In print

Not on the label: What really goes into the food on your plate

By Felicity Lawrence
Published by Penguin
Website: www.penguin.com
2004, 272pp, ISBN 0 141 01566 7(Pb), £7.99

If not on the label, how far should we go to find out about the food on our plates? Felicity Lawrence, a journalist working for the UK Guardian, went as far as Vietnam, Kenya and Spain on our behalf during 3 years of investigation. She uncovered a global fiasco, where workers are exploited, farmers struggle to survive, water is running out, soils are depleted beyond chance of recovery, the massive environmental costs of transporting food are ignored, and - the ultimate absurdity - consumers, around whose needs the food business has supposedly developed, are not in the end getting good food for their money.

How did the food business go so wrong? The answer is complex, but perhaps all in industrialised countries should share some of the blame. Demand for cheap meat, unblemished fruit and vegetables year round, processed foods and one-stop convenience shopping is at least part of the story. But governments and regulators have also let us down. Confused food and labelling laws allow unscrupulous producers and packagers to mislead, and deregulation of food standards to allow 'free choice' has only added to the confusion. Lack of labour regulations or their enforcement allows exploitation of workers. Subsidies on crops and hidden subsidies, such as the lack of tax on aviation fuel, have distorted the logic of food supply and demand. And failure to check the increasing power of the big supermarkets means that the whole market chain has become distorted, with a handful of retailers sharing the massive profits, and in effect controlling what is available for consumers to buy.

The rise of the supermarket, and its frightening impacts, is a recurring theme throughout the book. Price wars between these commercial giants, ensuring the best 'deals' for shoppers, are not in the end won or lost by the supermarkets but by their suppliers and by their poorest workers. The distribution of food to the supermarkets via massive distribution centres makes economic but no other sense - the thousands of unnecessary miles travelled add to pollution and climate change, depleting oil reserves and congestion on the roads, and the food itself is not improved on the journey. And the worrying prediction is that within 10 years "retailers will become even more dominant and will increasingly operate as gatekeepers to consumers, controlling the total food process from ingredients through production."

Lawrence writes about the food business predominantly from a first-world perspective but, at the same time, she has not neglected the global issues. From environment to exploitation, and world trade agreements to coffee prices, she explores every facet of the global food chain that links developing-world farmers with supermarket shoppers, but where neither group is getting a fair deal. Her journalistic style makes a complex story accessible, and the book is highly recommended reading. Lawrence ends with a short chapter describing how she has changed her shopping behaviour - patronising her small, local shops, buying organic and fair trade produce where possible, for example - and first-world shoppers who read this book will surely want to do the same.

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A continent for the taking: The tragedy and hope of Africa

By Howard W. French
Published by Knopf
Website: www.aaknopf.com
2004, 298pp, ISBN 0 375 41461 4(Hb), $25

Genocide in Rwanda and the Congo; the AIDS epidemic and Ebola outbreaks; military dictators and exploitation of the poor and of Africa's natural resources - these are the tragedies that seem to define Africa to many outside the continent. Here French looks at them from the inside, weaving his own stories from his years as a journalist in Africa into a wider political narrative. The result is an enlightening and moving book which provides both personal perspectives and critical assessments on recent episodes in Africa's troubled history. He holds the West largely accountable for Africa's tragedies, from the earliest cruelty and greed of the slave traders and colonists to more recent betrayals by Western governments with their misguided support for tyrant leaders. Indeed, he describes the book as "a chronicle of the calamitous continuum in the encounter between Africa and the West". But when the tragedies are told, French still sees hope for Africa, in the Africans themselves and their cultural strengths. Engagingly written and highly recommended (See also 'Shackled Continent' In Print 04-4).

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The future is an ancient lake

By Caterina Batello, Marzio Marzot and Adamou Harouna Touré
Published by FAO
Website: www.fao.org/icatalog/inter-e.htm
2004, 307pp, ISBN 92 5 105064 3(Pb), US$80

This portrait of the Lake Chad Basin is a remarkable book. Filled with over 350 stunning photographs of the land, the lake and especially its people, accompanied by well-written text, it describes the basin ecosystem, its grasslands and livestock, farming systems, fisheries and wildlife. Produced by the FAO's working group on biological diversity, it is in part a plea that the unique traditional knowledge, biodiversity and genetic resources of the basin should be preserved, since they hold the key to its future survival in the face of land and water degradation.

It highlights several traditional practices which, the authors contend, deserve greater recognition. The harvesting of kreb, wild grass seeds, as a protein-rich food source has long been associated with pastoralists in the basin. Changes in livestock keeping and a decline in nomadism are threatening the continued use of kreb, such that even the traditional harvesting method is being forgotten. Yet, the authors contend, use of kreb as a food source in the basin has great potential, if supported by science and policy. And it is policy makers and those with political or financial influence that the book is presumably aimed at. It can only be hoped that their response will justify the investment made in this impressive, but expensive book.

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Free trade: Myth, reality and alternatives

By Graham Dunkley
Published by Zed Books
Email: zed@zedbooks.co.uk
Website: www.zedbooks.co.uk
2004, 254pp, ISBN 1 85649 863 8 (Pb), £9.99

Dunkley plausibly dismantles the view that free trade is good for all, in this new addition to the excellent Global Issues series. As world leaders and global economic alliances continue to promote it as a desirable path, where the benefits (it is assumed) will flow into welfare gains, the author points out that the underlying theory is far from watertight, and indeed the loudest proponents of free trade are not economists. A key chapter on development describes how Western-style economic growth may be far from the best option for developing countries, tending to lead to "undesirable, inequitable, unsustainable growth paths, to underemphasize human development, to neglect agriculture, to devalue women and largely to ignore non-economic goals such as community, values, culture and tradition".

