Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System [Paperback]

Raj Patel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2008

How can starving people also be obese?
Why does everything have soy in it?
How do petrochemicals and biofuels control the price of food?

It's a perverse fact of modern life: There are more starving people in the world than ever before (800 million) while there are also more people overweight (1 billion).

To find out how we got to this point and what we can do about it, Raj Patel launched a comprehensive investigation into the global food network. It took him from the colossal supermarkets of California to India's wrecked paddy–fields and Africa's bankrupt coffee farms, while along the way he ate genetically engineered soy beans and dodged flying objects in the protestor–packed streets of South Korea.

What he found was shocking, from the false choices given us by supermarkets to a global epidemic of farmer suicides, and real reasons for famine in Asia and Africa.

Yet he also found great cause for hope—in international resistance movements working to create a more democratic, sustainable and joyful food system. Going beyond ethical consumerism, Patel explains, from seed to store to plate, the steps to regain control of the global food economy, stop the exploitation of both farmers and consumers, and rebalance global sustenance.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Journalist and scholar Patel (Promised Land: Competing Visions of Agrarian Reform) focuses attention on the unfortunate irony of the current world food situation, in which the imbalance of world resources has created an epidemic of obesity in some parts of the world while millions in the "Global South" endure starvation. To make sense of the situation, Patel addresses the entire system of global food production, distribution and sale, concluding that "unless you're a corporate food executive, the food system isn't working for you." "Record levels of diet-related disease" plague consumers, cruel market realities (and unsympathetic officials) doom farmers, and communities are beset by a supermarket system that provides "cheap calories" while "bleeding local economies." Patel analyzes what can be done, presenting logical recommendations and strategies for individuals-eat locally, seasonally, and ecologically; support local business, workers' rights, and living wages; create a sustainable food system-though several primary components of his big vision (including ending agribusiness subsidies and corporate farming, and levying a tax on processed foods) are clearly a long way off. Those concerned about global health, social justice and the environment will be aware of many of the issues presented here, but should still find much to learn.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Compelling. At first glance, Raj is another depressing voice in the chorus. But in traveling the world researching the book, he also found hope in international social movements working to create more democratic, sustainable, and joyful food systems."
—Mark Bittman, New York Times

"For anyone attempting to make sense of the world food crisis, or understand the links between U.S. farm policy and the ability of the world's poor to feed themselves, Stuffed and Starved is indispensable."
—Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma

“One of the most dazzling books I have read in a very long time. The product of a brilliant mind and a gift to a world hungering for justice.”
—Naomi Klein, author of No Logo

"Patel's broad treatment helps the layman connect the dots, as well as hear the voices of those who occupy the lower rungs of the global food chain."
—Time Magazine

"A blistering indictment of the policies of multinational agribusiness conglomerates and charges that their drive for profit at any cost has left the developing world starving while wealthy countries like the United States are experiencing epidemic obesity rates and related health problems."
—Newsweek

"For Patel, it is a short step from Western consumers 'engorged and intoxicated' with cheap processed food to Mexican and Indian farmers committing suicide because they can’t make a living. The 'food industry’s pabulum' makes us all cogs in an evil machine."
—The New Yorker

"A book full of insight, that makes an important contribution to understanding that the politics of food is not a narrow matter of shopping, ethical or otherwise."
—The Guardian

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Melville House; 398 edition (April 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933633492
• ISBN-13: 978-1933633497
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.1 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #20,632 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #5 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Agricultural Sciences > History
  • #39 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Agricultural Sciences > Food Science

More About the Author

RAJ PATEL is a Fellow at the Institute for Food and Development Policy (also known as Food First), a leading food think tank, and a visiting scholar at the UC Berkeley Center for African Studies. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian and The Observer, is a regular contributor to NPR and independent media outlets, and though he has worked for the World Bank, WTO and the UN, he's also been tear-gassed on four continents protesting them. Visit his website at www.rajpatel.org

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

108 of 109 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive overview of world food system filled with startling stories and data, April 9, 2008

By 

B B (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System (Paperback)

I've known bits and pieces about how our food gets to us but nothing that lays it out as this book does. Chapters range from what's happening to farmers and farms here in the U.S. and in diverse places like South Africa, India, Korea. Patel then moves on to the middlemen in the food chain, the food companies that exert control on farmers and consumers, and finally spends time on supermarkets, as well as the corporate sculpting of our tastes.

