The Stork and the Plow : The Equity Answer to the Human Dilemma

by Paul R. Ehrlich, Anne H. Ehrlich, Gretchen C. Daily

In this provocative book, the authors look at the interaction between population and food supply and offer a powerful and radical strategy for balancing human numbers with nutritional needs. Their proposals include improving the status of women, reducing racism and religious prejudice, reforming the agricultural system, and shrinking the growing gap between rich and poor.

“This ambitious, enlightened handbook is a cornucopia of strategies and ideas for concerned citizens and policymakers.”― Publishers Weekly

“Give equal education and power to women throughout the world, argue the when that happens, birth rates fall and food supplies go up.”― San Francisco Chronicle (Best Bets of 1995)

“[The book] can help us understand the past and possible future of the meals most Westerners take for granted.”―Bill McKibben, New York Review of Books

“A well-reasoned account of how poverty forces unsustainable use of natural resources . . . a careful and balanced treatment of developments in agriculture . . . that may help food production to stay ahead of population growth.”―Basia Zaba, Nature

“This generation faces a set of challenges unprecedented in their scope and severity and in the shortness of time left to resolve them. . . . The Stork and the Plow sets these out thoughtfully [and] accurately. . . . We can all hope this urgent message is carefully heeded.”―Henry W. Kendall, Nobel laureate and Julius A. Stratton Professor of Physics, MIT

“A wonderful piece of work.”―Partha Dasgupta, American Scientist

Genres: Nonfiction

383 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Paul Ralph Ehrlich is an American biologist and educator who is the Bing Professor of Population Studies in the department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University and president of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology. By training he is an entomologist specializing in Lepidoptera (butterflies), but he is better known as an ecologist and a demographer, specifically for his warnings about unchecked population growth and limited resources. Ehrlich became a household name after publication of his controversial 1968 book The Population Bomb.