The End of Plenty: The Race to Feed a Crowded World

by Joel K. Bourne Jr

In The End of Plenty, award-winning environmental journalist Joel K. Bourne Jr. puts our fight against devastating world hunger in dramatic perspective. He travels the globe to introduce a new generation of farmers and scientists on the front lines of the next green revolution. He visits corporate farmers trying to restore Ukraine as Europe's breadbasket, a Canadian aquaculturist, the agronomist behind the world's largest organic sugarcane plantation, and many other extraordinary farmers, large and small, who are racing to stave off catastrophe as climate change disrupts food production worldwide.


A Financial Times Best Book of the Year and a Finalist for the PEN / E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Food, Environment, Economics, Book Club, Sustainability

416 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 2015

Reviews

[Richard Reese · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing is more precious than balance, stability, and sustainability. Today, we’re hanging by our fingernails to a skyrocket of intense insane change, and it’s the only way of life we’ve ever known. Joel Bourne has spent his life riding the rocket. He grew up on a farm, and studied agronomy at college, but sharp changes were causing many farmers to go bankrupt. Taking over the family farm would have been extremely risky, so he became a writer for farm magazines. Later, he was hired by National Geographic, where he has spent most of his career.

In 2008, he was assigned to cover the global food crisis, and this project hurled him into full awareness of the big picture. The Green Revolution caused food production to skyrocket, and world population doubled in just 40 years. Then, the revolution fizzled out, whilst population continued to soar. Demographers have told us to expect another two or three billion for dinner in 2050. Obviously, this had the makings of an excellent book, so Bourne sat down and wrote The End of Plenty.

The subtitle of his book is “The Race to Feed a Crowded World,” not “The Race to Tackle Overpopulation.” A growing population thrills the greed community, and a diminishing herd does not. Overpopulation is a problem that can be solved, and will be, either by enlightened self-restraint, by compulsory restraint, or, most likely, by the vigorous housekeeping of Big Mama Nature. Feeding the current population is thrashing the planet, and feeding even more will worsen everything, but this is our primary objective. We are, after all, civilized people, and enlightened self-restraint is for primitive savages who live sustainably in roadless paradises.

As incomes rise, the newly affluent are enjoying a more luxurious diet. To satisfy this growing demand, food production must double by 2050. “We’ll have to learn to produce as much food in the next four decades as we have since the beginning of civilization.” Meanwhile, agriculture experts are not bursting with brilliant ideas. “Producing food for more than 9 billion people without destroying the soil, water, oceans, and climate will be by far the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced.” Bourne’s book describes a number of gigantic obstacles to doubling food production — or even maintaining current production.

Automobiles are more addictive than crystal meth. Europeans guzzle biodiesel made from palm oil. Americans are binging on corn ethanol. The 2005 Energy Tax Act mandated the addition of biofuels to gasoline. From 2001 to 2012, the ethanol gold rush drove corn prices from $1.60 to $8.28. Not coincidentally, in 2008 food riots erupted in twenty countries. The Arab Spring revolts began in 2011, a year of record harvests and record prices. Today, almost 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop is being fed to motor vehicles — enough corn to feed everyone in Africa. Experts predict that we’ll need four times more land for biofuels by 2030.

Crops require cropland, and almost all places ideal for farming are already in use, buried under roads and cities, or have been reduced to wasteland. Every year, a million hectares (2.4 million acres) of cropland are taken out of production because of erosion, desertification, or development. So, 90 percent of the desired doubling in food production will have to come from current cropland. At the same time, the farm soils still in production have all seen better days. Agriculture is an unsustainable activity that normally depletes soil quality over time.

Another obstacle is yield, the amount of food that can be produced on a hectare of land. Between 1961 and 1986, cereal yields rose 89 percent, due to the Green Revolution. But per capita grain production peaked in 1986. Since then, population has been growing faster than yields. Crop breeding experts are wringing their hands. A number of indicators suggest that we are heading for “agricultural Armageddon,” but the experts remain silent, praying for miracles. The biotech industry is focused on making huge profits selling seeds and poisons, not boosting yields.

