Who Really Feeds the World?: The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology by Vandana Shiva

Who Really Feeds the World?: The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology Reviews

• 
  Dave

  Considering how much I agree with Vandana Shiva, it's really amazing that I didn't love this book. The writing focuses mainly on general ideas, the way you'd expect a book to be written for an audience that's new to these things, yet her tone is more for an audience that already agrees with her. If you don't already have a good understanding of these ideas then you probably won't have the patience to listen to her, and if you do have a good understanding already then you're not going to learn much from this. So what's the point? It's also extremely repetitive. Looking at the table of contents you'd think that the book would be well organized but when you read it she basically summarizes the main topics from every chapter within each chapter, so you're essentially just rereading the same short essay 10 times. Each essay is okay on its own (although some of the feminist ideas in the chapter on women farmers are kind of pushing it in my opinion) but even within each one there's still a lot of repetition. It gets really irritating.
  
  Even though I agree with most of her general ideas, I'm not so sure that I agree with some of the statistics she uses. It just feels very cherry-picked and exaggerated. Some of the numbers don't even seem to match up from page to page, or they'll contradict previous arguments. A lot of my problems with this book also come from her trying to compete with industrial farming to see which approach can maximize the number of human beings on the planet. Shouldn't the idea of population growth be part of what's being challenged here? I do agree that sustainable, organic, small-scale, biodiverse farms and localized economies can support a lot more people than the mainstream thinks it can, and long-term it'll certainly support more generations of human beings than industrial farming, but I think it's a mistake for environmentalists to allow themselves to be sucked into arguments like these, even if it is potentially true. The main reason to support agroecology isn't because it's the best way to feed more people in the short-term. It's because it can be done sustainably. Even if it only fed half as many human beings at any given time it would still be the answer. And even if it could feed twice as many people, when you take all other environmental and social considerations into account, we still shouldn't try to grow the population. I'm not saying that I think Vandana Shiva doesn't agree with that, just that there's a lot of pages in here spent trying to show how much more productive sustainable farming is than industrial farming, and I don't think we should even have to prove that. It's like when you see Republicans tricking Democrats into arguing over which party drills the most oil. "Oh wait, aren't we supposed to be against that? Oops." Not the best approach.
• 
  Bernard Lavallée

  The ideas were great, but I expected much more from this book considering the author. There was so much repetition that I had a hard time finishing it, even though I am highly interested in the subject. I feel as if the book could have been half as long. That being said, there were a lot of amazing insights about the truth behind global food production.
• 
  Mehul Dhikonia

  There's little to disagree with Vandana Shiva; agricultural monopoly and profit mongering need to be checked, local biodiversity needs to be protected, farmer interests and land replenishment need to be in the forefront along with farm yield. Yet the book seems like long repetitive prose littered with selective facts, which could have been made more comprehensible with analytical insight.
  
  The book which could have been a reference point for agri-policy makers worldwide reads like literature that only manages to uphold confirmation bias.
• 
  Sabrina

  I understand where people are coming from when they say this book is repetitive, but another interpretation could be repetition for a purpose. It’s a lot of wide ranging concepts to an intensely complex subject in a relatively short book, and the way I saw the repetition of certain key phrases were just that, here’s the key takeaway. If you are reading this book, Vandana leaves you no room to guess what she wants you to remember. While a lot of the concepts in a general sense you may have heard of before, chemicals in our food are killing us and the world, big corporations don’t care, small farms and organic is the way, this book is a spring board into the world of not just knowing about it, but doing something about it.
• 
  elvira

  la verdad es que lo que dice la autora impresiona bastante, es muy interesante y tiene una perspectiva dificil de encontrar en otros sitios, pero bro no hagas un libro cuando puedes hacer dos ensayos
  se me ha hecho pesadísimo
• 
  delievi

  low quality writing, a whole lot of repetition but still a worthy introductory read
• 
  Clàudia

