Industrial agricultural, food systems, and politics
Websites and online information
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Lobbying by Industrial Agriculture via OpenSecrets.orgDetailed data on lobbying by the crop production and processing sector, including financials, contributors, and recipients.
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Food policy research centerFind research reports from the University of Minnesota related to food policy.
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Food PoliticsA blog maintained by Marion Nestle, a scholar and author who studies corporate food systems and their influence on our eating habits and options.
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National Academies Press: AgricultureResearch-based reports on topics related agriculture.
Books
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The politics of food supply: U.S. agricultural policy in the world economy by This book deals with an important and timely issue: the political and economic forces that have shaped agricultural policies in the United States during the past eighty years. It explores the complex interactions of class, market, and state as they have affected the formulation and application of agricultural policy decisions since the New Deal, showing how divisions and coalitions within Southern, Corn Belt, and Wheat Belt agriculture were central to the ebb and flow of price supports and production controls. In addition, the book highlights the roles played by the world economy, the civil rights movement, and existing national policy to provide an invaluable analysis of past and recent trends in supply management policy.Call Number: HD9006 .W56 2012ISBN: 9780300181869Publication Date: 2012-02-28 -
Food politics : what everyone needs to know by The politics of food is changing fast. In rich countries, obesity is now a more serious problem than hunger. Consumers once satisfied with cheap and convenient food now want food that is also safe, nutritious, fresh, and grown by local farmers using fewer chemicals. Heavily subsidized andunder-regulated commercial farmers are facing stronger push-back from environmentalists and consumer activists, and food companies are under the microscope. Meanwhile in developing countries, agricultural success in Asia has spurred income growth and dietary enrichment, but agricultural failure inAfrica has left one third of all citizens undernourished. The international markets that link these diverse regions together are subject to sudden disruption, as noted when an unexpected spike in international food prices in 2008 caused street riots in a dozen or more countries. In an easy-to-navigate, question-and-answer format, Food Politics carefully examines and explains the most important issues on today's global food landscape, including the food crisis of 2008, famines, the politics of chronic hunger, the Malthusian race between food production and population growth,international food aid, controversies surrounding "green revolution" farming, the politics of obesity, farm subsidies and trade, agriculture and the environment, agribusiness, supermarkets, food safety, fast food, slow food, organic food, local food, and genetically engineered food. Politics in each of these areas has become polarized over the past decade by conflicting claims and accusations from advocates on all sides. Paarlberg's book maps this contested terrain through the eyes of an independent scholar not afraid to unmask myths and name names. More than a few of today'sfashionable beliefs about farming and food are brought down a notch under this critical scrutiny. For those ready to have their thinking about food politics informed and also challenged, this is the book to read.Call Number: HD1415 .P12 2010ISBN: 9780195389593Publication Date: 2010-04-07 -
Fixing the food system : changing how we produce and consume food by America's broken food system has provoked an outcry from consumer advocates seeking to align food policies with public health objectives. This book examines both sides of the conflict for solutions. * Traces the development of a national food policy proposed by food movement leaders * Reveals the true cost of food and its toll on consumers and taxpayers * Discusses the opposition against a national food policy from the agricultural-industrial complex * Shows the effects of changing the current food system * Analyzes efforts to fix the food system and the efforts to oppose them * Introduces early food advocates who changed the food policy landscapeCall Number: TX359 .C53 2017ISBN: 9781440843709Publication Date: 2016-11-14 -
Food and Agriculture During the Civil War by This book provides a perspective into the past that few students and historians of the Civil War have considered: agriculture during the Civil War as a key element of power. * Provides a succinct survey of agriculture in the North and South directly relating to the Civil War that considers the expansion of Northern agriculture and the demise of Southern agriculture and the effects of each development on the war * Examines the transition of Southern agriculture from slavery to freedom * Discusses the roles of white and black women in Northern and Southern agriculture during the Civil War era * Includes a compelling black-and-white photo essay * Represents an invaluable resource for undergraduate students taking courses on the American Civil War or Southern historyCall Number: E468.9 .H87 2016ISBN: 9781440803253Publication Date: 2016-01-11 -
Closing the food gap : resetting the table in the land of plenty by In Closing the Food Gap, food activist and journalist Mark Winne poses questions too often overlooked in our current conversations around food: What about those people who are not financially able to make conscientious choices about where and how to get food? And in a time of rising rates of both diabetes and obesity, what can we do to make healthier foods available for everyone? To address these questions, Winne tells the story of how America's food gap has widened since the 1960s, when domestic poverty was "rediscovered," and how communities have responded with a slew of strategies and methods to narrow the gap, including community gardens, food banks, and farmers' markets. The story, however, is not only about hunger in the land of plenty and the organized efforts to reduce it; it is also about doing that work against a backdrop of ever-growing American food affluence and gastronomical expectations. With the popularity of Whole Foods and increasingly common community-supported agriculture (CSA), wherein subscribers pay a farm so they can have fresh produce regularly, the demand for fresh food is rising in one population as fast as rates of obesity and diabetes are rising in another. Over the last three decades, Winne has found a way to connect impoverished communities experiencing these health problems with the benefits of CSAs and farmers' markets; in Closing the Food Gap, he explains how he came to his conclusions. With tragically comic stories from his many years running a model food organization, the Hartford Food System in Connecticut, alongside fascinating profiles of activists and organizations in communities across the country, Winne addresses head-on the struggles to improve food access for all of us, regardless of income level. Using anecdotal evidence and a smart look at both local and national policies, Winne offers a realistic vision for getting locally produced, healthy food onto everyone's table.Call Number: HC110 .P6 W53 2008ISBN: 9780807047309Publication Date: 2008-01-15 -