There are alternatives, which Dunkley describes, and he suggests as goals social justice, environmental sustainability and cultural integrity. This is a complicated subject, but Dunkley manages to deliver a clear and attractive message that will hopefully be read by those non-economists who are promoting free trade without appreciating its full implications.

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Food policy old and new

Edited by Simon Maxwell and Rachel Slater
Published by Blackwell Publishing
Website: www.blackwellpublishing.com
2004, 204pp, ISBN 1 4051 2602 7(Pb), £19.99/$39.95

We are in a time of phenomenal change for the world food system - change in how food is produced, distributed, consumed and controlled (see also Not on the label above and Points of View). The editors of this book are not out to judge this transformation, "at least not yet; but we should certainly observe". They and the authors examine the changes, and their implications for developing countries, from various perspectives which they group under three headings: the character of the food system; the effects on the human population (diet and social impacts); and the actors and agendas of food policy.

The overall message of the book is that developing countries, even the poorest, need new policies and new policy processes to deal with the changes in the global food system. The editors urge the policy makers to "rediscover food policy", because "a preoccupation with food security is no longer sufficient".

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World agriculture and the environment: A commodity-by-commodity guide to impacts and practices

By Jason Clay
Published by Island Press
Website: www.islandpress.org
2003, 570pp, ISBN 1 55963 370 0(Pb), £18.95/US$35

"Farming is the single largest threat to biodiversity and ecosystem functions of any single human activity on the planet." This is the starting point for Jason Clay, who is an environmentalist and vice-president of the WWF's Center for Conservation Innovation. His aim with this book is to contribute to improving the sustainability of farming so as to reduce its environmental impacts. In a rather unexpected approach, he devotes a chapter to each of 21 key agricultural commodities, where he gives a broad description of the crop and its production and processing; an interesting section on potential substitutes for the crop and its products; and information on its market and market trends. This makes the book a useful reference for these crops even without the sections on environmental impacts and strategies for addressing them, which are the crux of the book. This is a well-written contribution by an optimistic writer who focuses on practical solutions within the real-world situation.

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The evolution of ecotourism in East Africa: From an idea to an industry

By John R. Watkin
Published by IIED (IIED Wildlife and Development Series No. 15)
Website: www.iied.org
Available from: www.earthprint.com
2003, 28pp, ISBN 1 84369 431 0(Pb), free (shipping cost only)

This short book summarises the East African Regional International Year of Ecotourism Conference held in 2002. Sections focus on the different sectors involved; the pros and cons of ecotourism; managing, marketing and financing ecotourism; diversifying the ecotourism sector; and the role of government. Despite the title there is only a short section on the evolution of ecotourism, while the majority of the book focuses on the state of ecotourism at present, and the possibilities and needs for its future success. More than half of the conference participants were community representatives from established ecotourism ventures, and community views are usefully reflected.

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High hopes for post-harvest

FAO Diversification Booklet 4
By Brian Clarke
Published by FAO
Website: www.fao.org/icatalog/inter-e.htm
2004, 48pp, ISBN 92 5 105071 6(Pb), US$14

By the author's estimate, as much as 50 per cent of food produced by farmers in developing countries is lost between harvest and consumption. Poor storage facilities that allow destruction by moisture, fungus, rodents and insects are the main cause of that loss, but early processing, such as drying, combined with improvements in storage can have a dramatic impact on food and income. Machinery such as grain mills and oil extractors can enable individual farmers or communities to greatly enhance their crop processing, but successful introduction and ongoing success of such technologies depends on many factors.

This short guide from the FAO, one of a new series of Diversification booklets discusses those factors; thus for extension departments, NGOs or others who might wish to promote post-harvest technologies, it raises the issues that will need to be explored in developing an implementation strategy. The issues include choice of crop to be processed, availability of power and machinery, and of supporting technologies such as training, transport, clean water, marketing and waste disposal. The focus is primarily on village- or community-level schemes rather than domestic or large scale. Other booklets in the series include home gardens, bee-keeping and food processing.

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Local forest management: The impacts of devolution policies

Edited by David Edmunds and Eva Wollenberg
Published by Earthscan
Email: earthinfo@earthscan.co.uk
Website: www.earthscan.co.uk
2003, 208pp, ISBN 1 84407 023 9(Pb), £19.99/$32.50

Devolution of forest management, as of other natural resources management, has been the trend for the last two decades. Among the assumptions driving this change was that "devolution would bring the large numbers of rural poor who live in or near forests better access to forests and more self-determination in decisions about local resources". This book reports impact studies to examine whether this has been the case, with particular focus on effects on the lives of the poorest people and other disadvantaged groups such as women and ethnic minorities. The case studies were carried out in the three Asian countries with the longest experience with devolution - China, India and the Philippines. The findings are mixed, but a significant conclusion is that in fact "devolution often has the opposite effect from that intended, resulting in a decrease in local control over resources rather than an increase". This book adds constructively to the debate on the future of natural resource management and the best ways to ensure benefits for the poorest people who rely directly on local resources (see also Points of View 04-4: Decentralisation of Forestry).

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