The world food situation is currently being rapidly redefined by new driving forces. Income growth, climate change, high energy prices, globalization, and urbanization are transforming food consumption, production, and markets. The influence of the private sector in the world food system, especially the leverage of food retailers, is also rapidly increasing. Changes in food availability, rising commodity prices, and new producer-consumer linkages have crucial implications for the livelihoods of poor and food-insecure people. Analyzing and interpreting recent trends and emerging challenges in the world food situation is essential in order to provide policymakers with the necessary information to mobilize adequate responses at the local, national, regional, and international levels. It is also critical for helping to appropriately adjust research agendas in agriculture, nutrition, and health. Not surprisingly, renewed global attention is being given to the role of agriculture and food in development policy, as can be seen from the World Bank's World Development Report, accelerated public action in African agriculture under the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), and the Asian Development Bank's recent initiatives for more investment in agriculture, to name just a few examples.

The failures of “free-market” capitalism are perhaps nowhere more evident than in the production and distribution of food. Although modern human societies have attained unprecedented levels of wealth, a significant amount of the world’s population continues to suffer from hunger or food insecurity on a daily basis. In Agriculture and Food in Crisis, Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar have assembled an exceptional collection of scholars from around the world to explore this frightening long-term trend in food production. While approaching the issue from many angles, the contributors to this volume share a focus on investigating how agricultural production is shaped by a system that is oriented around the creation of profit above all else, with food as nothing but an afterthought. As the authors make clear, it is technically possible to feed to world’s people, but it is not possible to do so as long as capitalism exists. Toward that end, they examine what can be, and is being, done to create a human-centered and ecologically sound system of food production, from sustainable agriculture and organic farming on a large scale to movements for radical land reform and national food sovereignty. This book will serve as an indispensible guide to the years ahead, in which world politics will no doubt come to be increasingly understood as food politics.

Excerpt from The National Food Situation, 1954 Although lard supplies will be smaller because of the reduction in hog slaughter, plentiful supplies of shortening, margarine and other edible oils are in prospect. Department of Agriculture holdings of butter are quite large. The output of butter is running at the highest rate in a decade for this time of year; after April 1 it will be affected by the Department's announcement of its price-support policy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.