous Struggle	161	(14)
Linda C. Majka
Theo J. Majka
Rebuilding Local Food Systems from the Grassroots Up	175	(14)
Elizabeth Henderson
Want Amid Plenty: From Hunger to Inequality	189	(14)
Janet Poppendieck
Cuba: A Successful Case Study of Sustainable Agriculture	203	(12)
Peter M. Rosset
The Importance of Land Reform in the Reconstruction of China	215	(16)
William Hinton
Appendix	231	(4)
Contributors	235	(4)
Index	239