Food Security
From Excess to Enough
Description
Canadians are failing to balance reasonable food consumption with sufficient and sustainable production.
The modern agricultural system is producing more and more food. Too much food. The cost is enormous: excess nutrients are contaminating the air and water; soil is being depleted; species loss is plunging us toward the sixth extinction; and farmers, racking up debt, are increasingly vulnerable to economic and climatic shifts.
At the same time, people are consuming too much food. Two-thirds of health-care costs in Canada can be attributed to chronic diseases associated with unhealthy eating. And then there is the waste - householders, food processors, distributors, wholesalers, and retailers collectively waste 40 percent of the food produced.
A radical rethink is required. We need to move from excess to enough.
About this Author
Ralph C. Martin is a professor of plant agriculture at the University of Guelph, where he also served as the Loblaw Chair in Sustainable Food Production from 2011 to 2016. In 2001, he founded the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada. Ralph lives in Guelph, Ontario.
Reviews
This book beautifully combines storytelling with scientific evidence. Martin contributes a unique perspective that seamlessly bridges his lived experience of family farming, and his distinguished academic career.
So much more than a treatise on food security... It's spiritual ecology in practice and at its finest.
Ralph weaves his personal experiences growing up on a farm in Wellington County, with his professional experiences as an agriculturalist, teacher, mentor and researcher.
Ralph challenges us to consider the complexities of agriculture, the impact agriculture has on individual farmer...consider their consumer habits and the effects their choices have on our environment and on the plight of poorer nations of the world.
This is a deeply personal but also profoundly analytical treatise on how to save ourselves and other species...Ralph Martin is Canada's Wendell Berry.
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