Customer Reviews

The Fatal Harvest Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture

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When I received this book recently as a gift I was completely overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the considerateness of the donor. Overwhelmed by the high quality of the production. Overwhelmed by the large number of "big names" who had contributed. Overwhelmed by the quality and meaningfulness of the photographs. Overwhelmed by the quality of the message that it gets across. Overwhelmed by the ammunition it gives me in my own personal drive for safer, more reliable food. Overwhelmed by how helpful it will be to the waverers who have not yet plucked up the courage to break their links with the chemical establishment.

Let me start with the photos which are not only high quality but extremely helpful because side by side we are given a picture of crops grown under two systems which represent the two poles of producing our food. The text on the left page goes like this: "Industrial Eye: see what you are looking at: MELONS: More than half the melons sold in the U.S. are grown in California where industrial melon farms stretch for miles and miles ... Two of the most heavily used toxins in industrial melon production are ... Life is also difficult for the melon pickers ..." On the right page we have: "Agrarian Eye: See what you are looking at: MELONS: These melons are one crop among dozens at the Live Earth's 23-acre farm near Santa Cruz, CA. The melons are part of a diverse system of annual and perennial fruit and vegetable crops that rely on soil health to support the plant's natural ability to deter pests. But it's not done so easily - there are many challenges ... Coastal fog also poses potential fungal problems for melons, which Broz addresses by using fungal-resistant varieties of melons ... The melons are sold at local farmers' markets and through the farm's community supported agriculture (CSA) program, where families receive a weekly box of seasonal fruits and vegetables throughout the growing season."

Next the text. "Part One: Farming as if Nature Mattered: Breaking the Industrial Paradigm" is composed of seven articles such as "Global Monoculture: The Worldwide Destruction of Diversity". Then "Part Two: Corporate Lies: Busting the Myths of Industrial Agriculture" is composed of articles each addressing one of the seven myths such as "Myth Two: Industrial Food is Safe, Healthy and Nutritious". The book continues through to "Part Seven: Organic and Beyond: Revisioning Agriculture for the 21st Century" with nine more articles such as "The Ethics of Eating: Why Environmentalism Starts at the Breakfast Table."

In these 370 pages we have all the information we need to convince those sitting on the fence that we must reduce our dependence on industrial agriculture. When confronted with this volume it is difficult to imagine how all those involved in the industrial agricultural chain will be able to put up an effective argument. On the contrary, it should be convincing to the thinking service organization that this is where their future profits lie and they should climb on the band wagon helping rather than hindering. For the farmer who is wavering - and probably for good reasons as his livelihood is affected - he will find in this volume the encouragement he needs; others have forged the trail and he can follow in the knowledge that the forerunners have solved the major problems.

Bravo to all those concerned with the preparation of this volume. You have done mankind a great service. It is a long tunnel down which we are travelling, but I for one can now see the light in the distance. Because of your initiative the rest of us will travel our own path with more confidence and with greater speed. At last we can hope for some sanity in our food production. If we can get this volume into the hands of enough people - people who care - then we really can change the world. If Silent Spring was the book that woke the world to the evils of indiscriminate chemical use, then this volume will go down as the one that banged home the last nail in the coffin of industrial agriculture.

This is a collection of essays with a lot of intellectual ruminating. It is valuable for that reason, providing a collection of writings on commercial food production in one place. It is essential reading for those passionate about sustainability. It is for those who enjoy reading a certain style of writing that I call academic (I'm not one of those people, so I'm not the best judge). For something more approachable (some would call "pop") I would recommend Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma.

Willis' review is for "Fatal Harvest" (ISBN 1559639407), NOT "Fatal Harvest Reader".

I guess the best way to summarize this book is to let you know that the subtitle is "The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture".

The main issues tackled are pesticides, fertilizers, genetic engineering and industrialization/globalization of agriculture. Solutions presented involve using organic methods, reduction of corporate power through changes in the law, support of small growers and the like.

This book is somewhat of a departure from what I usually read and write about. I decided to read it as background for an article I want to write on morality and the patent system; I am a patent lawyer.

There are a lot of interesting facts and viewpoints presented here. For more conservative readers, there are only a few places that might shock or irritate. I found some of the arguments a bit hard to accept, but I think the issues discussed are ones that all of us should be concerned with, even if we don't agree with the solutions offered in this book.

One thing that I have to mention is that I cannot understand the praise for "organic" fruits and vegetables in this book. I mean how they supposedly taste. In my experience, you pay a very high price for often ugly produce that almost always tastes odd - and odd is not good. I am from the country and do know what "home grown" (non-industrial) tastes like, and it is better than the "organic" stuff I have tasted. I just don't get it.

Anyway, the book is worth a read if the topic is of interest. I did find some of the websites listed at the end to be worth a look too.

I have the "coffee table" version of this book which is richly illustrated and convincingly written. If you have friends who are not yet convinced that organic, local, slow food is imperative just show them this book.

As Dominic Lawson writes in TIMESONLINE August 9, 2009:

As [Ben] Goldacre pointed out to the Soil Association: "Either you are proposing that there are health benefits [with organic food] which cannot ever be measured. In this case you have faith, which is not a matter of evidence. Or you are proposing that there are health benefits which could be measured, but have not been yet. In which case, again, you have faith rather than evidence." Cue an avalanche of organic ordure on the "comments" section at the foot of the online edition of Goldacre's column.

When I called him, he remarked: "In my experience the [comments of the] organic food, antivaccine and homeopathy movements are unusually hateful and generally revolve around bizarre allegations that you covertly represent some financial or corporate interest. I do not; but I do think it reveals something about their own motives that they can only conceive of a person holding a position as a result of financial self-interest."

His linking of the organic movement with homeopathy is telling. They are cults masquerading as science, rather like the creationists of America's Bible Belt - but at least the latter have the self-awareness to acknowledge their opinions are based on faith. The organic movement, philosophically, is based on an inchoate faith in nature, seeing any human interference with nature as in some way bad and destructive of the "roots" of creation.

As Luc Ferry, the French philosopher, wrote in The New Ecological Order: "The hatred of the artifice connected with our civilisation... is also a hatred of humans as such. For man is the antinatural being par excellence... This is how he escapes natural cycles, how he attains the realm of culture, and the sphere of morality, which presupposes living in accordance with laws and not just with nature." Guided by Ferry's insight that this philosophy is based on "hatred" of humanity - and I accept this is dangerously close to an attack on motives - we should hardly be surprised by the nature of the e-mails directed at Dangour and Goldacre.