Who really feeds the world?

Vandana Shiva—Indian physicist, researcher, author, anti-globalist and world-renowned advocate for economic, food and gender justice—has written more than 20 books. Her latest, Who Really Feeds the World? The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology, offers a scathing critique not only of industrial farming, but of the half-truths and outright lies employed to promote it around the world. It also presents us with an alternative. Shiva makes the case that not only is the dominant industrial paradigm not needed to feed the world, it’s doing a tremendous job of destroying it. The planet’s soil, water, biodiversity and human health are being compromised and exploited for profit by a relatively small pack of corporations operating on a worldwide scale: Over the last 20 years, the globalization of food and agricultural systems has been presented as a natural and inevitable phenomenon. However, there is nothing natural about globalization, and in particular, the globalization of food.