Agriculture guzzles 70 percent of the water used by humans. Irrigated fields have yields that are two to three times higher than rain fed fields. Demand for water is projected to increase 70 to 90 percent by 2050, but water consumption today is already unsustainable. “Over the next few decades, groundwater depletion could cripple agriculture around the world.”

Crop production is already being affected by climate change. Research indicates that further warming will take a substantial toll on crop yields. If temperatures rise 4°C, maybe half the world’s cropland will become unsuitable for agriculture. Rising sea levels will submerge large regions currently used for rice production.

Meanwhile, population continues to grow, and some hallucinate it will grow until 2100. In a nutshell, our challenge is “to double grain, meat, and biofuel production on fewer acres with fewer farmers, less water, higher temperatures, and more frequent droughts, floods, and heat waves.” This must be done “without destroying the forests, oceans, soils, pollinators, or climate on which all life depends.”

Ladies and gentlemen, this is an outstanding book, and easy to read. Most people have blind faith that innovation will keep the supermarkets filled forever. Those who actually think a bit are focusing on stuff like solar panels, wind turbines, and electric cars. Food is something we actually need, and it gets far less attention than it deserves. By the end of the book, it’s impossible to conclude that everything is under control, and that our wise leaders will safely guide us through the storm. Surprisingly, a few additional super-threats were not discussed in the book.

Bourne mentions that insects and weeds are developing resistance to expensive GMO wonder products, but stops there. Big Mama Nature is the mother of resistance. She never tires of producing new forms of life that are resistant to every toxin produced by science: insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, rodenticides, antibiotics. Every brilliant weapon we invent will only work temporarily. In terms of breeding new varieties of plants that are resistant to the latest biological threat, there are only so many tricks available. The low-hanging fruit has already been used. Just three plants enable the production of 80 to 90 percent of the calories we consume: corn, rice, and wheat.

The global food system is heavily dependent on petroleum fuels, which are finite and nonrenewable. There is no combination of biofuels or alternative energy that will come anywhere close to replacing oil. In the coming decades, we will be forced to return to a muscle-powered food system. We are entirely unprepared for this, and the consequences will be very exciting for people who eat food.

There is a similar issue with fertilizer. Of the three primary plant nutrients, reserves of mineral phosphorus will be depleted first, and this will blindside conventional agriculture — no phosphorus, no life. A hundred years ago, Chinese farmers used zero commercial fertilizer. Every morning, long caravans of handcarts hauled large jugs of sewage from the cities to the fields.

In the end, readers are presented with two paths to the future. One path looks like a whirlwind of big trouble, and this is not just a comic book doomer fantasy — it’s already blowing and rumbling. The other path is happy and wonderful. Humans will discover their legendary big brains, turn them on, shift industrial civilization into reverse, speed down the fast lane to genuine sustainability, and live happily ever after. Place your bets.

[Emma Sea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Phew. I don't know enough about the background science to critique any of Bourne's conclusions, but I appreciated the 71 pages of extensively detailed sources in the notes.

I highly recommend Richard Reese's review.

[Mamatha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is easily the best book I've read in years! Since agriculture is often in the shadows in our society, it's great to a read a book that describes the history and present state of modern agriculture so well and it's centrality to a stable society. Since I see and talk about obesity so much, I forget how much of the world is food insecure even today and the potential for things to get much worse.

Although we seem to live in a post agricultural society, Bourne reminds us we ignore food production at our peril since it is the foundation to any civilized society. It seems that the immense gains we have made are starting to come apart because of water issues, land management issues, population growth biofuel, climate change and increased meat consumption. To continue to survive as a civil action we will have to continue to wrest it from 6 inches of topsoil. And the question remains if we'll be able to do that.

[Philipp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Want to see something depressing?
Here's a chart tracking the expected growth of how much maize, rice, wheat, and soybean we can grow (thick lines) and how much of these we actually need if the world population keeps on growing like it does (dotted lines)



Fun, isn't it? Now look at the y-axis - wheat yields have to be around 4 tons per hectar. Note: This graph does not account for climate change.

