Page 73 - Spring2009

All Thumbs Book Reviews

Stuffed and Starved: the waistline between farmer and consumer has
The Hidden Battle for the become—the world’s millions of farmers and
World’s Food System billions of consumers have just a few thousand,
By Raj Patel or fewer, points of connection, and almost no
Melville House Publishing, 2008 viable ways to bypass this corporate bottleneck.
He also lays out the astonishing repercussions of
Question: How is it possible that the world this bottleneck—cheap soy and corn as inputs for
contains over 800 million starving people. . . and highly processed concoctions, suicidal farmers
over one billion obese people? How is it that the from the Midwest to India, degradation of land
overweight outnumber the underfed? Answer: and despicable treatment of animals and workers,
Because the food system suffers from a waistline starvation for hundreds of millions of people, and
problem. degenerative diseases for even more.
Scholar, journalist and activist Raj Patel These “waistline” occupants also wield
takes readers on a journey not just across Iowa’s unprecedented influence over countries and
cornfields or through California’s produce-laden governments—manipulating, bribing and some-
vales, but around the world and through its recent times blatantly violating laws when these laws
agricultural history. While Patel gives a modest stop them from engaging in harmful or suspect
outline for the book’s trajectory, from field to practices, such as with the spread of GMOs in
fork, it is more like a Tour de France of the global Brazil. The end result is that these companies
food system. keep the world food system’s waistline “thin,”
As the journey unfolds, Patel reveals the reaping incredible profits and shoring up their
“how” and “why” of starvation and obesity, control of the world market, while others suf-
an answer that is stunningly simple: it just so fer.
happens that the food system suffers from a
“waistline” problem. This waistline is not like SELF-INFLICTED SORROW Sadly, some
the robust and growing one of the developed One of the most moving stories in all of of the same
world, but is akin to the cinched, famine-stricken Patel’s work comes from South Africa, where people who
waistline of the Third World. local women lament the invasion of a grocery
This constriction at the connection point store chain—pointing out their accompanying suffer most
between farmers and consumers—occupied by loss of excellent health and fair incomes for them- from the
multi-national food conglomerates like Cargill, selves and their children and community—and modern food
Monsanto and others—gives these companies yet at the same time express how much they
a position of tremendous influence and control enjoy no longer having to hand-grind their own system are the
over every facet of the modern food system, corn. Sadly, some of the same people who suffer quickest to
from Argentine farmers in their fields to Ameri- most from the encroachment of the modern food support it with
can families trawling the aisles of their local system are the quickest to support it with their
supermarket, usually without the participants’ scant resources because of its “convenience.” their scant
knowledge, and certainly without their say in While people may be tempted to blame the resources
the matter. corporations or governments for their ill health, because of its
Patel’s figures, diagrams and other visual environmental pollution, unfair wages, and a host
aids help the reader grasp just how “narrow” of other woes, they often overlook a key fact: we “convenience.”

SPRING 2009 Wise Traditions 71