The Grand Food Bargain: and the Mindless Drive for More

The Grand Food Bargain: and the Mindless Drive for More

When it comes to food, Americans seem to have a pretty great deal. Our grocery stores are overflowing with countless varieties of convenient products. But like most bargains that are too good to be true, the modern food system relies on an illusion. It depends on endless abundance, but the planet has its limits. So too does a healthcare system that must absorb rising rates of diabetes and obesity. So too do the workers who must labor harder and faster for less pay.

Through beautifully-told stories from around the world, Kevin Walker reveals the unintended consequences of our myopic focus on quantity over quality. A trip to a Costa Rica plantation shows how the Cavendish banana became the most common fruit in the world and also one of the most vulnerable to disease. Walkerâ€™s early career in agribusiness taught him how pressure to sell more and more fertilizer obscured what that growth did to waterways. His family farm illustrates how an unquestioning belief in â€œfree marketsâ€ undercut opportunity in his hometown.

By the end of the journey, we not only understand how the drive to produce ever more food became hardwired into the American psyche, but why shifting our mindset is essential. It starts, Walker argues, with remembering that what we eat affects the wider world. If each of us decides that bigger isnâ€™t always better, we can renegotiate the grand food bargain, one individual decision at a time.
Country USA
Manufacturer Island Press
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2019-03-26
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Island Press
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2019-03-26
Format	Kindle eBook

The Grand Food Bargain: and the Mindless Drive for More

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