Food's Frontier: The Next Green Revolution [Paperback]

Richard Manning (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 2001

Food's Frontier provides a survey of pioneering agricultural research projects underway in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, India, China, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru by a writer both well-grounded technically and sensitive to social and cultural issues. The 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. Based on increasing yields by extensive use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and monoculture--agribusiness-style production of single crops--this approach has poisoned both land and farm workers, encouraged new strains of pests that are resistant to ever-increasing amounts of pesticides, and killed the fertility of land by growing single crops rather than rotating crops that can replenish nutrients in the soil. Solutions to these problems are coming from a reexamination of ancient methods of agriculture that have allowed small-scale productivity over many generations. Research in the developing world, based on alternative methods and philosophies, indigenous knowledge, and native crops, joined with cutting edge technology, offer hope for a more lasting solution to the world's increasing food needs.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A generation and more ago, when futurists warned that an ever-expanding population would unleash famine and suffering upon the world, scientists set in motion the so-called Green Revolution. Mixing high-yield seed stock and intensive cultivation with an increased use of chemical pesticides, the Green Revolution proved remarkably successful in feeding the developing nations of the world--but only for a time.

Now, writes journalist Richard Manning, when Earth's population is again exploding--adding a new Mexico City every 12 weeks, as one of the profiled scientists notes--the need to revolutionize agriculture anew is ever more pressing. Traveling to research laboratories and farmers' fields in places such as Uganda, Zimbabwe, India, and China, Manning looks at ways in which researchers are working to improve crop yields, reduce natural pests and diseases, and increase biodiversity, with greater or lesser success. Among their approaches, Manning observes, is the use of genetically modified plants, a matter of intense debate throughout the First World. Urging that readers not dismiss this solution out of hand, Manning points out that genetic engineering is not merely a subject for theoretical discussion, but a fact of life in the agriculture of the developing world.

At the close of his well-paced travelogue, he takes a considered look at the arguments pro and con, acknowledging that there are reasons to be both fearful and optimistic when tinkering with genomes. But, Manning slyly adds, "no one ever said feeding a planet of 6 billion people would be without consequences." --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Beginning with the assumption that monocultures and high-input agriculture are unsustainable and that the "Green Revolution" has failed, environmental writer Manning (One Round River) attempts to lay a course for a new way to practice agricultural research and production. Research needs to be cast in a social matrix that integrates research using (and preserving) local farmers and culture, tested methods, diversification, smaller scales, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) friendly to local ecosystems and committed to improving the life of the poor. Agriculture extension programs have missed this approach, says Manning. He uses examples from projects funded by the McKnight Foundation in nine countries, including India, China, Uganda, Brazil, and Mexico. He does not rule out genetic engineering as part of the equation, arguing that this technology may be no more dangerous than our current methods of growing foods with high chemical inputs. Manning's book is not easily digested and often raises more questions than it answers. Suitable for academic libraries, it should be read (last chapter first) by agricultural researchers and policy makers as well as sociologists.DTim McKimmie, New Mexico State Univ. Lib., Las Cruces
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 225 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (October 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520232631
• ISBN-13: 978-0520232631
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #547,534 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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32 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars from the Green Revolution to the Information Revolution, October 30, 2000

By 

Orrin C. Judd "brothersjudddotcom" (Hanover, NH USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Food's Frontier: The Next Green Revolution (Hardcover)

You have to approach with trepidation a book which has a cover blurb from the despicable, antihuman, scare monger Paul Ehrlich and which the author warns you was funded by a private organization (The McKnight Foundation) that funds the projects which he's going to be discussing. Right off the bat it just seems extraordinarily unlikely that you'll get a calm, balanced and non-dogmatic presentation of the issues. It's a pleasant surprise then that Richard Manning, despite a sleight over reliance on Ehrlichean "sky-is-falling" rhetoric, is able, at least to my non-expert eyes, to offer a full and fair look at some of the current debates surrounding the future of agriculture generally and, more specifically, the issues that arise out of the need to boost crop yields in developing countries to meet the rising food demands of their constantly increasing populations.

