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"Food's Frontier sets a new intellectual standard for placing genomics, biotechnology, and food security into the lives of ordinary people. Richard Manning takes the reader on a worldwide tour of agriculture, displaying both its science-rich and resource-poor systems. His volume combines complex scientific principles with a remarkably accessible style. Above all, Manning demonstrates the shortage of human capital in poor countries and the need for much greater support for Third World scientists."—Paul Ehrlich, author of Human Natures
List of contents
The Seed
The Case for a Second Green Revolution
An Island in Africa
Global Methods, Local Choices
[Ethiopia]
How Things Fall Apart
When Politics Pushes People Against Nature's Limits
[Zimbabwe]
To Work in Peace
Visionaries in Violent Times
(Uganda]
From Basket Case to Bread Basket
When Biotechnology Has a Brain Trust
[India]
The Critical Mass
The fate of farming in an Industrializing World
[Nanjing, China]
Genetic Revolution
Bioengineering on the Loose
[Shanghai, China]
Forging a Magic Bullet
Technology Based in Biodiversity
[Chile and Brazil]
In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World
Sustaining Traditional Forming and Genetic Resources
[Mexico]
Roots
Restoring Rural Wisdom
[Peru]
The Genie in the Genome
Bioengineering in Context
A Common Ground
Food, Cities, and the Integrity of Rural Life
Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index
About the author
Richard Manning is an environmental journalist and author. Among his books are Grassland: The History, Biology, Politics and Promise of the American Prairie (1995), A Good House: Building a Life on the Land (1994), and Last Stand: Logging, Journalism, and the Case for Humility (1991). His reporting has received the Audubon Society Journalism Award, the R. J. Margolis award, and three C. B. Blethen awards.
Summary
Provides a survey of agricultural research projects underway in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, India, China, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru. This book starts from the premise that the 'Green Revolution' which averted mass starvation a generation ago is not a long-term solution to global food needs and has created its own very serious problems.