  This is my first Vandana Shiva’s book and first manifesto against monoculture and genetically-modified foods, but many ideas were already familiar to me. I’m really in favour of small-scale farms and locally produced food as well as sustainable agriculture with systems thinking perspective; however, the book got quite repetitive after a while. I also checked one of the references of some statement she made that seed exchange is forbidden within the UK and EU and she referenced a book she written herself, which I don’t think it’s the most correct way of doing so. Forgetting these two details, the content is inspiring and invites population to reflect on current ways of living more related to Nature and human friendly. At the end I got quite convinced that big corporations controlling food chains is a mistake that is paying off its its consequences with hunger, pollution, poverty, distress and wars for resources. Local production, zero kilometer initiative, urban gardening or ecological agriculture are just simple examples of what can we do to relieve the global food problem. I myself feel I want to learn something so fundamental as seeding and harvesting, which I wonder why I was never taught in school before.
• 
  André Habet

  Really glad I read this, but the more it went on, the more I felt as if just a few key phrases were being recycled again and again. Think it could've been half as long and more effective as a result.
• 
  Víctor García

  Carece de base científica y es bastante alarmista. Mezcla temas (agricultura, economía y feminismo) de forma caótica.
• 
  Anh Nch

  8 chapters:
  1. Agroecology feeds the world, not a violent knowledge paradigm
  2. Living soil feeds the world, not chemical fertilizers
  3. Bees and butterflies feed the world, not poisons and pesticides
  4. Biodiversity feeds the word, not toxic monocultures
  5. Small-scale farmers feed the world, not large-scale industrial farms ⭐️⭐️⭐️
  - "Local farming communities still produce 70% of the world's food"
  - "In an ecological and small farming system, outputs include the rejuvenation of ecological processes, the diverse outputs of crops, livestock and trees, and the livelihoods created through cocreation and coproduction. In a large-scale industrial farming system, output is reduced to a single community and input is reduced to labor."
  - "The devaluing of livelihoods is also a recipe for further intensifying the external inputs of chemicals and fossil fuels, which rather than feeding people and sustaining farming systems, create hunger and generate environmental degradation. This is known as the "myth of more", in which an agricultural system where a farmer spends more for costs of inputs than she or he will earn from selling a monoculture community is presented as "productive", a path to higher incomes and higher production."
  6. Seed freedom feeds the world, not seed dictatorship ⭐️⭐️⭐️
  - "In the last half century, a reductionist, mechanistic paradigm has laid down the legal and economic framework for privatizing seeds and the knowledge of seeds. This has destroyed diversity, denied farmers's innovation and breeding rights, enclosed the biological and intellectual commons through patents, and created seed monopolies."
  - "Globally, more than 1.4 billion people depend on farm-saved seed as their primary seed source. In order for agribusinesses to make profits, they must rupture this self-sustaining, nutritious system of food production. Farmers' varieties are therefore being replaced by 3 new seed varieties: high-yielding varieties, hybrid seeds, and GMOs."
  - 2 lawsuits Monsanto vs Vernon Hugh Bowman (2007) and vs Percy Schmeiser (1998) -> consequences: Monsanto and others corporations can own all future generations of seeds, and they can use patents to sue farmers whose crops it has contaminated.
  - "Since 1995, 284 000 farmers in India have killed themselves due to rising input prices and volatile output prices."
  7. Localization feeds the world, not globalization ⭐️⭐️⭐️
  - "As far as "cheap food" goes, globalized food is actually produced at a very high cost, and if it weren't for the fact that agribusinesses collect more than $400 billion in subsidies in rich countries, the entire system would collapse."
  - "The subsidized commodities are then in turn sold to poor countries, which are forced to dismantle their border protections so that rich nations can "dump" artificially cheap commodities into the developing world."[...] "This creates the artificial impression that cheaper goods are now available in poorer countries. However, what this actually does is destroy local sources of food production and distribution, including farmers' livelihoods." (Cases: Kenya in 1980 with trade liberalization, Mexico in 2014 with North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA)
  - "One billion people on the planet are hungry (2009). Globalization has led to a shift from "food first" to "export first", in which growing luxury crops for export takes precedence over growing food crops for people."
  - "Ironically, while one in every four Indians goes hungry due to the displacement of local food sources and farmers' livelihoods, an urban upper class is suffering from diabetes and obesity, which stem from exactly the same source".
  8. Women feed the world, not corporations
  9. The way forward
• 
  Aleksandra Jarosz