Source: Ray et al., 2013, Yield Trends Are Insufficient to Double Global Crop Production by 2050, PLOS ONE

Now this graph, the new CSIRO prediction for Australian wheat yields for the current year of our noodly lord, 2018, these predictions just came out last week:



Source

That's 0.4 tons per hectar! Thanks to climate change, most of Australia is in drought, yields are in the bin. So not only are we not close the the yields we need, we're going in the opposite direction! (Here's a new great article with tons of visualisation showing how climate change is already here, and how it has been causing havoc in Australian farming for the last few years)

That's what the first half of this book is about - yields are crashing as soils are depleted, climate change is making things much much worse (if the global temperature increases by 4 degrees, we lose 50% of arable land!), then we have additional problems - the US took their controls on commodities trading away, so large banks and finance institutes are using their endless pockets to drive up food prices for their personal gain. In fact, the 2008 Egyptian food riots were directly linked to a spike in food prices caused by newly-unfettered commodities trading! Then there's an increased pressure on food prices due to farms growing crops for Biodiesel, not for food - about 13-15% of US farm land goes into car tanks, with a tendency to grow even more.

Depressing, isn't it? And this problem is not going to go away. Malthus features prominently in the introduction for a reason.

The second part is about potential solutions - aquaculture farming, GM technology, organic farming (much more positive than I see it - but ah well, more to re-consider!), vegetarianism, new farm land (especially in the Ukraine), etc., each possible part of the solution one chapter. With one outlook chapter at the end - again reconsidering Malthus, and hoping that increased education programs will bring birthrates down, as they already have in some countries. A small sliver of light in a depressing, but important book.

P.S.: I found this NYT book review and it's confusing me - is it about a different book?

For example, from the NYT review:

This is a shame. It means, for instance, that Bourne misses a chance to talk more about sex. A book inspired by Malthus really ought to have more discussion about his hopes for “restraint” to tame population growth.

Isn't that what the entire last chapter is about?

Bourne tells the history like this: “Better seeds, combined with more fertilizer, pesticides and irrigation, enabled farmers to grow more crop from each acre. Farmers grew so much extra food during the 1960s that they actually helped alleviate global poverty by making food cheaper in most places around the world. The change was so dramatic it was dubbed the ‘green revolution.’ ”

Which isn’t quite right. The man who coined the term “green revolution” was William Gaud, the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development in 1968. He was clear about its political intent when he said: “It is not a violent Red Revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a White Revolution like that of the Shah of Iran. I call it the Green Revolution.”

Bourne's book has that exact same quote from Gaud?!? I don't get it!

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be required reading for all humans. It looks at the challenge we face of feeding a growing global population off a limited amount of arable land amidst climate change without further wrecking the planet. Bottom line: we need to produce as much food in the next four decades as we have since the dawn of civilization.

It's a completely daunting and complicated problem, but Bourne works through it methodically, first outlining the broken promises of the Green Revolution and the extraordinary pressure on land and resources in the most densely populated parts of the world, particularly India and China. He describes agricultural and scientific principles in ways easy for non-experts to grasp and keeps it entertaining - I'd actually say fascinating - with one mind blowing datapoint after another.

He then devotes the second half to ways to meet this challenge, looking at aquaculture, bringing breadbaskets like Ukraine to full potential, organic farming, low-meat diets, greater access to family planning resources in the developing world, and the most level-headed and compelling discussion of GMOs I've yet seen.

This book is fabulous. Everyone should read it. Before it's too late.

[Cwiegard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bourne attempts to explain the complex topic of the human challenge of feeding ourselves on a finite planet with an increasing population and the looming menace of drought and coastal land loss from climate change. It's not a pleasant prospect, and he does a good job of explaining the scope of the challenge and the countless obstacles to success.
The start and the finish are the best parts, as Bourne uses the early population scientist Thomas Malthus as his focus to set the stage and then finally tie up the loose ends. In between, he trots around the planet and throws a baffling amount of detail at the reader. Overall, very good- judgemental when appropriate, and equivocal and nuanced when appropriate.
A key idea- we talk about odd aspects of climate change, when the heart of the matter is Hunger. It is the consequence that should truly horrify us and motivate us to stop talking and take action.

