Every day in Mumbai 5,000 dabbawalas (literally translated as "those who carry boxes") distribute a staggering 200,000 home-cooked lunchboxes to the city's workers and students. Giving employment and status to thousands of largely illiterate villagers from Mumbai's hinterland, this co-operative has been in operation since the late nineteenth century. It provides one of the most efficient delivery networks in the world: only one lunch in six million goes astray. Feeding the City is an ethnographic study of the fascinating inner workings of Mumbai's dabbawalas. Cultural anthropologist Sara Roncaglia explains how they cater to the various dietary requirements of a diverse and increasingly global city, where the preparation and consumption of food is pervaded with religious and cultural significance. Developing the idea of "gastrosemantics" - a language with which to discuss the broader implications of cooking and eating - Roncaglia's study helps us to rethink our relationship to food at a local and global level.

New updated edition of July 2011. Future Harvests explores a very hot topic: Will we be able to feed nine billion people by 2050? The world population is growing fast. From six billion people in 2000, it is expected to pass nine billion by 2050. The urban population will double. Water shortages, climate change and soil degradation present a serious threat to the ability of farmers to produce the quantity of food required to meet future demand. In his new book, Future Harvests, Christophe Pelletier presents an objective and comprehensive overview of both the challenges and the potential solutions to produce more food. Using examples from around the world, the author illustrates the amazing potential for growing more food on the land, in the oceans, in the cities and even in the desert. The book covers a broad range of topics in simple, clear language, appealing to both industry specialists and readers with little knowledge of food production. Since its publication, several events mentioned in the book have started to become reality such as the erosion of the US dollar, food inflation, unrest in Arab countries, and the progressive implementation of new measures to control the markets of financial derivatives, in particular in European countries. This demonstrates the author's foresight and thorough understanding of the factors that influence the functioning of food markets. Future Harvests contains many more predictions about things to come in the world of food production and food security for the coming decades. The readers of this book will know what to expect and how to adapt to an ever-changing food supply environment. Future Harvests is a must read for everyone who wants to understand the future of food and farming Author Christophe Pelletier introduces the SIMPLE principles required to increase food production: Sustainability, Innovation, Market orientation, Pragmatism, Leadership, and Efficiency. Future Harvests reviews future farming strategies. The book discusses the pros and cons of large-scale vs. small-scale, industrial vs. organic, and local vs. global farming. It shows that, instead of choosing one system versus another, maximum progress will be achieved by taking the best of both worlds. Future Harvests addresses controversial topics such as genetic engineering, nanotechnologies, the so-called "land grabs," the development of biofuels, as well as investments and speculation by financial institutions. The next agricultural revolution will be about the way we think

Asked to head up Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s environmental organization's "hog campaign," Nicolette Hahn Niman embarked upon a fascinating odyssey through the inner workings of the "factory farm" industry. Whatshe discovered transformed her into an intrepid environmental lawyer determined to lock horns with the big business farming establishment. She even, unexpectedly, found love along the way.

A searing account of an industry gone awry and one woman's passionate fight to remedy it, Righteous Porkchop chronicles Niman's investigation and her determination to organize a national reform movement to fight the shocking practices of industrial animal operations. She offers necessary alternatives, showing how livestock farming can be done in a better way--and she details both why and how to choose meat, poultry, dairy, eggs, and fish from traditionally farmed sources.

"Who would have thought that a natural food supermarket could have been a financial refuge from the dot-com bust? But it had. Sales of organic food had shot up about 20 percent per year since 1990, reaching $11 billion by 2003 . . . Whole Foods managed to sidestep that fray by focusing on, well, people like me. "Organic food has become a juggernaut in an otherwise sluggish food industry, growing at 20 percent a year as products like organic ketchup and corn chips vie for shelf space with conventional comestibles. But what is organic food? Is it really better for you? Where did it come from, and why are so many of us buying it? Business writer Samuel Fromartz set out to get the story behind this surprising success after he noticed that his own food choices were changing with the times. In "Organic, Inc., " Fromartz traces organic food back to its anti-industrial origins more than a century ago. Then he follows it forward again, casting a spotlight on the innovators who created an alternative way of producing food that took root and grew beyond their wildest expectations. In the process he captures how the industry came to risk betraying the very ideals that drove its success in a classically complex case of free-market triumph.