  
  ‘Who Really Feeds the World’ is a book written in 2016 by Dr Vandana Shiva, the physicist, ecologist, food rights and anti-GMO activist who is sometimes called ‘the Gandhi of grain’ (BBC Travel 2021). In her book, Shiva provides detailed overview of the modern world’s food supply and identifies its crisis and contribution to the climate change. The book widely explains how this crisis threatens biodiversity of the planet and its inhabitants who become increasingly hungry and unhealthy, even though industrial agriculture and created by it monocultural crops, promise to produce more food (Shiva 2016). Shiva’s book is a strong, critical, and holistic piece of work that gives the (not necessarily specialist) reader an easy to grasp insight into the problem but also into her three decades long research and involvement into ‘seed-saving’ Navdanya movement.
  
  The main argument and purpose of the book is to show contrast between two paradigms that surround today’s food systems and its organising principles. The first paradigm explains the nature of the corporate agriculture that is ruled by - as Shiva describes - ‘the Law of Exploitation’ and ‘the Law of Domination’ (Shiva 2016, p2) which are exercised by corporate farming that disregards traditional knowledge at cost of ‘militarized’ and ‘violent’ way of thinking towards the Earth (p17), destruction of fertile soil what inevitably leads to the creation of poverty, hunger, climate change and shortage of the clean water (p29) and monoculture farming that produces lacking in nutrients - genetically engineered foods. Shiva argues that industrial farming is counterproductive and highly dangerous for natural biodiversity as it creates the ‘poison cycle’ (p53) of chemicals used to fertilise and kill natural and needed for survival of the ecosystem pests. The book condemns the ‘patriarchal science’ (p125) which ‘shakes nature to her foundations’ (p126), dominates nature and disregards women’s agricultural knowledge that is essential to maintaining a food security.
  
  The second paradigm is by contrast, based on ‘the Law of Return’ – a sustainable system of food production referred to by Shiva as an ‘agroecology’ that maintains a traditional ecological farming where there is no ‘waste; everything is recycled’ (Shiva 2016, p3). Shiva sees it as the solution to the first paradigm’s problem. She shows how agroecology sustains and preserves biodiversity, soil fertility and water by ‘recycling organic matter’ (p33) and not using synthetic fertilisers as fungi, bacteria, and pests already maintain natural balance in the ecosystem. She endorses small-scale farming, especially led by women who ‘return to the Earth’ (p74) what soil has given them in the first place and is able to grow nutritious, healthy, and safe foods.
  
  The strength of the book lies in the fact that Shiva does not simply describe the current status quo of industrial agriculture and its failures in a problem-solving (Cox 1981)manner but is providing a full picture of the issue while answering ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions about the modern food system. She argues that ‘crisis is not an accident; it is built into the system’s very design’ (Shiva 2016, p.1-2) and emphasis that current dominant farming system is driven by profit-maximising practices where ‘the arenas of seed, food, and agriculture’ are transformed ‘into a commodity to be traded for profit’ (p.125). To explain this, Shiva goes back to the very beginnings and foundations of the industrial agriculture and finds that its values and rationalities are built on a ‘Western, mechanistic, reductionist modern science’(p.18).
  