[Sean Goh · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading this, one will be more inclined to waste less food, and maybe eat less meat? We may not feel the pressures of not having enough to eat yet, but with business as usual food pressure may soon become our reality. Maslow's hierarchy is very real.
___
Though I love my profession and believe it is fundamental to a functioning democracy, a nation can survive without journalists. It cannot last a day without farmers.

Three plants (wheat, rice and corn) provide directly or indirectly (in the form of animal feed) 80-90% of all the calories that humans consume.

It takes 5 times more grain to get the equivalent amount of calories from pork as from simply eating the grain itself. The ratio is ten times for grain-fattened beef. Already, two thirds of the world's agricultural land is used to grow feed for livestock.

"If you desire peace, cultivate justice, but at the same time cultivate the fields to produce more bread; otherwise there will be no peace." - Norman Borlaug

Vietnamese farmers, being of a practical bent, called it (IR8, high-yield rice) luo Honda, or Honda rice, because one good crop would buy a new motorbike.

There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort.

Vandana Shiva argues that on a systems level, the green-revolution monocultures are not as productive as traditional agriculture. All the energy in the system is focused towards producing more seed. But the short-stalked varieties leave less straw for livestock to eat, and fewer nutrients to recycle into the soil. And with less diversity on the farm, there is nothing to eat should the crop fail.

The joke among Chinese who live in other parts of China is that the Cantonese will eat anything that flies except a plane, anything that crawls except a tank, and anything that swims except a boat - and every part of the pig save its hair.

65% of all meat eaten in China is pig. The price of pork in the marketplace is a key indicator of Chinese zeitgeist, much like the price of gasoline in the United States.

"Everyone talks about China as a market of 1.3 billion. But that's crazy, since 80% of Chinese do not have the consumption power."

Even if China imported all the world's available pork, it would make only a slight dent in the country's demand. The total world pork export market - dominated by the US, Canada and Denmark - is about 6 million tons. Each year China consumes 50 million tons of pork.

At the turn of the 21st century, two new factors drastically changed the simple equation of increasing supply to meet food demand: food grains became the feedstock for a whole new industry (biofuels), and commodity markets were deregulated, enabling investment banks to buy and sell billions of bushels with a keystroke. No matter how much grain is produced, poor hungry people around the world must now compete for it with Big Biofuel and the wolves of Wall Street.

70% of the world's water is used to irrigate crops and water livestock.

Ray Hobbs, electric utility company engineer: "We want energy cheap because we want to throw it away. We've developed unbelievable wasteful habits. In typical urban traffic you get 4-5% of useful work out of your car's fuel consumption. All we are doing with our current use of fuel is making air pollution and heat while doing very little work. You're throwing 95% of your money away."

The world now farms more fish than beef. Nearly half of all shellfish and fish eaten on Earth are now raised on farms rather than caught or collected from the wild.

During the Three Kingdoms period farmers added carp to the flooded rice fields, as the omnivorous fish gobbled up insect pests and weeds but left the seedlings alone, providing food, free pest control and fertiliser for their paddies.

Fish farms currently consume nearly 70% of the global fish meal and almost 90% of fish oil.

Because fish are cold-blooded and live in a buoyant environment, they need fewer calories to regulate their body temperature or build strong bones to counteract gravity. To grow a pound of farmed-salmon body mass requires just over a pound of dry feed. Chicken requires 2 pounds of feed, pork (3), beef (7). And marine species require no freshwater.

A future with less snow and ice means more runoff in winter and spring,when crops are small or not yet planted, and less runoff in summer, when they need it most.

People always look at small-plot farmers and say, "oh the problem is lack of education, or lack of health care, or lack of gender equality." But these are symptoms. The problem is poverty, and if you want to cure poverty you have to help them make more money. And when the poor farmer makes more money, they invest in health and education, and all these other symptoms go away.

At the moment, corporate GMOs are still largely feeding livestock and company shareholders. Researchers funded by taxpayers and nonprofits remain, as they've been since Elvin Stakeman's day, the ones trying to feed the world.

The world's soils contain more than three times the carbon currently floating around in the atmosphere and four times the amount currently tied up in forests and plants. If farmers could increase soil organic matter (nearly 60% carbon, by weight) on the world's farmland, they could sequester as much as a third of annual global carbon emissions and help grow healthier, more drought-resistant crops in the bargain.

