Food Rebellions!: Forging Food Sovereignty to Solve the Global Food Crisis

Food Rebellions! takes a deep look at the world food crisis and its impact on the global South and underserved communities in the industrial North. Eric Holt-Gimenez and Raj Patel unpack the planet's environmentally and economically vulnerable food systems to reveal the root causes of the crisis. They shows us how the steady erosion of local and national control over their food systems has made nations dependent on a volatile global market and subject to the short-term interests of a handful of transnational agri-food monopolies. Food Rebellions! is a powerful handbook for those seeking to understand the causes and potential solutions to the current food crisis now affecting nearly half of the world's people. Why are food riots occurring around the world in a time of record harvests? What are the real impacts of agrofuels and genetically engineered crops? Food Rebellions! suggests that to solve the food crisis, we must change the global food system-from the bottom up and from the top down. The book frames the current food crisis as unique opportunity to develop productive local food systems that are engines for sustainable economic development. Hunger and poverty, the authors insist, can be eliminated by democratising food systems and respecting people's right to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food and to food-producing resources-in short, by advancing food sovereignty.

Eric Holt-Gimenez is the executive director of the Food First Institute for Food and Development Policy. He is the author of Campesino a Campesino: Voices from Latin America's Farmer to Farmer Movement for Sustainable Agriculture (2006). Raj Patel studied at Cornell University, the London School of Economics and Oxford University. He is the co-editor of 'Promised Land: Competing Visions of Agrarian Reform', published by Food First and the Land Research Action Network. He is the author of the international bestseller Stuffed and Starved (www.stuffedandstarved.org)