A Year of Food LifeAuthor: Barbara Kingsolver
Subject: non-fiction
Book website: click here
My rating: 3*
About the Book:
This is a story written by the whole family, after moving from Arizona to a lush farm. The family decided to start a project, by living and eating off the land for a year. Each member of the family has an area they write about- the daughter about recipes, the dad about ethical and political information related to food etc. The idea of the project sounds interesting and the book actually presents quite clearly where food comes from (rather than the grocery store) and the impact we each have on the environment. Another interesting fact is how we managed to make whole species of plants disappear, by cross breeding and genetic engineering. I wasn't very fond of the writing style, preachy at times. Although the book has interesting passages, I found that was far too little to keep me engaged in reading it.
From the book:
'According to Indian crop ecologist Vandana Shiva, humans have eaten some 80,000 plant species in our history. After recent precipitous changes, three-quarters of all human food comes from just eight species, with the field quickly narrowing down to genetically modified corn, soy and canola.'
'Six companies [...] now control 98 per cent of the world's seed sales. These companies invest heavily in research whose purpose is to increase food production capacity only in ways that can be controlled strictly. The most common genetic modifications now contained in most U.S. corn, soy, cotton, and canola do one of two things: 1.put a bacterial gene into the plant that kills caterpillars, or 2.alter the crop's physiology so it withstands the herbicide Roundup, so that chemicals can be sprayed over the crop. (The crop stays alive, the weeds die). If you guessed [that one of these companies] controls sales of both the resistant seed and the Roundup, give yourself a star'.
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