From a technical perspective it would be a lot easier to address the demand side of the food equation (reduce the birth-rate). But from a political, social and religious perspective, it is not so simple.

[Meredith Watts · Rating 5 out of 5]

A farmer boy, majoring in agronomy in college, who then went to the Columbia School of Journalism, the author Joel Bourne is the perfect person to write a book on this pressing problem. He resurrects Malthus's stained reputation, and makes his population theory crystal clear: all other things being equal, the availability of food will control population growth. Period. It's true that Malthus did not anticipate the hybrid seeds and the petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides that made possible the Green Revolution fifty years ago. But that doesn't mean Malthus was wrong.

The carrying capacity of the arable land on the planet simply is limited. The Green Revolution has now played out, leaving many areas that eagerly embraced it with barely any soil left, like the Punjab, but much bigger populations that were encouraged by the temporary explosion of productivity. Many of those places are right back where they started. About a billion people in the world are food-insecure.

Climate change will steal away arable land in the Southern Hemisphere and our own middle-American plains states. Reaching the end of the first half of the book, which describes where we are at present, is sobering. The challenge of feeding the expected population at 2050 seems insurmountable.

However, Bourne is not running around with his hair on fire crying out that the sky is falling. The second half of the book looks at forward-focused ideas for increasing our food supply and the enthusiastic, hard-working people who are exploring them and trying them out. Organic farming comes off well in this part of the book -- a counter to the conventional wisdom that "it's nice for your garden but can't feed the world." Not surprisingly, Bourne thinks we and our farmers will do much better working with the earth rather than against natural currents.

The one thing he doesn't address is how we're going to make it possible for our fellow-traveler species to survive. He sees middle Africa as a huge potential farming region, without mentioning that other creatures also live there and need habitat. But I grant him that he is talking about possibilities. He ends by saying what I like to say: if every fertile woman in the world were to be educated and given access to contraception, the problem of overpopulation would diminish radically without any draconian, top-down programs of one-child families or sterilization. This is something we could do, you know? Everybody should read this book.

[Jo-anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has informed me tremendously and has left me soul searching about the deterrent that capitalism is to our ability to feed the world. Every nation needs people willing to stand up to business and say the buck stops here. I kept notes that will make me feel more confident when I share my 'voice' with Canadian leaders.
*Food is a moral right, the first component of social justice
*Hunger and food availability are used as political weapons
*Clinton's rice policy in Haiti which he later apologized for, resulted in protective tariffs being dropped and cheaper US rice flooding the Haitian market and destroying the ability for Haitians to provide for themselves.
*there are starving people yet in the US 40% of the corn harvest is used for biofuel. This amount could feed Africa for a year.
*there is tremendous heartache in India resulting from cancers caused by pesticides; many so toxic, they are banned or have restricted use in the US
*research that focuses on seed volume of wheat means less straw for livestock and fewer nutrients returned to the earth. Vandara Shiva an anti-GMO activist has an important message that decisions need to be made that reflect the impacts on local biodiversity. Nature is a powerful adversary. Plants are starting to develop resistance to the glyphosphate in Roundup. Without diversity, entire regions of crops could be wiped out.
*weeds can be beneficial. Lamb's Quarters is high in Vit A, calcium, protein and potassium. Yet it is destroyed to plant less beneficial crops.
**there are some positive effects of GMOs. Glyphosate GMO use reduces the need for tilling, which results in less soil erosion. Bt is a transgene that produces a toxin that can kill harmful bacteria that affect corn, potatoes and cotton. GMO beta-carotene producing rice could prevent 1/3 of the deaths in infants under 5 that are related to Vit A deficiency. The development of 'Submarine' rice' which can survive in flooded areas has been publicly funded and is free technology.
*organic farming despite all controversy does result in reduced leaching of nitrogen into our water

[Elisabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, along with This Changes Everything, should be required reading for everyone.

