Now Available – Food Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justice

Were pleased to announce the release of Food Rebellions!, co-published by Grassroots International and our ally Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy. Food Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justice, written by Eric Holt-Gimez and Raj Patel with Annie Shattuck, offers us the real story behind the global food crisis and document the growing trend of grassroots solutions to hunger spreading around the world.

To learn more, read the Press Release below. You can also order books directly from Food First.

August 4, 2009

Just releasedFood Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justice

Today there are over a billion hungry people on the planet, more than ever before in history. While the global food crisis dropped out of the news in 2008, it remains a painful reality for the world’s poor and underserved. Why, in a time of record harvests, are a record number of people going hungry? And why are a handful of corporations making record profits? In their new book, Food Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justice, authors Eric Holt-Gimez and Raj Patel with Annie Shattuck offer us the real story behind the global food crisis and document the growing trend of grassroots solutions to hunger spreading around the world.

Food Rebellions! comes at a time when alternatives to the corporate food system are literally breaking through the asphalt around the world. In the face of increasing corporate control and abuse farmers, consumers, rural and urban people are actively building sustainable and equitable food systems that defend the rights to food, land, water, seeds and livelihoods. Easy to follow evidence and examples are used to document the truly devastating effects of the industrial agri-foods complex, and to debunk the myth that sustainable farming practices and people-centered food systems cannot feed the world.

Anchored in a historical perspective, Food Rebellions is a valuable analytical manual for food activists and an eye-opening resource for the general public.

Scholar-activist Walden Bello writes, In this very timely book, two of the world’s most prominent critics of the global food system, Eric Holt-Gimez and Raj Patel, dissect the causes of hunger and the food price crisis, locating them in a political economy of capitalist industrial production dominated by corporations and driven by the search for profits for the few instead of the welfare of the many. The picture that emerges is a political economy of global production that is failing badly in terms of feeding the world and is itself contributing to the spread of inequalities that promote hunger.

Food Rebellions! has received praise from the highest levels of international governance. Olivier de Shutter, the UN Special Rapporteur charged with defending the human right to food notes, The 20th century was the century of technological revolutions. This century is that of the knowledge revolution, and Eric Holt-Gimez and Raj Patel are in its vanguard. At long last, a book which confronts the real issues: How do we reform our food systems to avoid environmental disaster? How do we recapture the production and distribution of food from the tyranny of unchecked markets? This book is vital reading for all concerned with the right to food.

President of the U.N. General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann praised the book saying, Food Rebellions! provides an analysis that is clear, documented and searing in its challenge to the powers that be. It provides solutions appropriate to our ecological age and to a new era of food democracy and food sovereignty. It reflects the vision of those most affected by the food crisis. I strongly endorse this book and I hope that it gets a wide readership. More importantly though, I hope that it gets the support of the nations of the world suffering from hunger and poverty. It provides insights from those directly suffering from hunger and poverty, who have a right to be heard.

In a time on our planet when official plans to solve the world food crisis call for more subsidies and greater technical fixes, here is finally a manual for creating sustainable, resilient food systems. Food Rebellions: Crisis and the Hunger for Justice is a trail marker on the journey to end hunger and build food sovereignty.

To order Food Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justice, call 510-654-4400 ext 232 or go to
http://www.foodfirst.org/en/catalog/101/book

To invite one of the authors to speak at a campus or community event, call 510-654-4400 ext 221.