  ‘Who Really Feeds the World?’ is an important book and valuable contribution to the critical environmental politics study, as it provides a holistic and multidisciplinary approach to analysis of why contemporary food production is so problematic and why our food system needs to shift towards agroecology. Shiva provides a typical for Marxist ecologists’ critique of capitalism (Hickel 2021) and explains how Western knowledge benefits market economy and allows ‘control over nature’ to extract profit from ‘seeds, chemicals, and fertilizers that constantly needed to be purchased’ (Shiva 2016, p20-22). Shiva also brings attention to how the globalised agriculture follows postcolonial agendas and exploits the Global South where the regime for example ‘enabled high-cost European farmers to benefit at the expense of much more efficient South African producers’ (p101) while the global North’s farming system continues to be a major contribution to climate change and its impact on food prices and its availability. The North deepens the hunger crisis, especially in developing countries like India that ‘is the hunger capital of the world, and as globalisation becomes further entrenched, so does hunger’ (p114). Additionally, Shiva uses an intersectional, post-humanist approach (Haraway 2015) and asks questions ‘about our relationship with the Earth and other species’ (p12) while reinforcing the idea that if people do not want to extinct, people have to start seeing themselves as ‘cocreators and co-producers with Mother Earth’ rather than just dominate ‘inferior’ nature (p3). For Shiva, species like plants, pests, insects, or seeds are our ‘kin’(p.94; 136) and not simply a ‘property’ what makes the book have a more unique and less human-centred viewpoint. What is more, Shiva delivers a feminist critique of male-dominated and violent neoliberal system of food production where male-led system that ‘privileges violence, fragmentation and mechanistic thought’ (p126). She acknowledges women’s importance that often is omitted in the climate change debate and reinforces that ‘the future of food needs to be reclaimed by women (…) only when food is in women’s hands will both food and women be secure’(p136). It is because Shiva explains that women are ‘producing more than half the world’s food and (…) 80% of the food needs’ for households and regions(p124).
  
  What makes the book credible and convincing in its arguments and criticisms is the fact that Shiva is not solely an author but also an active activist and member of the ‘save the seed’ Navdanya movement, what makes her standout as a critical ecological thinker. Shiva used agroecology in practice what was an effective way of making the land of Navdanya’s farm - fertile, diverse in corps and non-food species, productive and ecologically balanced(p.148). Her transitional framework - that she proposes at the end of the book is therefore a genuine and trustworthy recipe for solving the food crisis, because as she states - ‘these transitions are not an utopia(…)and are actually taking place across the world’ (p146).
  
  To sum up, Shiva’s book is a strong, unique, and persuasive analysis of the two paradigms of the food production with a credible and a practical proposal for systematic change. Her critique is a holistic synthesis of insightful approaches like critical ecological, feminist, decolonial, anti-capitalist and intersectional stances that give the reader a comprehensive understanding of the topic.
  
  
  BBC Travel (2021). Vandana Shiva on why the food we eat matters. [online]
  www.bbc.com. Available at:
  https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20....
  
  Cox, R.W. (1981). Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory. Millennium, [online] 10(2), pp.126–155
  
  Haraway, D. (2015) ‘Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocence, Chthulucene: Making Kin’, Environmental Humanities, 6 (1), 159-165.
  
  Hickel, J. (2021) ‘The Anti-Colonial Politics of Degrowth’ Political Geography 88 (June): 102404.
  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021....
  
  Shiva, V. (2016). Who really feeds the world? London: Zed Books.
  
  
• 
  Shafiqah Nor

  Ever so often, I don't think twice about the food on my plate. I am far removed from the efforts, growth and processes that bring the food to my table. Without the need to question the sustainability or ethical questions, this has made me unknowingly complicit to possible exploitation of others, additionally causing harm to my own body.
  
  Law of Exploitation sees the world as a machine and nature as dead matter. This harms people's health and the environment.
  
  Law of Return maintains that all beings give and take mutually. It is based on life and its interconnectedness.
  
  Traditional farming is rooted in paradigm of agroecology, conforming to the Law of Return. Shiva argues in support for this. The existing industrial agriculture is a monoculture monopoly, set up to increase inequity and be unsustainable.
  
  What surprises me is the global seed monopoly, we are growing significantly less diverse crops than less than 100 years ago - which likely has health/nutritional and environmental impacts we are unaware of.
  
  Shiva complements Kate Raworth Donut Economics & Hope Jahren's The Story of More. However, she is anti-globalization and this is where I find myself in conflict with her views. I think there are benefits to having an 'open society'.
  