Consistency and Credibility? identifies in its first part the extent of correlation between actual environmental performance, the use of physical environmental performance indicators and corporate environmental reporting in the paper and electricity industries in Germany and the UK. The results suggest environmental performance is mainly country-related, possibly due to differences in environmental legislation. This implies that any assessment of the relationship between environmental and economic performance of firms needs to be based on actual environmental performance data and cannot take reporting quality or information about the intensity of use of specific tools, such as environmental performance indicators as a proxy variable. The second part of the book therefore analyses the relationship between environmental and economic performance. Based on the results, the book's second part concludes that for firms in environmentally-intensive industries it is difficult to create a positive link between their environmental and economic performance, and that market settings as well as strategy considerations both can have an effect, but situational aspects determine which of these dominates. Consistency and Credibility? provides useful information for practitioners as well as deeper insights for academics about the link of environmental reporting and environmental performance measurement and how this interacts with economic success. It thus reveals valuable strategic insights in how aiming for corporate sustainability can help to create business success and which factors are critical for achieving this.

We may be gambling with our lives whenever we purchase meat, milk, or eggs in a supermarket and every time we order a burger at a fast-food restaurant because agribusinesses have allowed unsafe and unhealthy products to be sold and consumed by an unsuspecting public."The Meat You Eat" explains what you should know about how the quality of our food has been greatly compromised in the name of productivity and profit. With large corporations controlling the food supply not only has our health been put at risk but the practices these companies undertake to mass-produce foods has lead to inhumane treatment of animals, lack of diversity in the food supply, as well as put a strain on the environment. Ken Midkiff argues that there are actions consumers can take. While eating a vegan or vegetarian diet is an option there are ways to keep meat, fish, eggs and more on our plates. We can use and support local farmers and sustainable farming, and demand that our supermarkets and restaurants sell organically grown, free-range, and local products.Featuring a resource guide to sustainable producers of meat, milk, and eggs across the country, "The Meat You Eat" is a call to arms to change the way we eat.

Coffee trader and historian Antony Wild delivers a rollicking history of the most valuable legally traded commodity in the world after oil an industry that employs 100 million people throughout the world. From obscure beginnings in east Africa in the fifteenth century as a stimulant in religious devotion, coffee became an imperial commodity, produced by poor tropical countries and consumed by rich temperate ones. Through the centuries, the influence of coffee on the rise of capitalism and its institutions has been enormous. Revolutions were once hatched in coffeehouses, commercial alliances were forged, secret societies were formed, and politics and art were endlessly debated. Today, while coffee chains spread like wildfire, coffee-producing countries are in crisis: with prices at a historic low, they are plagued by unprecedented unemployment, abandoned farms, enforced migration, and massive social disruption. Bridging the gap between coffee s dismal colonial past and its perilous corporate present, Coffee reveals the shocking exploitation that has always lurked at the heart of the industry."

Honorable Mention, Mirra Komarovsky Book Award, given by the Eastern Sociological Society 2021 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine How workers navigate race, gender, and class in the food service industry Two unequal worlds of work exist within the upscale restaurant scene of Los Angeles. White, college-educated servers operate in the front of the house—also known as the public areas of the restaurant—while Latino immigrants toil in the back of the house and out of customer view. In Front of the House, Back of the House, Eli Revelle Yano Wilson shows us what keeps these workers apart, exploring race, class, and gender inequalities in the food service industry. Drawing on research at three different high-end restaurants in Los Angeles, Wilson highlights why these inequalities persist in the twenty-first century, pointing to discriminatory hiring and supervisory practices that ultimately grant educated whites access to the most desirable positions. Additionally, he shows us how workers navigate these inequalities under the same roof, making sense of their jobs, their identities, and each other in a world that reinforces their separateness. Front of the House, Back of the House takes us behind the scenes of the food service industry, providing a window into the unequal lives of white and Latino restaurant workers.

Gli autori propongono una visione multidisciplinare che integra settori apparentemente lontani fra loro ma uniti dal tema della globalizzazione.

Il volume raccoglie contributi di Economia, Giurisprudenza, Agraria, Ingegneria, Medicina, Farmacia, Biologia e Scienze della Terra.

I diversi capitoli forniscono uno sguardo d'insieme sul tema della globalizzazione in maniera accessibile a tutti coloro che desiderano conoscere meglio la realta dei nostri giorni senza rassegnarsi ad accettarne gli aspetti negativi.

