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Never Out of Season: How Having the Food We Want When We Want It Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future
by
The bananas we eat today aren't your parents' bananas: We eat a recognizable, consistent breakfast fruit that was standardized in the 1960s from dozens into one basic banana. But because of that, the banana we love is dangerously susceptible to a pathogen that might wipe them out.
That's the story of our food today: Modern science has brought us produce in perpetual abund ...more
That's the story of our food today: Modern science has brought us produce in perpetual abund ...more
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Hardcover, 336 pages
Published
March 14th 2017
by Little, Brown and Company
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Start your review of Never Out of Season: How Having the Food We Want When We Want It Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future

I agree with other reviewers in the primary complaint about this book- the title is totally not in line with the content. I was kind of expecting something along the lines of Fugitive Denim or Flower Confidential- an insiders look into a commodity/industry, with a focus on our self-indulgence and the lengths to which producers and distributors go to satisfy our desire for fruit out of season, exotic flavorings, etc. I would have enjoyed that book more, I think. This book presents essentially the
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I found this book fascinating. As a food historian, I was aware of many of the problems with mono-culture food supply, but Mr Dunn made me realize that this problem is much bigger then I ever imagined.
Mr Dunn also introduced me to many of the people of the past, and present, that have made attempts to save our fragile food supply.
This book is a must read for everyone who eats!
Mr Dunn also introduced me to many of the people of the past, and present, that have made attempts to save our fragile food supply.
This book is a must read for everyone who eats!

At the risk of being too cute: this is more a seed catalog than a sustained argument.
Seed catalog--that's a term I picked up from the old pseudoscientific author Ivan T. Sanderson, who would complain about books that were hardly more than lists of anomalous things, with nothing else added. Dunn's book isn't just a list, but the book doesn't really have an overarching perspective. He isn't in control of his material, and so it rides him, expanding beyond the scopes of what he wants to touch upon. ...more
Seed catalog--that's a term I picked up from the old pseudoscientific author Ivan T. Sanderson, who would complain about books that were hardly more than lists of anomalous things, with nothing else added. Dunn's book isn't just a list, but the book doesn't really have an overarching perspective. He isn't in control of his material, and so it rides him, expanding beyond the scopes of what he wants to touch upon. ...more

Mr. Dunn is definitely preaching to the choir here, but this is one of the better titles I've read about the need for biodiversity. Not only does the author explain how we've come to this stage --farming primarily monocultures that are all dependent of chemical inputs to maintain production/fight off plant diseases and pests-- but he also gives historical examples of the almost inevitable results (potatoes, bananas, rubber trees, cacao). Fascinating reading about the various scientists who have
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Only complaint is with the title. This is much more a story of how crops are saved (by hard work, nature and luck) and why we desperately need to conserve our remaining biodiversity, not so much a direct survey of the supermarket and what the consequences of demanding every type of food all season are.

Literal two stars, as ever: It was okay.
An informative (if repetitive) book, but not on the topic I was hoping for; I now know plenty about the history of seed saving, but not quite as much as I would hope about the insider process of how the forces of capitalism have poked and prodded our agricultural system into providing grocery stores the exact same fruits and vegetables year round, which is why I picked this book up in the first place. An expose about how bananas are picked early and artifi ...more
An informative (if repetitive) book, but not on the topic I was hoping for; I now know plenty about the history of seed saving, but not quite as much as I would hope about the insider process of how the forces of capitalism have poked and prodded our agricultural system into providing grocery stores the exact same fruits and vegetables year round, which is why I picked this book up in the first place. An expose about how bananas are picked early and artifi ...more

4.5
Interesting book, though not quite what I was expecting. Rob Dunn is great at throwing hilarious asides into otherwise serious topics (I would love to read a novel by him on the oddities of a college biology faculty, as he jokingly pitched in this book.) I learned a lot about not only the threats to our food supply, but the threats that come from treating much of what we've learned about agriculture as private information owned by corporations. ...more
Interesting book, though not quite what I was expecting. Rob Dunn is great at throwing hilarious asides into otherwise serious topics (I would love to read a novel by him on the oddities of a college biology faculty, as he jokingly pitched in this book.) I learned a lot about not only the threats to our food supply, but the threats that come from treating much of what we've learned about agriculture as private information owned by corporations. ...more

A book about plant pathogens, which isn't what it presents itself as; I gathered from the title and subtitle that it would be about the modern practice of having all foods in all seasons, but while that is (barely) touched upon, it really has nothing to do with the book. It's fine, I guess, if you were looking for a popular science book about plant pathogens.
...more