  She argues that neoliberalization has contributed to the "myth of more" to justify industrial agriculture. While I agree with this claim, I do believe that globalization is necessary for effective exchanges in (traditional) knowledge and practices. The existing global model is guilty of upholding corporate monopoly trying to perpetuate overdependence. This is the root of the issue and what needs to be dismantled, not globalization. Like Raworth, I think we also need to look at the need to have an "enough" to debunk the "myth of more".
  
  My (pragmatic) idealism thinks globalization can be productive and environmentally sustainable. But conditions need to be set to decentralize power locally and respect diversity that Shiva supports. Additionally, openness must be limited when the principle of harm (against human and ecologically) is violated. With the current momentum on climate change, it is possible.
• 
  Philippa

  Yes! Vandana Shiva clearly articulates what's wrong with the world's food and farming, and how - in broad terms at least - to change it for the better. She is one of the world's most important leaders and thinkers.
  Who really DOES feed the world? It is NOT industrial cash-crop monocultures (which only feed 30% of the world) - it is small-scale farmers who provide 70% of the world's food.
  So THIS is what we need: organic (or agroecological) farming, based on co-operation and the interconnectedness of all things, where farmers have sovereignty and produce a huge diversity of real, healthy, nourishing food for local communities. Industrial cash-crop monocultures are hugely destructive to soils and ecosystems, and because the profits flow to multinationals, farmers are indebted, suicidal, or displaced. Industrially produced food lacks vitality and nutrients; instead it has harmful additives and residues - it's not food but merely a commodity.
  Shiva emphasises that women must play a strong role in this transition to a life-affirming way of producing food, and also emphasises the importance of saving myriad seed varieties as part of strengthening biodiversity and of seed sovereignty, rather than being beholden to corporates who have patented, hybridised and genetically engineered seeds for their own commercial purposes.
  Check out Vandana Shiva's work at
  https://navdanya.org/site/.
• 
  Pollyanna Darling

  Excellent information for those who know little about the history of industrial agriculture and the destruction and violence it has wreaked on the living systems of our planet. Also a little repetitive. Dr Shiva presents a compelling case for small scale organic farming in every country that hands back power and income to farmers who have been devastated by the so called Green Revolution that brought industrial chemicals and fertilisers to the Global South and has so far driven 284,000 farmers to suicide in India alone. Worth reading.
• 
  Ryan Cope

  A thought-provoking book, quite literally about who REALLY feeds the world. This book feels like an overview type read and doesn’t get too specific but it offers up some good reminders about why concepts like agroecology and food sovereignty are so important. We think industrial ag feeds the world and is the answer to our hunger problems but it just isn’t true. This books makes a strong case for that. For anyone who loves food, particularly small-scale, locally-produced food, this is certainly worth a read.
• 
  charlotte

  i'm just not going to finish this one. i really admire vandana shiva and the incredibly meaningful work she's doing, however, i only read a small part of this book and it's really repetitive. i already agree with her ideas and there did not seem to be more in-depth analysis. i might pick up something else from her in the future but i don't have the motivation to power through this one.
• 
  Kab

  Important, including addressing the work of women made invisible and endangered alongside planet-wide casualties under capitalist patriarchy. Would be much more powerful if the repetition were edited out. I was especially inspired learning about the different mixed-cropping systems.
• 
  Elizabeth Hawkins

  Really good, incredibly researched but also super academic. Definitely not a fluffy Sunday ready but necessary if you are interested in food sovereignty or understanding the impacts of Western ag on the rest of the people on the planet.
• 
  Logan Streondj

  A pretty good book, though often makes dubious claims that she doesn't back up. Otherwise a cute nice book on food sovereignty, and talks about importance of diversity of plants and genders in agriculture.
• 
  Shawn Gray

  Loved it! Power Goddess Vandana Shiva sticking it to the corporate patrichary, reclaiming food for the people & the planet.
• 
  Max Harland

  Insightful book on how the food industry really works. Quite eye-opening and shocking. You’ll probably make the extra effort to buy local and organic food after reading it.
• 
  Leah

  This book is at its best when Shiva talks specifically about the work that she has done. In other spots it can be unhelpfully general and vague.