Customer Reviews

Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I was given this book by a friend who is an organic "true believer" and when he handed me a book I sort of expect a re-hashing of the usual pro-organics arguments I've heard many times over the years. Instead I was pleasantly surprised.

The book is straight forward, well-reasoned, and accessible. I have a background in agriculture and molecular biology, and so at times I found the science a tad too simplistic to strongly hold my interest, but I suspect that for the average reader, it strikes a nice balance between addressing the subject fully and excessive complexity and jargon. The case they build is in my view quite compelling, and I hope this book serves to open many minds.

When I was starting out in plant science, I remember a professor telling me that when the first transgenics were being developed, he really thought the organics crowd would be the biggest supporters. "We'd just come up with a solution to their biggest problems, but instead they decided we were the enemy". Although I think that organics are, ultimately, a positive development in agriculture, they are like most "movements" a mixture of real reasons and irrational, emotional impulses. Although organic agriculture has been an important step towards a sustainable future, it has brought with it a fair amount of baggage, based on not on science or reason, but on a nostalgic idealization of traditional agriculture--even though such agriculture was often neither natural nor sustainable nor especially desirable, even then. The fear of genetic engineering seems to me to come from that deeply conservative undercurrent in an otherwise progressive movement. By making the facts behind genetic engineering and its impacts on agriculture and environment accessible to a general audience, this book can hopefully be a step towards calming that reactionary impulse.

It helps too that it is also an easy and enjoyable read. By the end I felt as though I'd kind of gotten to know the authors (in fact since we don't live all that far apart and work in vaguely the same field, it crossed my mind that I might someday bump into them). The style is casual without being superfluous, making it easy to lose yourself in the book. I started this book as I tended the grill before dinner, and finished it as I went to bed the same night.

Putting aside the genetic engineering part, even, this book is also simply one of the best scientific presentations of organic agriculture I have read, in that it is soundly grounded in the literature and does not over-reach, while remaining staunchly and reasonably pro-organic. There are few other books on the topic I can say the same for.

All in all a good read about an important topic.

Pam and Raul's very well written book makes the rational and even emotional argument that biotechnology is fully compatible with the core ideals of the organic movement. I completely agree with that position looking back to my grandfather's version of "organic" from the 1960s.

I wish I could believe that Pam and Raul's logical arguments will fly with the core of the "organic consumer" movement. They make excellent rational arguments. I'm not sure this debate is about that. As Mark Twain said, "you can't reason someone out of a position they weren't reasoned into in the first place."

As much as I wish otherwise, I'm not optimistic that this book will succeed in its aim to reconcile "organic" and "biotech". Even so, it does a great job of explaining the societal benefits of biotech crops and it helps to humanize the people that have made this a reality.

This is a book that everyone focused on the environment should read.

Steven Savage, Ph.D.
savage.sd@gmail.com

I made it through the book in a day or two. It is not overly technical; it is an excellent introduction to biotech and organic farming. I did not really get into the book until the last chapter; I guess I kept wishing for more technical information, for the authors to drive home their point of view.

However, the point they are trying to make cannot be more important. That is that biotech has a place in organic farming to make it more "sustainable". RoundUp ready crops have made it possible for farmers to stop using much more damaging and toxic herbicides and to go to no-till farming to preserve topsoil. It is the only answer for some problems sometimes, such as virus resistance. It would allow conventional farmers of sweet corn to stop using a slew of really noxious insecticides.

Like Dr. Savage said in his review, I do not think that the organic farming movement is going to "hear" this message and see the wisdom in it, but if they could I think they would have to redefine the way they think of organic vs. sustainable.

A partnership between organic farming and genetic engineering might sound impossible, but might be the best chance we have to feed our growing population while taking care of the planet.

Tomorrow's Table is not a technical text. It is a friendly discussion with a friend who invites you over for lunch. In their conversational tone, the authors make a strong case for integrating genetic engineering into organic farming, leaving behind many aspects of so-called conventional farming. Their points are backed up by much research, and references are provided the reader so he or she can learn more if they like.

I hope this book will help some people to take a second look at genetic engineering, but it made me take a second look at organic farming. I had become convinced that organic farming was pointless and only for rich hippies. The discussion of the benefits of organic methods was more than enough to jolt me back to reality.

In the interests of full disclosure, I'm a PhD student in genetics, and was generally in favor of genetic engineering before reading this book.

As a consumer who shops at grocery stores that specialize in organic food, I have noticed a proliferation of signs and labels stating that this or that product is GE or GMO free. These labels don't do much to inform the public and do much to increase anxiety. This book is a great antidote; informative and detailed, clear and engaging.

Readers of recent books on the politics of food, such as Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver or The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan will be interested in the authors' global perspective and local expertise, and I was especially glad to read about the potential impact of GE food in developing countries.

This book will clear a lot of misconceptions created by opponents of genetically engineered crops with concerns about their safety for humans, animals and the environment. Based on scientific facts only, it demonstrates that GE plants organically grown is the best strategy for food production without pesticide residues in our food products and the environment. Information is very well presented so that the non-biologist reader will understand it very well. Highly recommended.