Manning's basic premise is that the original Green Revolution--largely a product of improved fertilizers, pesticides, and breeding techniques--has hit a wall and is no longer providing the types of increases in production which have characterized the past thirty or forty years. Nor is there any readily apparent successor Revolution to step in and provide the necessary increases. He proposes that the answer to pending food supply problems then will not come from such a top down revolution but rather will have to rely on myriad local solutions :

The Green Revolution at its most fundamental level treated all the world the same, but the lessons being learned in agriculture now are local. A practice, a variety, a people, and a crop endure in a place because selection has finely tuned them to survival. They have evolved along with local conditions, and the path to a sustainable future requires some respect for the results of that process.

In the ensuing chapters he surveys the results of studies in nine regions--Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, India, several parts of China, Chile, Brazil, Mexico and Peru--on unfamiliar but traditional crops like sorghum, tef, milpa, sweet potatoes, and the like, which suggest that these foodstuffs are uniquely suited to these areas and are more appropriate than Western grains. The work being done by scientists in these countries therefore focusses on how to maximize the yields of these native plants, but their work tends to be understaffed, underfunded and unappreciated. The nations after all tend to be poor, their best minds tend to emigrate to the industrialized West and there's not much interest on the part of powerful multinational corporations in these marginal crops. This is where McKnight and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) come in, providing seed money (quite literally) to keep local scientists working to improve local crops.

The best section of the book is Manning's rational and dispassionate discussion of bioengineering. Though he maintains a healthy respect for the dangers that genetic manipulation of crops could conceivably pose, he also recognizes that it is already happening on a significant scale and is going to continue regardless of hysteria like that which greets export of genetically modified American goods to Europe, that it is absolutely vital to the daunting task of boosting yields, and that it simply does not much differ from the routine ways in which man has always intervened in plant and animal breeding. Sadly missing from most of the heated argument that you hear about genetically modified foods is the simple common sense and undeniable truth of the following :

For at least ten thousand years humans have been engaged in selection, an artificial pressure on breeding populations. All the forms of life we call domestic have a genetic makeup, a code, that is artificial as a result of this pressure.

Manning does not issue a blanket approval for all bioengineering, suggesting that more limited manipulations may be more effective anyway, and are certainly less risky, but he comes down squarely in favor of using the techniques, particularly to help improve these native crops.

In the end, Manning suggests that the examples he's looked at are united by a common thread : that local knowledge, conditions, and customs should play a much more central role than they have in guiding agricultural development in Third World nations, and that they have started to, thanks in large part to the efforts of NGOs like McKnight :

All this suggests the real breakdown of the linear model. Information and knowledge will no longer flow from top to bottom but will originate in and reverberate through every part of the system. Information flows among researchers and farmers that in the end could have them working on a common ground, a common ground of knowledge. It may be difficult to define what will replace Green Revolution methods, but this concept lies at its core.

In fact, this too is a revolution, as he says, an "information revolution." Moreover, it echoes the writings of folks like F. A. Hayek on political economies, and the idea that centralized, bureaucratic, top-down decision making can not possibly be effective, precisely because it can not take into account all of the unique individual and local information bubbling up from the bottom.

It's become sort of commonplace these days to depict the ascent of Free Markets and Global Trade as a threat to the developing world, to the environment, and to local customs. But the push for free market capitalism is based on the hard won consensus that such a system offers the most efficient means of structuring an economy, that only such an open system allows for the free flow of ideas and information which is a predicate for intelligent decision making. It is really exciting to see that a similar recognition may be emerging in the field of agriculture and in those developing countries, that not only are free markets not necessarily a threat to native ways of life but that such a decentralized, fluid, information dependent, ruthlessly efficient system may be the best means of preserving local knowledge and traditions.

GRADE : B+

3 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Bought and Sold, November 20, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Food's Frontier: The Next Green Revolution (Paperback)

While I give him credit for acknowledging the McKnight Foundation's role in his writing this book, you can tell throughout that Manning is doing it for their sake, and less for ours. Regardless, there is some interesting information about agriculture past, present and future, but I didn't feel he reaches a unified point about where we as humans should go next.