Excellent read about the perpetual race between humanity's crops and nature's pests, and the challenges we face in trying to stay ahead. Dunn explores many of the times when we've fallen behind in this race in the past (the Irish potato famine and the loss of the first widely known banana species are 2 fairly well known examples) and uses this history to show how inevitable it is that we will fall behind again.
Like many reviewers, I didn't think the title quite fit with the book, as it didn't r ...more
Like many reviewers, I didn't think the title quite fit with the book, as it didn't r ...more

Never Out of Season: How Having the Food We Want When We Want It Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future by Rob Dunn is a highly recommended discourse on the importance of diversity in our increasingly genetically standardized crops grown worldwide.
We used to know what season it was and where a person lived based on what food was available. Now agriculture has been globalized and homogenized. Food crops are breed for taste, productiveness and hardiness - and then that selected variety is the on ...more
We used to know what season it was and where a person lived based on what food was available. Now agriculture has been globalized and homogenized. Food crops are breed for taste, productiveness and hardiness - and then that selected variety is the on ...more

I received this book as part of the Goodreads First Reads giveaway.
That was really interesting. I had never known how much of modern agriculture is dependent on breeding traits from wild variants of crops or how much trouble there is in gathering the seeds of the wild variants for storing in seed vaults and then keeping the seeds alive in seed vaults.
One Russian scientist made a career of venturing to Anatolia and Central Asia to gather varieties of wheat and even learned local languages so he c ...more
That was really interesting. I had never known how much of modern agriculture is dependent on breeding traits from wild variants of crops or how much trouble there is in gathering the seeds of the wild variants for storing in seed vaults and then keeping the seeds alive in seed vaults.
One Russian scientist made a career of venturing to Anatolia and Central Asia to gather varieties of wheat and even learned local languages so he c ...more

This is an enjoyable, and important book, that persuasively describes serious and growing threats to the world’s food supplies caused by a worrying decline in biodiversity and also addresses the need for increased public awareness of the necessity for wild plant conservation in general.
Plant conservation is a topic that doesn’t receive anywhere near the level of media attention and public recognition it deserves. This book is written in an informative, narrative style that will appeal to a broa ...more
Plant conservation is a topic that doesn’t receive anywhere near the level of media attention and public recognition it deserves. This book is written in an informative, narrative style that will appeal to a broa ...more

According to both Ecclesiastes and The Byrds – everything has a season. Everything, that is, except your favorite produce.
On any and every given day, you'll find the same fruits and veggies at your local grocery store. There are always bananas, oranges, berries, avocados, tomatoes, and salad greens. This lack of seasonality has had a profound, likely deleterious, effect on worldwide crop diversity.
Fact: We only grow the crops that are the most popular and most robust. That sounds reasonable on ...more
On any and every given day, you'll find the same fruits and veggies at your local grocery store. There are always bananas, oranges, berries, avocados, tomatoes, and salad greens. This lack of seasonality has had a profound, likely deleterious, effect on worldwide crop diversity.
Fact: We only grow the crops that are the most popular and most robust. That sounds reasonable on ...more

"Once humans started to farm, they were wed to the field. There was no way to return to gathering. Populations grew fast, thanks to agriculture, and as they did they became ever more dependent on their crops. The crops, in turn, became ever more dependent on people. When the people suffered, the crops suffered. When the crops suffered, the people suffered. Farming was not an insight; it was instead a marriage, a bond between humans and seeds." - pg 215
Having studied anthropology and environment ...more
Having studied anthropology and environment ...more

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This book is not quite what the title says it is. When I first heard about the book it seemed like it would be an interesting read. How we can have food that is basically the same all the time, with less concern regarding seasonal changes, lack of water/fertilizer, geographic concerns, etc. At least, that's what I thought the book was about.
Instead it's a really dry book about how delicate the food chain is in regards to pests, pathogens, etc. To be fair, that is a very important topic but that ...more
Instead it's a really dry book about how delicate the food chain is in regards to pests, pathogens, etc. To be fair, that is a very important topic but that ...more

Great read on how the lack of diversity of our globalize crops leaves them (and therefore our food security) vulnerable to various pathogens. I really appreciated Dunn’s humorous quips and thorough notes section. He focusses on a few main crops such as cassava, corn, potatoes, latex (rubber), wheat, bananas, and coffee and outlines their evolution into monoculture. I also enjoyed how he spotlighted seed researchers/conservationists like Cary Fowler and Nikolai Vavilov as well as the lengths that
...more

