The myth of “feeding the world”: Subsidizing agricultural overproduction and industrial technologies, and marginalizing alternatives

Abstract

How many times have you heard some version of the phrase “we need to produce more food to feed a growing population”—often attached to impressively precise estimates of the percentage increases and specific dates far into the future? If you’re reading this journal, it’s probably in the thousands, if not more. In this book, Glenn Davis Stone dismantles such claims and shows who is really benefiting from their constant repe­tition (hint: it’s not most of us). He suggests a description of a problem that should be widely repeated instead: overproduction due to massive government subsidies—particularly for input industries—is leading to the runaway industriali­zation of agriculture and its numerous negative impacts. . . .