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| Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food
Hardcover
Author: Pamela C. Ronald, R. W. Adamchak
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Release Date: 2008-04-18
ISBN-10: 0195301757
ISBN-13: 9780195301755
List Price: $29.95
Average Customer Rating:
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
By the year 2050, Earth's population will double. If we continue with current farming practices, vast amounts of wilderness will be lost, millions of birds and billions of insects will die, and the public will lose billions of dollars as a consequence of environmental degradation. Clearly, there must be a better way to meet the need for increased food production.
Written as part memoir, part instruction, and part contemplation, Tomorrow's Table argues that a judicious blend of two important strands of agriculture--genetic engineering and organic farming--is key to helping feed the world's growing population in an ecologically balanced manner. Pamela Ronald, a geneticist, and her husband, Raoul Adamchak, an organic farmer, take the reader inside their lives for roughly a year, allowing us to look over their shoulders so that we can see what geneticists and organic farmers actually do. The reader sees the problems that farmers face, trying to provide larger yields without resorting to expensive or environmentally hazardous chemicals, a problem that will loom larger and larger as the century progresses. They learn how organic farmers and geneticists address these problems.
This book is for consumers, farmers, and policy decision makers who want to make food choices and policy that will support ecologically responsible farming practices. It is also for anyone who wants accurate information about organic farming, genetic engineering, and their potential impacts on human health and the environment.
Tomorrow's Table: Organic low key propaganda for corporations
| Customer Rating:  | | Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food is a commercial effort to impose genetically engineered food and the licenses to sell those seeds onto organic farming. The author claims that genetic engineering is just another farming practice from the long history of farming improvements. That claim is not right, genetic engineering is a fundamental and radical departure from the 14,000 year history of selecting improved varieties after crossing those plants. The genetically engineered crops are modified with synthetic genes in the laboratory that are claimed to be equivalent to natural genes . These synthetic genes Genetic Engineeringare not adequately tested nor are they allowed to be labelled in the market. Organic foods are the only foods presently marketed that are free of such untested synthetic genes. Beware of the propaganda from industry that flow from universities that are funded and controlled by large corporations. |
Tomorrow's Table is an important book
| Customer Rating: | | I enjoyed reading the book and come away the better for it. This is an important work that cuts through a lot of...let's just call it dross...and makes plain to those of us without degrees in plant science what is important to consider in any handling of questions about and objections to the tools of modern plant science. The authors elegantly and masterfully frame the concerns and questions in the intricate tapestry of all pertinent aspects of agriculture. I look forward to hearing of its effective influence in agriculture in the coming years. |
A pleasant surprise
| Customer Rating: | I was given this book by a friend who is an organic "true believer" and when he handed me a book I sort of expect a re-hashing of the usual pro-organics arguments I've heard many times over the years. Instead I was pleasantly surprised.
The book is straight forward, well-reasoned, and accessible. I have a background in agriculture and molecular biology, and so at times I found the science a tad too simplistic to strongly hold my interest, but I suspect that for the average reader, it strikes a nice balance between addressing the subject fully and excessive complexity and jargon. The case they build is in my view quite compelling, and I hope this book serves to open many minds.
When I was starting out in plant science, I remember a professor telling me that when the first transgenics were being developed, he really thought the organics crowd would be the biggest supporters. "We'd just come up with a solution to their biggest problems, but instead they decided we were the enemy". Although I think that organics are, ultimately, a positive development in agriculture, they are like most "movements" a mixture of real reasons and irrational, emotional impulses. Although organic agriculture has been an important step towards a sustainable future, it has brought with it a fair amount of baggage, based on not on science or reason, but on a nostalgic idealization of traditional agriculture--even though such agriculture was often neither natural nor sustainable nor especially desirable, even then. The fear of genetic engineering seems to me to come from that deeply conservative undercurrent in an otherwise progressive movement. By making the facts behind genetic engineering and its impacts on agriculture and environment accessible to a general audience, this book can hopefully be a step towards calming that reactionary impulse.
It helps too that it is also an easy and enjoyable read. By the end I felt as though I'd kind of gotten to know the authors (in fact since we don't live all that far apart and work in vaguely the same field, it crossed my mind that I might someday bump into them). The style is casual without being superfluous, making it easy to lose yourself in the book. I started this book as I tended the grill before dinner, and finished it as I went to bed the same night.
Putting aside the genetic engineering part, even, this book is also simply one of the best scientific presentations of organic agriculture I have read, in that it is soundly grounded in the literature and does not over-reach, while remaining staunchly and reasonably pro-organic. There are few other books on the topic I can say the same for.
All in all a good read about an important topic. |
An Excellent Introduction To Biotech and A Unique View
| Customer Rating: | I made it through the book in a day or two. It is not overly technical; it is an excellent introduction to biotech and organic farming. I did not really get into the book until the last chapter; I guess I kept wishing for more technical information, for the authors to drive home their point of view.
However, the point they are trying to make cannot be more important. That is that biotech has a place in organic farming to make it more "sustainable". RoundUp ready crops have made it possible for farmers to stop using much more damaging and toxic herbicides and to go to no-till farming to preserve topsoil. It is the only answer for some problems sometimes, such as virus resistance. It would allow conventional farmers of sweet corn to stop using a slew of really noxious insecticides.
Like Dr. Savage said in his review, I do not think that the organic farming movement is going to "hear" this message and see the wisdom in it, but if they could I think they would have to redefine the way they think of organic vs. sustainable. |
Required reading for foodies
| Customer Rating: | As a consumer who shops at grocery stores that specialize in organic food, I have noticed a proliferation of signs and labels stating that this or that product is GE or GMO free. These labels don't do much to inform the public and do much to increase anxiety. This book is a great antidote; informative and detailed, clear and engaging.
Readers of recent books on the politics of food, such as Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver or The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan will be interested in the authors' global perspective and local expertise, and I was especially glad to read about the potential impact of GE food in developing countries. |
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