快猫短视频

Against the Grain by Richard Manning, North Point Press/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $24, ISBN 0865476225 Reviewed by John Bonner

鈥淗OW agriculture has hijacked civilization鈥� is the publisher鈥檚 blurb for this revisionist history of the impact of farming on human society. Environment journalist Richard Manning is concerned about the direction that agriculture has taken, but that hyperbolic claim does little justice to his subtle arguments.

As he knows, without farming there would be no recognisable civilisation. By definition, hunter-gatherer societies must be mobile and that precludes them from carrying much, apart from the bare necessities. But an agrarian lifestyle has always been a mixed blessing 鈥� throughout history there have been well-fed elites supported by a toiling peasant class. Yet, says Manning, industrial agriculture has made things far worse. In the American Midwest, the farmers have gone, replaced by machines that churn out not food but commodities 鈥� soya and maize that can be eaten only after processing in a factory or inside a cow鈥檚 gut.

Manning does offer an alternative vision for agriculture in Against the Grain. Consumers can drive past the supermarket and head for the nearest farmers鈥� market selling tastier produce direct from the grower. But for all his passion there is a gnawing doubt. Will that solution benefit everyone or an elite with the time and income to make this choice?