Food Economics

Often blamed for the rising rates of obesity and diabetes among black Americans, fast food restaurants like McDonald's have long symbolized capitalism's villainous effects on our nation's most vulnerable communities. But how did fast food restaurants so thoroughly saturate black neighborhoods in the first place? In Franchise, acclaimed historian Marcia Chatelain uncovers a surprising history of cooperation among fast food companies, black capitalists, and civil rights leaders, who believed they found an economic answer to the problem of racial inequality.

By explaining the lean system for identifying and eliminating waste and introducing efficiency in every aspect of the farm operation, The Lean Farm makes the case that small-scale farming can be an attractive career option for young people who are interested in growing food for their community. Working smarter, not harder, also prevents the kind of burnout that start-up farmers often encounter in the face of long, hard, backbreaking labor. Lean principles grew out of the Japanese automotive industry, but they are now being followed by progressive farms around the world....

For decades, a single free market philosophy has dominated global economics. But this is bland and unhealthy—like British food in the 1980s, when best-selling author and economist Ha-Joon Chang first arrived in the UK from South Korea. Just as eating a wide range of cuisines contributes to a more interesting and balanced diet, so, too, is it essential we listen to a variety of economic perspectives. In Edible Economics, Chang makes challenging economic ideas more palatable by plating them alongside stories about food from around the world.

There is a major disconnect between what we wear and our knowledge of its impact on land, air, water, labor, and human health. Even those who value access to safe, local, nutritious food have largely overlooked the production of fiber, dyes, and the chemistry that forms the backbone of modern textile production. While humans are 100 percent reliant on their second skin, it’s common to think little about the biological and human cultural context from which our clothing derives.

Monsanto, a St. Louis chemical firm that became the world’s largest maker of genetically engineered seeds, merged with German pharma-biotech giant Bayer in 2018 - but its Roundup Ready® seeds, introduced 25 years ago, are still reshaping the farms that feed us. When researchers found trace amounts of the firm’s blockbuster herbicide in breakfast cereal bowls, Monsanto faced public outcry. Award-winning historian Bartow J. Elmore shows how the Roundup story is just one of the troubling threads of Monsanto’s past, many told here and woven together for the first time.

Inequality in America manifests in many ways, but perhaps nowhere more than in how we eat. From her years of field research, sociologist and ethnographer Priya Fielding-Singh brings us into the kitchens of dozens of families from varied educational, economic, and ethnoracial backgrounds to explore how - and why - we eat the way we do. We get to know four families intimately: the Bakers, a Black family living below the federal poverty line; the Williamses, a working-class white family just above it; the Ortegas, a middle-class Latinx family; and the Cains, an affluent white family.

Bottled & Sold shows how water went from being a free natural resource to one of the most successful commercial products of the last 100 years - and why we are poorer for it. It's a big story and water is big business. Every second of every day in the United States, a thousand people buy a plastic bottle of water, and every second of every day a thousand more throw one of those bottles away. That adds up to more than 30 billion bottles a year and tens of billions of dollars of sales. Are there legitimate reasons to buy all those bottles?

Years of consolidation, price-fixing, and power grabs by elite industry insiders have harmed consumers and caused environmental destruction. And while that’s hurting us, it’s also making others rich. Now, financial journalist Chloe Sorvino presents a “deeply informed and eye-opening” (Publishers Weekly) look at the meat industry and its future as its fundamental weaknesses are laid bare for all to see.

This audiobook explains based on science and facts how you can be the solution to the big crises we will face to cover our basic needs (food, water, health). It’s just a question of time before the next economic crisis. In the coming years, we will all directly suffer from climate change in one way or another including our kids and grandkids. The rich get richer, banks steal from us, while so many don’t even have decent food or health care.... There is an alternative system in which you can lead toward a solution to these crises.

Tracing a new labor movement sparked and sustained by low-wage workers from across the globe, "We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now" is an urgent, illuminating look at globalization as seen through the eyes of workers-activists: small farmers, fast-food servers, retail workers, hotel housekeepers, home-healthcare aides, airport workers, and adjunct professors who are fighting for respect, safety, and a living wage. Drawing on interviews with activists in many US cities and countries around the world.

Farm animals have been disappearing from our fields as the production of food has become a global industry. We no longer know for certain what is entering the food chain and what we are eating - as the UK horsemeat scandal demonstrated. We are reaching a tipping point as the farming revolution threatens our countryside, health, and the quality of our food wherever we live in the world.

Learn about Food Security with iMinds Money's insightful fast knowledge series. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation defines Food Security as a state when “all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”.

Every year, the world’s farmers produce a lot of food for people to eat. Yet every night, millions of people around the world go to bed hungry. Why are people going without food when the earth is able to produce so much? Max Axiom and the Society of Super Scientists go on a fact-finding mission to discover the reasons behind food scarcity. Young listeners can join the team to find out why many people deal with food insecurity and learn ways that they can help.

Explore the life and achievements of Wallace Amos, entrepreneur and founder of Famous Amos cookies.

Goose Island opened as a family-owned Chicago brewpub in the late 1980s, and it soon became one of the most inventive breweries in the world. In the golden age of light and cheap beers, John Hall and his son Greg brought European flavors to America. With distribution in two dozen states, two brewpubs and status as one of the twenty biggest breweries in the United States, Goose Island became an American success story and was a champion of craft beer. Then, on March 28, 2011, the Halls sold the brewery to Anheuser-Busch InBev, maker of Budweiser, the least craft-like beer imaginable.

Long before the advent of conventional farming methods - which have focused on constant growth, human intervention, and genetic homogeneity - the apple had already grown to become the ubiquitous all-American symbol it is today. Known for their hardiness, ability to adapt to new environments, natural diversity, and plentiful bounty, wildly grown apples were once known as “America’s fruit” throughout the trading world.

Food is a conduit for connection; we envision smiling families gathered around a table-eating, happy, content. But what happens when poverty, mental illness, homelessness, and addiction claim a seat at that table? In The Meth Lunches, Kim Foster peers behind the polished visions of perfectly curated dinners and charming families to reveal the complex reality when poverty and food intersect.

Biotechnology crop production area increased from 1.7 million hectares to 148 million hectares worldwide between 1996 and 2010. While genetically modified food is a contentious issue, the debates are usually limited to health and environmental concerns, ignoring the broader questions of social control that arise when food production methods become corporate-owned intellectual property.

The story of dairying in Wisconsin is the story of how our very landscape and way of life were created. By making cows the center of our farm life and learning how to care for them, our ancestors launched a revolution that changed much more than the way farmers earned their living - it changed us. In Creating Dairyland, journalist, oral historian, and former dairyman Ed Janus opens the pages of the fascinating story of Wisconsin dairy farming.

The world food system is in crisis. Right now, just over one billion people in the world live in extreme poverty. Food shortages are not limited to third world countries and crops. Maybe genetic modification of food might solve the problem. Some people think this is the be-all and the end-all and cite this as a perfect solution for food shortages. This book takes a look at the economic crisis with special attention to the world food system.