As a plant scientist who is often frustrated at the poor level of information available for lay person regarding GM technology, I found this book to be an excellent effort to communicate the risks and benefits of GM foods in a clear, relevant and interesting manner. Having an organic farmer to provide a different viewpoint was also interesting. I thoroughly recommend this book for anyone who loves food and wants to know more about the technology behind transgenic plants.

I can only give this book a 2 star rating, as there is only about 2/5th of the book that are worth reading. If that!

I purchased the book with the hope of finally finding proof that Organic and GM farming can be combined for the betterment of society and our health.

What I did not expect was a book about a married couple, their vacations, their fights with family, what they taught in class on any given day, what they ordered from seed catalogues, or their favorite recipes. I have enough recipe books, I can look through my own seed catalogues, and quite frankly I don't know them well enough to care about what goes on in their lives.

This is a very important topic & they do have some good ideas. But they buried it in superfluous fluff that was boring to the average reader, making it difficult to ferret out the real topic at hand. Not too technical by any means. It was just boring and the majority of it not to the point at all.

I wanted to give up on the book several times and consider it money wasted. I came back here and reread the reviews to see why it got such a high rating and noted all the reviews that said it didn't get good till at least halfway through, or the last chapter. So I tried again, skimming through page after page, skipping page upon page of recipes, looking for the "good part" to finally arrive. It finally did, but it was a lot of work to get to that little bit of true information.

The previous reviews are dead on about not getting good till about halfway through or even only the last chapter. So if you feel that paying the price of the book to read about their lives but actually only get some good information out of less than 20% of the book is worth it, by all means go for it. Personally I wish I'd saved my money.

The writing style was clear and not overly technical, and this book would be a good introduction for those without training in farming or biology but interested in the future of agriculture and the true costs and benefits of modern organic farming methods and genetically modified breeds of crops.

The first part of the Tomorrow's Table is an introduction to the ideas behind organic farming and genetic modification. The real substance of the book is in the second half where the authors address some of the frustratingly common arguments used by those who vehemently oppose genetically engineering crops (for example: safety, pollen drift, intellectual property) and go on to talk about the benefits GM crops can and do bring to the environment, consumers, and growers.

The authors do a good job of making the point that GM crops really are compatible with the principles of the organic movement, but what personally won me over about this book was the way Pamela Ronald describes the delicate dance of a plant biologist drawn into a discussion of genetic engineering with friends or family who are firmly convinced of the danger or immortality of the technology.

Readers looking for a sample of Pamela Ronald's writing style can look up a piece she wrote for the Boston Globe called "The New Organic".

That this book was such an easy and interesting read by clearly intelligent and caring people does not negate it's chief problem. The authors of this book repeat yet again the misrepresentation that genetically engineered plants have been tested and proven safe. If something has been proven safe then tests would have been conducted and they would have been published, somewhere. To make the claim that something is safe because tests have not been conducted is absolute rubish. I scratch my head and remain aghast. I even know these people and like them. Has the entire world gone mad? Do we live in alternate universes?

The plant genetic engineers have been repeating this mantra since the mid 1980's when the purging of all of the scientists who dared to question the safety of the products of this very complex and sophisticated technology began. With so few at the major universities left to question or test the products of the technology how could safety testing be conducted? One would think that they would be proud of the wizardry that they had mastered and thus share the products of their finesse with pride.

The reported costs of developing a new open pollinated classically bred variety runs in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars. The cost of developing a new genetically engineered variety starts in the millions. Now, if we need many new varieties worldwide suited to the very different environments that people farm, why would we use the most costly one? And why would anyone advocate using an untested technology to solve the massive problems of our times?

I agree that we do need more varieties suitable for the super changing climate predicted. How to achieve this is where the authors and I disagree. What we need are local plant breeders who are funded and enabled to actually breed suitable varieties in an efficient way. And plant breeders can certainly muster adding a single gene from one rice line to another with something called back-crossing. But plant breeders are the very group of people who have been unfunded for over a decade thanks to what Reaganomics brought to us. The requirement that public university scientists secure private grants to pay for their research began the shift to more expensive, more propriety technologies. Along with that funding the knowledge gained became not the property of the public but the property of the corporation providing that money. Who have obligations to their shareholders to post profits.

I am all for studying genetics and experimenting with and learning in a lab and greenhouse how genes express themselves and how we can use that knowledge. These folks should have been publicly funded and the new life forms developed should have had the chance to be properly tested before release. But these scientists were not fully funded by us. They had to go out and scrounge for money and lots of it as this was pricey cutting edge stuff at the time and still is. My belief is that it was the need for money that encouraged these gifted scientists to overstate the potential good and understate the potential harms inherent in releasing life forms so new and untested en masse out into the agricultural landscape of our farmlands. I do believe that if they had not been rushed to have some product to release for sale by corporations that they would have provided their new life forms to the public for proper testing.

So, despite all the good intentions and potential sustainable uses of these new technologies, open and honest testing should still be a prerequisite to release. Until transparent safety testing has been published I do not think that you will find organic farmers clamoring to use the products of this technology.