A fascinating and well-written insight into food production, some of which I found surprising, some frustrating, some shocking. I knew little bits and pieces of what's in this book, but am glad to have had the satisfying experience of having it all placed into the big picture, so I now feel like I have a much better understanding of many issues. While this book is downright frightening in some ways, the author does a great job of offering both solutions to some of the problems he describes, as well as hopeful visions of the possibilities for a more food-secure future... if we will only act, and do the "right thing". Much of what needs to be done is in alignment with the list of things I ended up with after reading This Changes Everything, a reminder that everything is connected: food, climate, human health, population, fossil fuels... etc.

I just read about a word "Ellipsism": A sadness that you'll never be able to know how history will turn out. I do hope that I live long enough to know whether humanity gets its act together to fix all these problems, so that I know how history turns out... at least this part of history.

We'll see!

[Sim Hanscamp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book I've read in a while. Appreciated the commentary on the wide variety of considerations, historical, different geographical locations (china, africa, india to name a couple) and that the author discusses in a mature fairly non-biased lens. It is reasonable discussion (in this way, Naomi Klein's style of argumentative writing comes a little to mind)... often neglected agricultural factors are considered and also factors on economics, politics & impacts for development. Woo hoo - this one is a keeper on my shelf (when it's not being read by other friends). Great to see some further discussion for climate change too.

[Geoff Winston Leghorn Balme · Rating 5 out of 5]

Possibly the most important book you can read on the current crises facing our species. This is no joke. Joel Bourne also offers us some lights at the end of the doom tunnel. Not surprisingly GMOs, Organic Farming systems, family-planning, and worldwide education, as well as equal rights for women the world over top the bill for our continued satisfactory existence.

it's a scary book, full of facts and figures, but the story is not one that we can ignore.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worthwhile read to get one thinking about how we feed the world. Never knew much about the green revolution but fascinating to learn how Borlaug started experimenting with improved farming techniques and plant selection in Mexico. Was also a good read about how Chinese moving to cities after learning from the green revolution meant they earned more money… leading to more meat demand which requires a lot of extra grain to produce. One more thought was that the green revolution enabled Asia to become an economic engine as they didn't need to focus on how to feed their large population. Additional key excerpts are below:

- The food riots in Haiti in 2008 revealed the pitfalls of relying on free trade to provide a poor nation with its staple grain…. The imports destroyed local rice production – Haiti’s small farmers simply couldn’t compete – and left the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere at the mercy of the international grain market.
- In 2007, world grain reserves fell to a 61 day supply, the second lowest level on record…. Demand is slowly outstripping supply. PJK: Wonder what the supply is today?
- While poverty is part of the problem, it’s complicated by the fact that much of the world is getting richer. When people have more money, they tend to eat more meat and dairy products.
- “….there is no culture without agriculture. PJK: I really like this line.
- In the late 20th century, classic famine shifted almost entirely to Africa, where dearth has often been exacerbated by conflict and civil war. PJK: another interesting line. Wonder if Africa can fix this?
- Major television news networks and newspapers are quick to send reporters to cover food crises in place like Ethiopia and Darfur, helping, as Sen argued, to shame governments into action.
- 50 years after the green revolution transformed world agriculture, its legacy is still hotly debated. The benefits were substantial, especially in Asia. The number of calories consumed per capita increased by nearly 30 percent, while the price of wheat and rice dropped and stayed low…. Noted economist Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University goes so far as to credit the green revolution for Asia’s emergence as an offshore manufacturing powerhouse.
- Critics of the green revolution focus on the enormous cost it levied on both people and the planet.
- Pesticide use tripled between 1960 and 1990, leading to increased farmworker poisonings, wildlife deaths – including both birds and bees – and residues in food. The global use of fertilizer increased more than eightfold between 1960 and 2000, contaminating rivers, lakes, groundwater, and estuaries. Harmful algal blooms and dead zones fueled by excessive nitrogen and phosphorous are now commonplace in coastal estuaries around the globe.
- Ten tons of grain, year after year, is mining large amounts of nutrients from the soil. Without large quantities of fertilizer you would not be able to produce this yield.
- “Ultimately it’s a population problem,” Kalkat continued, echoing Borlaug himself. “If India were a country of 700million instead of 1.3billion we could do fallow-land farming…. Where will we get the grain to feed them all.”
- While most people think of the green revolution as a package of semidwarf wheat and rice and copious amounts of fertilizers and pesticides, none of that would have come to much without timely irrigation to maximize the uptake of nitrogen and empower the seeds to do their thing.
- A future with less snow and ice means more runoff in winter and spring, when crops are small or not yet planted, and less runoff in summer, when they need it most.
- Unless you are a feral wilderness dweller living on game, fish, and berries, virtually everything you eat has been genetically modified. Most of the genetic engineering was accomplished by our ancient ancestors who first domesticated crops, and the early farmers that followed.
- “Providing food and nutrition for 9 billion people without compromising the global environment will be one of the greatest challenges our civilization has ever faced,” Foley said….
- Sub-Saharan Africa has yet to get the memo. Of the 25 countries left on the planet were the average woman has five or more children, 23 are in Africa…. In none of these countries do women have equal rights; in many they are virtually enslaved. Yet their freedom – economic, political, and sexual – is the key to solving the global food crises.

