Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture [Anglais] [Broché]

"We ... find ourselves in the midst of a historic battle over two very different visions of the future of food in the 21st century. A grassroots public movement for organic, ecological, and humane food is now challenging the decades-long hegemony of the corporate, industrial model." With 58 essays and more than 250 photographs, Kimbrell, director of the Center for Food Safety, aims to provide "a timely treasure trove of ammunition" for that movement. The ammunition includes a litany of environmental harms caused by industrial agriculture and a strategy for bringing about "the end of agribusiness."

Editors of Scientific American

How and why has agriculture, an endeavor that for millennia involved intimate knowledge of and profound respect for nature and place, become so industrialized that it's wreaking havoc all around the world? And what can people do about it? Editor Kimbrell, author of The Human Body Shop (1993), has assembled an eloquent group of contributors to answer these urgent questions in a book distinctive for its wealth of clarifying information and illuminating interpretations as well as for its generous design and striking use of photographs. Seminal thinkers such as Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, and Ron Kroese make the distinction between agrarian and industrial agriculture, assess the treacherous divide between them, and chronicle the catastrophic unintended consequences of monoculture farming, genetically engineered seeds, and the massive use of toxic pesticides and fertilizers. Kimbrell and company not only testify to the myriad ill effects of agriculture based solely on profit rather than the well-being of people and the planet, they also discuss alternative farming practices and the prospect for a new agrarianism and a brighter future. Donna Seaman
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Fatal Harvest takes an unprecedented look at our current ecologically destructive agricultural system and offers a compelling vision for an organic and environmentally safer way of producing the food we eat. It includes more than 250 profound and startling photographs and gathers together more than 40 essays by leading ecological thinkers including Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, David Ehrenfeld, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Vandana Shiva, and Gary Nabhan. Its scope and photo-driven approach provide a unique and invaluable antidote to the efforts by agribusiness to obscure and disconnect us from the truth about industrialized foods.

The book's many photographs and essays offer graphic testimony to the tragic consequences of how our food is produced. Readers will come to see that industrial food production is indeed a "fatal harvest" - fatal to consumers, as pesticide residues and new disease vectors such as E. coli and "mad cow disease" find their way into our food supply; fatal to our landscapes, as chemical runoff from factory farms poison our rivers and groundwater; fatal to genetic diversity, as farmers rely increasingly on high-yield monocultures and genetically engineered crops; and fatal to our farm communities, which are wiped out by huge corporate farms.

As it exposes the ecological and social impacts of industrial agriculture's fatal harvest, the book also details a new ecological and humane vision for agriculture. It shows how millions of people are engaged in the new politics of food as they work to develop a better alternative to the current chemically fed and biotechnology-driven system. Designed to aid the movement to reform industrial agriculture, Fatal Harvest will inform and influence the activists, farmers, policymakers, and consumers who are seeking a safer and more sustainable food future.

Takes an unprecedented look at our current ecologically destructive agricultural system and offers a compelling vision for an organic and environmentally safer way of producing the food we eat. Exposes the ecological and social impacts of industrial agriculture's fatal harvest. Softcover. Hardcover available.