Product Description

This volume provides an overview of modern farming, acknowledging the astonishing achievements of modern farming in providing for such a rapidly growing population, whilst exploring the growing disquiet surrounding it, with day to day dramas such as foot and mouth, BSE and raids on GMOs. It discusses the innate conflicts in farming; should the forces of capitalism and high technology be quelled to introduce less damaging alternatives? yet these alternatives - such as vegetarianism and organic farming - are said to be indulgent and an unrealistic option. Colin Tudge shows a way through the confusion to enlightened agriculture. He shows how we can manage to feed people for the indefinite future, but do so without destroying other species and traditional landscapes, without cruelty, without perpetuating injustice and without wrecking rural communities.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #860410 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

Amazon.co.uk Reviews
So Shall We Reap, award-winning writer Colin Tudge's latest book, has a revealing if lengthy subtitle How everyone who is liable to be born in the next ten thousand years could eat very well indeed; and why, in practice, our immediate descendants are likely to be in serious trouble. Tudge is a Cambridge zoology graduate who has worked as a science journalist and has written several well known and very successful books on agriculture and conservation (such asFood Crops for the Future), genetics (In Mendel's Footnotes) and evolution (The Variety of Life).

So Shall We Reap combines all these strands in an impassioned plea for global change in current farming practice. Tudge argues that at present there are good reasons for thinking we are getting it wrong. For instance, one of the most glaring and obscene disparities is that while famine is common, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, the developed world has food surpluses and is suffering from what the World Health Organisation calls a "global epidemic" of obesity.

Tudge examines the nature of the problem, then castigates the main players--the agribusiness, the bio technicians and other scientists who have been seduced by the lure of big bucks and quick fixes and then embarks on his own solution, what he calls "Enlightened Agriculture"--appealing to the better use of some basic rules of biology and ecological models and the development of more labour intensive mixed economies which will help maintain rural society. A detailed argument of the new agricultural revolution is presented here; Tudge suggests that the hammer and sickle has been replaced by a pc with access to the Internet. --Douglas Palmer

Customer Reviews

Don't eat another bite till you've read this book
Colin Tudge has a knack for making complex issues clear and for explaining the science behind everyday life. In So Shall We Reap he takes on the food production system and shows how the agrichemical revolution has unbalanced the planet's economy and how cheap food actually costs us a great deal more than it seems. His solution, 'enlightened farming' isn't that far away from organic farming, but takes a more global view and is the better for it. The book is ultimately optimistic because we know all the answers to these problems, all we need is the will to put them in place. Anyone who cares about the food they eat and the world they live in should read this book and then lend it to a friend.

Thought Provoking & Enlightening
This is a book written by a scientist who has learned the art of writing well. Tudge explores the central theme of the book - that the growing population of the world will need feeding to a point where we are 9 billion of us on Earth before any fall can realistically be expected - by drawing on a wide range of well researched sources.

He covers a lot of ground: for example, traditional farming techniques in China are contrasted with modern industrial farming in North America & Europe. Tudge speculates on how traditional land-efficient farming can be combined with an urban situation to maximise food production without demolishing the remaining countryside and wild places of the World. He touches (in a timely fashion, as it has turned out) on the impact of the biofuels "revolution".

The book succeds, at least in my opinion, in exploding the myth that modern farming is actually efficient and demonstrates compellingly that we can feed ourselves in the future by gentle improvement on tradional techniques and that modern intensive farming, with or without GMOs, could instead be our down fall.

The writing is fluent, though possibly a little long winded, and some points are laboured perhaps a bit to much; perhaps Tudge underestimates his ability to explain things clearly, a talent he actually has in spades. Nonetheless, this is an excellent book for anyone interested in sustainable developement. I'd give it 4-and-half stars if I could.

A Dreadful, Disappointing Piece of Work
I expected better from Colin Tudge after his intriguing "The Day Before Yesterday" but this is a terrible, blinkered book. How can we be expected to treat seriously a 400+ page book on world agriculture that devotes 2 pages to discussing the effect of subsidies such as the European Union's Common Agricultural Program? Tudge bizarrely praises democracy in the abstract yet never misses an opportunity to take cheap shots at Western politicians. Politicians aren't perfect but who does Tudge think elects them? Try being a politician in a farming constituency in America, France or Ireland who stands up for abolishing subsidies and see how far you get. There are many problems - in developed and developing countries - affecting agricultural. This book doesn't have the answers because it has a blinkered view of the problems.