It's an opinionated book - but doesn't try to hide it. Regardless of where you're coming from, the book is so engaging and chockerblock full of information that you're likely to come away with new knowledge, at least. I moved along further in actually changing some of my thinking. Prior to reading this book I understood perhaps intuitively that oligopolistic corporate control over anything is bad for everyone other than the corporation. But Patel, as his Time review said, really did connect the dots in the story from farm to fork, and as a result I have much more specific concerns, many of which will likely influence some choices I make.

Favorites include the chapter on soy - the hidden ingredient I had no idea existed in so much of the food I buy. Stories about the industrial allure of Soy include beguiling tidbits about Henry Ford. I learned that someone created a patent for the supermarket - the patent diagrams (reproduced in the book) are enlightening. Also, stories from farmers around the world - women selling their farm produce outside a new supermarket being built near Durban in South Africa, a farmer in 'green revolution' Punjab, India bemoaning the now complete leaching of his soil and wondering when the 'revolution' will bring him real freedom from his debt. These were valuable lenses into the lives of people I'd likely never meet, given my urban inclinations, but who clearly are connected to me in producing the food I eat.

If you're at all interested in either food or the structure of our world through a case study of the food system, you'll find this a worthwhile read. Whether you end up agreeing with Patel or not, there's enough here that you'll be alternately shocked, amused, entertained and informed.

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars required reading, June 3, 2008

By 

David Gleeson (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System (Paperback)

A very digestible read for the consumer that's liable to provoke dyspepsia in the bellies of food giants and governments alike.
In taking a moralistic view of starvation and obesity, our media, governments and many NGOs have condemned those suffering to more of the same. While the institutional causes remain unaddressed - in large part thanks to public sector responsibility being abdicated to private sector interests - we can only expect more headlines about food riots and editorials on farmer suicides, just as diabetes (II) continues apace.
The resounding conclusion is that `free market' policies remain accountable only to shareholders - not to farmers, not to consumers, and certainly not to the governments that unleashed them.
But Stuffed & Starved is as prescriptive as it is diagnostic. By identifying the grassroots organisations that have come to terms with the problems and begun to enact the social changes necessary for remedy, Patel brings to the page a message of hope and understanding with great clarity. To his credit, he is no less objective or critical in examining these social movements (as they struggle to develop) than he is of the corporations, WTO, and World Bank.
If you're interested in a comprehensive overview of what's behind the headlines, of what's causing the paradox of starvation at the same time as an epidemic of obesity, this is the book.

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Contradictions with Connections, October 15, 2008

By 

J. Jones (Tucson, AZ United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System (Paperback)

In his comprehensive critique of the global food system, Patel takes his time winding his way through every stage of the food production process, through the experiences and perspectives of all involved--lay and professional--from around the world. Patel ultimately blames both corporations and governments for their complicity in undermining local, cultural, and sustainable foodways and thereby causing the major food-related problems of today, from obesity to starvation. Drenched in details and indictments, Patel's Stuffed and Starved is a broad but accessible analysis of global food struggles that aims to inform and incite the general Western public.

Despite his heady academic and professional background, Patel keeps the technical and academic jargon to a minimum, using basic reportage and narrative description to convey his ideas, analyses, and anecdotes. As such, the book has the possibility of appealing to an audience beyond the academy. However, based on Patel's political bent, Stuffed and Starved is still most likely to play better to a more leftward-leaning and politically-engaged audience.

The breadth of Stuffed and Starved is both its greatest strength and greatest weakness. Patel does not shy away from his stated task of examining the global food system in all its overwhelming complexity. He does explain in the introduction that he tries to maintain organization by arranging the chapters according to what should chronologically be the beginning of the food cycle--farming--and then winding his way through each of the stages of food production and distribution until he ends up at consumption. However, the complexity of the system, the global scope of the project, and Patel's own intimate knowledge and passion for the subject work against any kind of neat-and-tidy organization or argument. Although such complexities speak volumes about the current state of the global food system and the major problems within it, they also can be confusing on a number of different levels.

Overall, Stuffed and Starved is an informative introduction for the lay reader interested in political issues related to food production, distribution, and consumption around the world, particularly those who appreciated Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and would like a look beyond the North American context. Academic audiences may also find Patel's text useful for the broad coverage that he gives to various food-related economic and political problems all over the world, as well as his extensive bibliography and research. The book can be used almost like a reference text in this way, indexing an expanse of contemporary food-related issues.