A review by octavia_cade
Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply by Vandana Shiva

informative medium-paced

4.0

This was published back in 2000, and while I'd like to think that in the subsequent 23 years corporate greed has been booted from the food industry, I suspect that if I did I'd be very disappointed. This short book makes no bones about the damage that the World Trade Organisation and its corporate supporters have done to food production. The lack of diversity, the grab for genetic patents, the flat-out lies and essentially mob tactics that bully farmers into using products that will only make them poorer and more beholden, as well as the environmental consequences of monoculture and pesticide use... it's all depressingly laid out, with lots of accessible examples so that readers can understand the scale of the scam. The book has a strong focus on India, which is interesting (I don't know a lot about farming in India, not being from there) and so there's a lot of emphasis on small-scale farming, and the effects of the above on the sustainable, local communities there. Shocker: they are not good.

On the bright side, Shiva's argument that community mobilisation has (and can) succeed in combating this sort of food exploitation is both encouraging and well-taken. I hadn't heard the phrase "food democracy" before, but it makes perfect sense. Food's a necessity for all living things, and so deliberately undermining its production in the desperate search for profit before all else is hopelessly shortsighted and, honestly, just plain morally void.