[Lauren Schnoebelen · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were a wide variety of topics within agriculture that this book really went into. I found myself knowing a good portion of them from past articles and books I've read but there were others like the Malawi Miracle that I wasn't aware of. Each chapter went into depth on a specific area of concern in agriculture; whether it be GMOs, organic farming or irrigation concerns, but at the same time, it did a very good job of weaving all the information together. Additionally, in the beginning of the book the author goes into detail about his academic background of this topic and how that area of the field focuses heavily on how GMOs and pesticides/herbicides can be a be all end all solution to the world's hunger issues.

I loved getting background on Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolutions. The best part about reading this section was that I was at the greenhouses on the Univesrity of Minnesota Campus while learning all about the work he did in his career.

Overall I think this is a good book for anyone who is just starting to learning about the agricultural industry because it provides a very good foundation on the topic. But, I also feel people within the field need to read this as well because it goes over factors that directly impact agriculture that are not always thought about like concerns over water conservation and access to family planning services which can help reduce population growth and in turn reduce the number of people who are facing malnutrition and hunger.

I listened to the audiobooik verision of this and followed along physically and I highly suggest it.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

This reads exactly like your standard National Geographic magazine story. It isn't terrible, and does have a good high-level overview of food security and the Green Revolution, fairly standard stuff. But there's also lots of gee-whiz reporting, uncritical reporting based on single sources, and some questionable choices of topics. That's why I mostly look at the pictures!

> "To sequence the Arabidopsis genome—the fruit fly of plant breeders—took $70 million and seven years," says Pam Ronald, a rice geneticist at UC Davis. "The same process is now done in a week for $99. …"

> The food riots in Haiti in 2008 revealed the pitfalls of relying on free trade to provide a poor nation with its staple grain. Haiti had been self-sufficient in rice as late as the mid-1980s. But in 1994, when President Bill Clinton restored ousted President Jean Bertrand Aristide to power, he requested that Aristide drop Haiti's protective tariffs on imported rice. The country was soon flooded with cheap "Miami rice" from the United States, a crop that is heavily subsidized and grown in just a few states, including Clinton's home state of Arkansas. The imports destroyed local rice production—Haiti's small farmers simply couldn't compete—and left the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere at the mercy of the international grain market.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The worst part of the book is the title; it screams of an attempt to sell copy. 1.5 stars off for that alone.

Each chapter individually is an interesting read, and well-researched. The End of Plenty is mostly a compilation of Bourne's main research projects for various media outlets, and simply taken as research of the costs, benefits, and potential future of modern agronomy and agriculture, is excellent.

However, Bourne stretches really hard to tie all the chapters together under the specter of population doom, but the actual research conclusions he reaches with the chapters are much less pessimistic and sometimes even hopeful.

After a Part I that recaps the Green Revolution and hits at the ecological and other costs that are the flip side of the benefit of being able to feed the world, I kept waiting for the hammer to really drop in Part II. Instead, we are introduced to the potential of aquaculture (chapter 8), new water-saving techniques (chapter 10), the potential of GMOs (chapter 11), and Ukraine failing to live up to its potential as the breadbasket of Europe not because of out-of-control population growth, but "civil war, corruption, and a Communist hangover" (chapter 9). And the book goes on like this, with the actual research never fully supporting the main thesis.

