The Greening of Antarctica: Assembling an International Environment by Alessandro Antonello (review)

Abstract

complexities of food, population, sex and gender, and politics. The book wrongly asserts that rice is now “considered a food for poor people” in China (p. 124). Per capita rice consumption has declined with rising incomes; it is not stigmatized. In a section on Nigeria, the author asserts that the country’s ethnic diversity and “distinct food preferences” held back “the increase of crop yields based on the principles of the Green Revolution” without providing any hint as to why this would be the case (p. 136). Hurt concludes that the Green Revolution was a success in increasing food production—the only definition of success accepted by Norman Borlaug and other key proponents of the Green Revolution— but not in fighting hunger. What was the point, then? And was it really a success if, in the long term, these technologies left rural communities with exhausted aquifers, saline soil, toxic exposure to pesticides, and chemical-resistant pests, as Hurt documents in the conclusion? This book leaves ample room for new scholarship on the legacies and politics of the Green Revolution around the world.