Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #148932 in Books
• Published on: 2004-02-15
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In this controversial and prodigiously researched condemnation of our current and past systems of growing grain, Manning (Food's Frontier: The Next Green Revolution) argues that the major forces that have shaped the world-disease, imperialism, colonialism, slavery, trade, wealth-are all a part of the culture of agriculture. He traces the beginnings of agriculture to the Middle East, where plants were abundant and easily domesticated in coastal areas; hunter-gathers, who became fishermen, formed settlements near river mouths. Manning skillfully details the historical spread of agriculture through the conquest of indigenous peoples and describes how this expansion led to overpopulation, famine and disease in Europe, Asia and Africa. Sugar agriculture was supported by slaves and farming by laborers who grew produce for the rich while the workers ate a high carbohydrate diet (potatoes, rice, sugar, bread) and ingested no protein. In the U.S., modern agriculture has evolved into an industrial system where agribusiness is subsidized to grow commodities like wheat, corn and rice, not to feed people but to store and trade. According to Manning, agricultural research focuses on just these few crops and is profit driven. Although he succeeds in drawing attention to critical problems caused by agriculture, such as water pollution and malnutrition, he is pessimistic about reform coming from political systems. He romantically advocates hunting animals for food and hopes that such citizen movements like urban green markets and organic farms can lead to better nutrition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
A growing body of somewhat controversial scholarship ties the beginnings of war to the "culture of scarcity" that emerged with the invention, sometime in the Neolithic era and probably in the eastern Mediterranean, of agriculture. Before that, these theorists contend, humans lived as hunter-gatherers who were, far from the common vision of the half-starved caveman, quite comfortable and well-fed, because their diet was both varied and seasonal. The investment of time and energy to grow a few crops led, paradoxically, to both great excess and horrific want; when the crops failed, famine followed among people whose population had swelled beyond the small tribes of the earlier peoples. These theories are regularly bruited about at academic meetings, but rarely are they the subject of popular writing (Daniel Quinn's 1992 novel Ishmael constitutes an exception). Manning brings theory to life with well-crafted essays that cover such diverse subjects as the Irish potato famine and the controversy over bioengineered plants. Readable and well-researched, this book unsettles as it informs. Patricia Monaghan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"An exhilarating and provocative questioning of our most ingrained beliefs about how we get our food and why. A must read for anyone concerned about the intimate couplings of man, plant, and beast." --Betty Fussell, author of The Story of Corn

"Against the Grain is a brilliant, provocative book. Where environmental journalism is concerned, Richard Manning is at the head of the class." --Larry McMurtry

"Richard Manning's important new book is radical in the very best sense, taking agriculture by the roots to make a bracing case that unless we manage to tame this environmental juggernaut it will ruin our health and the health of the planet." --Michael Pollan

"Against The Grain is both fascinating and frightening. But Manning reports more than bad news--he also suggests solutions. This is an important book. Let’s hope it’s widely read, and that its urgent message reaches our leaders. As it will, if we insist loudly enough." --William Kittredge, author of The Nature of Generosity

"Against the Grain is an important book. It effectively upends the assumption that domesticating agriculture thousands of years ago improved lives then and now. Instead agriculture domesticated people. Manning brings the concentration of the hunter-gatherer to his subject. The writing is taut and powerful. He shows how with agriculture diets deteriorated, workload increased, and social inequities soared. We have become distanced from our very natures as sensual human beings. Agriculture’s quest is products. As grain production rose, it required more outlets, so we eat what needs to be sold. Manning points the way to restored health for humanity and for ecosystems: a counteragriculture of food rather than food products. Diversify what gets planted, raised, and eaten to go against the grain." --Deborah Popper, geographer at City University of New York’s College of Staten Island

"Anyone who can read this book and still accept the NPR-advertised Archer Daniels Midland notion of non-sustainable monoculture "feeding the world" is sleepwalking off a cliff. Industrial agriculture is not farming: It's a political scam that gives industrialists money to bankrupt real farmers, force unhealthy food-commodities upon the world, and ruin cultures and ecosystems in the process. This book will raise screams from what will pretend to be the "farmer community," but those screams will be from corporate welfare recipients, not real gardeners and farmers. Manning's indictment is so well researched, provocative, and damning that it makes us feel moral conflict every time we place a processed food product in our mouths. This conflictedness can only improve our health and lives." --David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K and My Life as Told by Water

Customer Reviews

Eye opening.
Many books cover aspects of this book - food, agriculture, farm subsidies, and so forth. However, Against the Grain pulls the pieces together to show the dynamics between all these forces.
It's like being stuck in traffic and finding out its because of an accident half-a-mile ahead, then finding out the accident was caused by a malfunctioning traffic signal, then finding out a corrupt traffic department bought substandard parts, and so forth -sitting in traffic takes on a new meaning. That's what this book does in explaining our food system.

A book for a welcome yet unexpected change of view
A book that takes up where the classic, "The Naked Ape", left off. This goes into the very beginnings of civilization and the fall out for some of the whys and consequences of it. Its premise is that our nature as hunter-gatherers is diametrically opposed with our agricultural/civilization way of life. Indeed civilization benefits only a small percentage of society. Mankind, as a whole, was far better off in being and soul as the hunter-gatherers. Well researched with an intuitive yet novel approach reminiscent of Desmond Morris's original. The kind of book that leaves you at its end with a better perspective of the world in which we live. A great book.

We are a victim of all we eat!!
There is no scholarship in the book, a few reference that are minimally supportive to his cause.
The premise of the book is that Agriculture hijacked civilization 10,000 years ago. Hijacked!!! How do you prove that one? He believes ALL agriculture is detrimental, including organic. He asks us to go back to hunting and gathering in the form of "perenial polyculture" and describes the satisfaction of a Buffalo hunt in a farmers field. He believes (no proof at all) that hunter gatherers had sensory abilities that make us moderns practically robotic. Are we victims of agriculture? - there is a real arrogance here for the reader, who apparently is too ignorant to see what has happened. This author has not got a clue what it meant to be a hunter gatherer, and there is little description of their lifestyle other than how the author feels when he goes out hunting.This is real belief in and grief for the loss of the garden of eden.
It is written like a expose, a conspiracy of the elite( probably started by a female), who just wanted to keep slaves and accumulate wealth.
This is a real disservice to people trying to improve/reform and innovate in agriculture.
It should have no stars at all(that option did not seem to be available) and I would not have read it, if it had not been choosen by my bookclub