Weeds are a major constraint to agricultural production, particularly in the developing world. Cost-efficient biological control is a self-sustaining way to reduce this problem, and produces fewer non-target effects than chemical methods, which can cause serious damage to the environment. This book covers the origin, distribution, and ecology of twenty model invasive weed species, which occur in habitats from tropical to temperate to aquatic. Sustainable biological control of each weed using one or more arthropods is discussed. The aim is to provide ecological management models for use across the tropical world, and to assist in the assessment of potential risks to native and economic plants. This is a valuable resource for scientists and policy makers concerned with the biological control of invasive tropical plants.

As development donors invest hundreds of millions of dollars into improved crops designed to alleviate poverty and hunger, Africa has emerged as the final frontier in the global debate over agricultural biotechnology. The first data-driven assessment of the ecological, social, and political factors that shape our understanding of genetic modification, Africa's Gene Revolution surveys twenty years of efforts to use genomics-based breeding to enhance yields and livelihoods for African farmers. Matthew Schnurr considers the full range of biotechnologies currently in commercial use and those in development - including hybrids, marker-assisted breeding, tissue culture, and genetic engineering. Drawing on interviews with biotechnology experts alongside research conducted with more than two hundred farmers across eastern, western, and southern Africa, Schnurr reveals a profound incongruity between the optimistic rhetoric that accompanies genetic modification technology and the realities of the smallholder farmers who are its intended beneficiaries. Through the lens of political ecology, this book demonstrates that the current emphasis on improved seeds discounts the geographic, social, ecological, and economic contexts in which the producers of these crops operate. Bringing the voices of farmers to the foreground of this polarizing debate, Africa's Gene Revolution contends that meaningful change will come from a reconfiguration not only of the plant's genome, but of the entire agricultural system.

French Canadian workers who paddled canoes, transported goods, and staffed the interior posts of the northern North American fur trade became popularly known as voyageurs. Scholars and public historians alike have cast them in the romantic role of rugged and merry heroes who paved the way for European civilization in the wild Northwest. Carolyn Podruchny looks beyond the stereotypes and reveals the contours of voyageurs' lives, world views, and values.

"Making the Voyageur World" shows that the voyageurs created distinct identities shaped by their French-Canadian peasant roots, the Aboriginal peoples they met in the Northwest, and the nature of their employment as indentured servants in diverse environments. Voyageurs' identities were also shaped by their constant travels and by their own masculine ideals that emphasized strength, endurance, and daring. Although voyageurs left few conventional traces of their own voices in the documentary record, an astonishing amount of information can be found in descriptions of them by their masters, explorers, and other travelers. By examining their lives in conjunction with the metaphor of the voyage, Podruchny not only reveals the everyday lives of her subjects--what they ate, their cosmology and rituals of celebration, their families, and, above all, their work--but also underscores their impact on the social and cultural landscape of North America.

Nikolaus Ludwiczek zeigt mit seiner empirischen Forschung, dass beim Ausbau der Biokraftstoffproduktion die Verdrangung des Lebensmittelanbaus, der bauerlichen Landwirtschaft und oekologisch wertvoller Waldflachen vermieden werden kann. Der Autor analysiert dazu die Regulierungssysteme der EU und Brasiliens und fuhrt Interviews uber die brasilianische Landnutzung mit Vertretern der bauerlichen Landwirtschaft, der Landlosenbewegung, des Agrarbusiness, der Zucker- und Ethanolindustrie und von Waldschutzorganisationen.

After five years of debates, consultations and negotiations, the European institutions reached an agreement in 2013 on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for the 2014-2020 period. The outcome has major implications for the EU's budget and farmers' incomes, but also for Europe's environment, its contribution to global climate change and to food security in the EU and in the world. It was decided to spend more than EURO400 billion during the rest of the decade on the CAP. The official claims are that the new CAP will take better account of society's expectations and lead to far-reaching changes by making subsidies fairer and 'greener' and making the CAP more efficient. It is also asserted that the CAP will play a key part in achieving the overall objective of promoting smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. However, there is significant scepticism about these claims and disappointment with the outcome of the decision-making, the first in which the European Parliament was involved under the co-decision procedure. In contrast to earlier reforms where more substantive changes were made to the CAP, the factors that induced the policy discussions in 2008-13 and those that influenced the decision-making did not reinforce each other. On the contrary, they sometimes counteracted one another, yielding an 'imperfect storm' as it were, resulting in more status quo and fewer changes. This book discusses the outcome of the decision-making and the factors that influenced the policy choices and decisions. It brings together contributions from leading academics from various disciplines and policy-makers, and key participants in the process from the European Commission and the European Parliament.