Read the book, but ignore the title.

[Maureen Caupp · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting and at times troubling account of the extremely challenge facing us as we try to feed a quickly growing population with the added complication of climate change and not destroying the environment for future generations in the process. Through lots of research Bourne has brought together and described many issues and possible solutions. Scary but also hopeful with stories of farmers and scientists working together to try to help solve the problem. Ultimately the earth can only support so many.

[Fred Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading as possible inclusion into a course on Science policy. Overall I liked this book, I thought it covered the issued around agriculture and growing food in a fairly balanced way. The author is an agronomist, so that helps in more authentic and realistic writing. The story is a narrative both of his own travels and interviews, and a historical narrative around Norman Borlaug. The end part of the book covers a variety of interesting new paths (probably all of which we need, there is no silver bullet here). Recommend the book, will use it in class.

[Generally Unpopular Opinion · Rating 5 out of 5]

My generation (millennial) desperately needs to understand the cautionary tales outlined in this book. Although frustratingly daunting are the roadblocks posed by politics, money, and culture; I'm relieved to know these brilliant mindsets exist and influence more people day.

Although shrouded in doomism (at least to those on the left) and ignorance (to those on the right) this book is extremely well written, offering immense knowledge on topics that NEED to be discussed in classrooms and politics.

This book is absolutely amazing. Please do yourself a favor and read it through.

[Andrew Rothstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an important read as face an administration that is determined to reverse policies that we need to keep living on Earth sustainable.

In this case, the challenge is feeding a world with a rapidly rising population and an environment under increasing stress.

This book is an excellent combination of hard science, anecdotes, history and commentary. Very readable and compelling.

I wish more people, especially policy makers, had these issues in mind when they make decisions.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I struggled with this book. Initially i was impressed with the detail and his emphasis on science. however there was a niggling feeling that there was too much emphasis on population control without any serious discussion on education.

despite this I still think this book is a good introduction to agriculture abd it's relevance to being able to feed a growing population in a world afflicted with climate change.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn’t familiar with the work of an agronomist, but was immediately drawn in to the author’s way of thinking about his work, the planet, and our future. Much of the book moved at a good pace with good story arcs and lots of examples and anecdotes; I appreciated the quick summary and recommendations at the end. This book inspired quite a few conversations with friends and colleagues and I’ve recommitted to some of his recommendations.

[Richard Rossi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a solid work of journalism that reviews the current state and outlook for feeding the world's rapidly growing population. The takeaway is that the outlook is grim for a complicated interacting set if facts. Read the book only if for some reason you are interested in all the many factors that underlie the pending global food shortage.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic read! Bourne carefully lays out the problems facing humanity, explains how we got there, shows the consequences of continuing that path, and then details all the ways we can resolve them, giving real world, current examples. A must-read for anyone interested in agriculture, climate change, or the survival of humanity.

[Langston Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was fine. A great overview of the problems facing agriculture without many convincing solutions. It’s interesting reading the book ten years after it was published because you can see how the trends he talks about actually pan out. In retrospect it feels a little too optimistic and makes me think things will get a lot worse before they get better.

[Francis Kilkenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clarion call on our vulnerable but destructive agricultural systems. Radical shifts in agricultural practice will need to occur for civilization to keep feeding people. This book surveys both the problems and the promise inherent in modern agriculture.

[A.Y. · Rating 4 out of 5]

For those who know nothing of agronomy (as did I), this is a great introductory book on the subject. Picked this up at the library because of the cover and the title. Glad I did. Not my favorite read, but this book is certainly well-researched and well-informed.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read. This book should be mandatory reading for politicians, government economists and city and state planners. Food sustains us, so it is imperative that we learn more about how to sustain the supply of food as the world population grows minute by minute.

[Alexgosling · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book presents a confronting view on how science and technology advances; and excessive farming, consumption and population; have ravaged the world's natural resources.

[Mwmiyake · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wake up world, we need to take responsibility for our Earth.