"Never Out of Season" is an informative read about food agriculture, its history of disasters around the world, and the need to focus on taking care and improving our food supply. The only problem about this book is its cover. The tagline and the close-up photo of a banana plastered with "Best Before" tags of various dates can mislead people, me included, to assume that this book is about how food companies manipulate the freshness of produce for the sake of quantity over quality. Anti-GMO activ
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Fascinating and not entirely depressing read about the vulnerability of our food supply. Dunn examines everything from how we came to eat the few varieties of plants we eat (blame the Conquistadors and a few handfuls of survivor seeds), to past food threats, to efforts to save our food future. I'd read about the Irish Potato Famine and Cavendish banana before, and how the tomatoes we eat represent just the narrowest genetic slice of what's out there, but Dunn makes clear the pattern set by remov
...more

I felt a little conflicted about this book. On the one hand, yes. Your point is well taken. On the other hand, pretty much all of the people profiled as "making a difference" or doing something that helps the situation are white men. Also the ultimate takeaway seems to be that "Science will solve it, we just need to collect all the seeds of all the plants everywhere," even though the author has alluded earlier to how (1) scientific methods actually caused a lot of the problems, and (2) the threa
...more

I received a free copy of this book in a Goodreads Giveaway.
I thought this was informative and well-researched, and I found it very interesting. However, it wasn't what I was expecting based on the title. Every now and then at the end of a chapter the author would have a few brilliant pages that kept me avidly turning pages into the next section, only to be mildly disappointed that he didn't really discuss what I wanted him to.
But overall, once I left the expectations of the title behind (I was ...more
I thought this was informative and well-researched, and I found it very interesting. However, it wasn't what I was expecting based on the title. Every now and then at the end of a chapter the author would have a few brilliant pages that kept me avidly turning pages into the next section, only to be mildly disappointed that he didn't really discuss what I wanted him to.
But overall, once I left the expectations of the title behind (I was ...more

This book took me quite a while to read, since it takes concentration to keep track of the historical and scientific information that it contains. But I did find it very interesting and well written, and I think what the author is talking about is very important.
It left me a little scared, though, that our food security is in peril, and there is not much as the average consumer that we can do to change that. I already do what he suggests we can do - grow some amount of our own food, buy/grow her ...more
It left me a little scared, though, that our food security is in peril, and there is not much as the average consumer that we can do to change that. I already do what he suggests we can do - grow some amount of our own food, buy/grow her ...more

Rob Dunn's book will make you think about the foods you eat, the details of what brought them to your local grocery, your place in the web, and how fragile the entire system is. The author does a nice job of explaining the science of our increasing reliance on a limited number of species of crops. Loss of diversity is causing vulnerability to plants, putting them at great risk. With use of true stories he shows not only the challenges to our food supply but we can do as consumers to help. Overal
...more

It was pretty good; not quite what I was expecting (I thought it was going to be more about seasonality than it did), but interesting nonetheless. Dunn loves to repeat the central point he's trying to make: conserving the wild species of our staple crops and those plants we have yet to discover so as to ensure that future food sources do not succumb to disease and predation, all at once and with no remedy. The facts Dunn throws around are impressive, as far as just how dependent we've become on
...more

If you like to eat, you should find this book interesting and educational.
The author focuses the reader on the simple fact that our world's food supply is too dependent on big agriculture and their chemical manufactures, and more people need to become aware of the dangers we face as the world's population continues to grow and grow.
The author encourages readers to grow our own food, or buy from our local farmers which is a trend that I think many people have started to do in the past 5-10 years ...more
The author focuses the reader on the simple fact that our world's food supply is too dependent on big agriculture and their chemical manufactures, and more people need to become aware of the dangers we face as the world's population continues to grow and grow.
The author encourages readers to grow our own food, or buy from our local farmers which is a trend that I think many people have started to do in the past 5-10 years ...more

Purchase Never Out of Season here for just $12!
Authoritative, urgent, and filled with fascinating heroes and villains from around the world, Never Out of Season is the story of the crops we depend on most and the scientists racing to preserve the diversity of life, in order to save our food supply, and us.
Paul - The Book Grocer ...more
Authoritative, urgent, and filled with fascinating heroes and villains from around the world, Never Out of Season is the story of the crops we depend on most and the scientists racing to preserve the diversity of life, in order to save our food supply, and us.
Paul - The Book Grocer ...more

This book is another reminder of how planting vast tracts of genetically identical crops spurs development of pests and diseases. A new, resistant, variety used to be good for 12 years, now we are lucky to get 2-3 years. Yes we have many new genetic tools to use in designing new crops but, we are losing the genetic diversity of traditional seeds from which we may harvest resistant genes. Our salvation can only be found in diversity of crops and within crops.
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