344 | Precarious Work and the Struggle for Living Wages

AGRICULTURE AND FOOD IN CRISIS: CONFLICT,

RESISTANCE, AND RENEWAL

by Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar. New York, New York: Monthly
Review Press, 2010. $18.95 U.S., paper. ISBN: 978-1-58367-226-6. Pages:
1-298.

Reviewed by Katie M. MacDonald1

The economic and political failings of a dated and self-interested
system based on capital accumulation have generated a new battle cry for
the modern era: Our food system is in crisis! This system, centred upon
tightly consolidated, large-scale, transnational corporations, is also
responsible for squeezing all stages of food production – scarring the land,
air, and people that are each an integral part of this same system.

Taking the 2008 global food (and financial) crisis as the point of
departure, Magdoff and Tokar paint a damning picture of the truly global
scope of our failing food system. Unearthing the true stranglehold that
political and economic power has had on many facets of the food supply,
Magdoff and Tokar outline a number of contemporary issues. The use of
biotechnology in the age of peak oil and soil, food sovereignty and land
reform, and the perennial question of how we are to feed the nine billion
eaters that this planet will carry by 2050. Each of these concerns have
erupted from age-old issues of colonialism, degradation of indigenous
knowledge systems, and the erroneous belief in free trade as a solution to
food provision. This is a rendition of the usual suspects (e.g. International
Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, governments),
up to their usual tricks (faith in export-oriented markets and the illusory
benefit of comparative advantage), except in this version of the story – the
masses are beginning to resist.

The book is set in two parts: first, pieces by Philip McMichael and
Walden Bello contextualize the latest iteration of the food crisis through
the historical and politico-economic underpinnings of capitalized
production of agrofuels, livestock feed, and international land grabbing.
In order for institutional, long-lasting change to occur, the workings of the
industry must first be laid bare. In the next section, the book offers case
studies of resistance to this dominant food system. While the call for food

1 Katie M. MacDonald is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology and
Anthropology at the University of Guelph. Her primary research surrounds the
political economy of food systems, value chains, and the Ontario pork industry.
Katie can be reached at kmacdo08@uoguelph.ca



Book Review: Agriculture and Food in Crisis | 345

policy based on food sovereignty, agro-ecology, and small-scale
landholding – particularly from a Global South perspective – provide a
hopeful and improved form of agricultural productivism, rhetoric of
export-oriented production is one of the most truly devastating and thus
lasting influences that capitalist agribusiness firms have had in this
crisis. The inefficient global marketplace is one where food is treated and
traded like any other commodity, essential skills are destroyed, and those
we depend on for its production, while dwindling in number, have become
disenfranchised “labourers for agribusiness” (Magdoff and Tokar,
2010,14). Each of these facets signals the lasting degradation of poor and
ineffectual agricultural policies mirrored as food policies. When food’s
status as a nourishing life-essential is degraded to speculative futures
trading deals, we all risk marginalizing the health of our bodies and of our
communities.

The message of the book is clear: If you eat, and if you care about
your ability to eat in the near future, you should care about the issues
considered in this book. The range of disciplines represented by the
contributing authors is among the book’s strengths. Contributions include
work by a sociologist (McMichael), an economic geographer (Fahy
Bryceson), food activists and advocacy groups (Kirschenmann; Schiavoni
& Camcaro; GRAIN), agroecologists (Altieri; Holtz-Giménez), economists
and policy analysts (Patniak; Murphy), alongside some contributors who
fall across a number of different categories. This transdisciplinarity adds
depth to the treatment of such a complex set of problems, which are
intertwined with an array of agricultural, ecological, social, and policy
questions. The information offered here provides evidence of the truly
global linkages that exist between flawed production and consumption
patterns.

A central theme in this collection concerns the glaring inefficiencies
of industrialized agriculture, which have become normalized as
unavoidable costs of production. The contribution from GRAIN outlines
the land-grabbing that results from finance capitalists seeking to
diversify their portfolio stocks (GRAIN, 2010,143), while the Tokar piece
describes the implications for land-use of expanding ethanol agrofuel
production (Tokarm, 2010, 127). Contributions by Howard, Patnaik, and
Fahy Bryceson detail the gross inefficiencies of our current food system,
as land is diverted to use for mono-cropped soy for livestock feed (Howard,
2010,176), which later results in a grossly insufficient consumptive calorie
conversion (Patnaik, 2010, 87), and risk to biodiversity (Fahy Bryceson,
2010, 81).



346 | Precarious Work and the Struggle for Living Wages

Once the reader is sufficiently angered by the bleakness of the
current food crisis, and the powerful institutions and the governments
that have played a role in its development, the latter half of the text
provides cases of resistance. There are accounts of peasants enacting
change through “occupation and reclamation – “reform from below…”
(Rosset, 2010, 195) when higher levels of reform were ineffective, along
with the subsequent potential for poverty alleviation through more
labour-intensive, small-scale holdings. There is also a wonderfully positive
spin to the projected spike of oil prices that will serve to make the cost of
industrial agriculture prohibitive (Kirschenmann, 2010, 232), and
essentially force a better designed and managed food system.

Our food system is indeed in crisis. The 2008 food crisis that swept
across much of the globe was one of those times when the sheer
magnitude of the impacts became glaringly obvious. The issues are not
new, but are rather the intensification of productivist policies based on
greed and appropriation. We must each state our claim and our position in
this crisis, and insight into the historical development and complex path
ahead, is the first step for us all to fight for a fairer food system.