Food, farms, and community : exploring food systems by Throughout the United States, people are increasingly concerned about where their food comes from, how it is produced, and how its production affects individuals and their communities. The answers to these questions reveal a complex web of interactions. While large, distant farms and multinational companies dominate at national and global levels, innovative programs including farmers’ markets, farm-to-school initiatives, and agritourism are forging stronger connections between people and food at local and regional levels. At all levels of the food system, energy use, climate change, food safety, and the maintenance of farmland for the future are critical considerations. The need to understand food systems—what they are, who’s involved, and how they work (or don’t)—has never been greater. Food, Farms, and Community: Exploring Food Systems takes an in-depth look at critical issues, successful programs, and challenges for improving food systems spanning a few miles to a few thousand miles. Case studies that delve into the values that drive farmers, food advocates, and food entrepreneurs are interwoven with analysis supported by the latest research. Examples of entrepreneurial farms and organizations working together to build sustainable food systems are relevant to the entire country—and reveal results that are about much more than fresh food.Call Number: HD9000.5 .C488 2014ISBN: 9781611686876Publication Date: 2014-12-02 -
The CAFO reader : the tragedy of industrial animal factories by The CAFO Reader is possibly the most powerful indictment of factory farming ever compiled, with essays from 30 of the world's leading experts. It also offers a vision for a food system that leaves behind the horrific 20th century model of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. The CAFO Reader brings the tragic world of industrial food production into sharp focus with essays on every facet of factory farming: health, environment, animal welfare, labor, politics, economics, and so on. This affordable reader is a companion book to the larger photo-essay volume,CAFO: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories. It is sure to become a relied-upon resource for activists, food policy makers, academics, the media and the general public for many years. This project is a follow-up to the highly successful projectFatal Harvest, published in 2002. It is being supported by an extensive outreach campaign with events around the country.Call Number: SF140 .L58 C34 2010ISBN: 9780970950055Publication Date: 2010-06-01 -
The meat racket : the secret takeover of America's food business by An investigative journalist takes you inside the corporate meat industry--a shocking, in-depth report every American should read. The biggest takeover in American business that you've n ever heard of The American supermarket seems to represent the best in America: abundance, freedom, choice. But that turns out to be an illusion. The rotisserie chicken, the pepperoni, the cordon bleu, the frozen pot pie, and the bacon virtually all come from four companies. In The Meat Racket, investigative reporter Christopher Leonard delivers the first-ever account of how a handful of companies have seized the nation's meat supply. He shows how they built a system that puts farmers on the edge of bankruptcy, charges high prices to consumers, and returns the industry to the shape it had in the 1900s before the meat monopolists were broken up. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the greatest capitalist country in the world has an oligarchy controlling much of the food we eat and a high-tech sharecropping system to make that possible. Forty years ago, more than thirty-six companies produced half of all the chicken Americans ate. Now there are only three that make that amount, and they control every aspect of the process, from the egg to the chicken to the chicken nugget. These companies are even able to raise meat prices for consumers while pushing down the price they pay to farmers. And tragically, big business and politics have derailed efforts to change the system. We know that it takes big companies to bring meat to the American table. What The Meat Racket shows is that this industrial system is rigged against all of us. In that sense, Leonard has exposed our heartland's biggest scandal.Call Number: HD9415 .L46 2014ISBN: 9781451645811Publication Date: 2014-02-18 -
Ecological Hoofprint: the global burden of industrial livestock by The exploding global consumption of meat is implicated in momentous but greatly underappreciated problems, and industrial livestock production is the driving force behind soaring demand. Following his previous groundbreaking Zed book The Global Food Economy, Tony Weis explains clearly why the growth and industrialization of livestock production is a central part of the accelerating biophysical contradictions of industrial capitalist agriculture. "The Ecological Hoofprint" provides a rigorous and eye-opening way of understanding what this system means for the health of the planet, how it contributes to worsening human inequality, and how it constitutes a profound but invisible aspect of the violence of everyday life.Call Number: SF140.E25 W45 2013ISBN: 9781780320960Publication Date: 2013-11-01 -
Food and the City by No Marketing BlurbCall Number: S494.5 .U72 C63 2012ISBN: 9781616144586Publication Date: 2012-02-21 -
Food and Agriculture Security (ebook) by This work is a historical, multidisciplinary explanation of the complexities of the food system in the United States and around the world, spanning the beginning of the modern era to today's globalized, interconnected market. * Contains chapters on food security, trade policy, and historical studies of border security authored by resident experts within the Frontier program * Historical maps illustrate how past trade disputes over animal disease have influenced modern food and agriculture security * Includes photographs of key people who have influenced the Food and Agriculture Security policy throughout historyCall Number: HD9006 .F58 2011 EBISBN: 9780313383236Publication Date: 2010-10-01 -
Just food : where locavores get it wrong and how we can truly eat responsibly by A provocative book that explodes the myths of the locavore movement and charts a path to truly planet-friendly eating.Call Number: GT2850 .M375 2009ISBN: 9780316033749Publication Date: 2009-08-26
