BOOK REVIEW


Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity


By Lester R. Brown | Norton and Company Review by Jack Hui Litster


For those of us who call Ontario home, food security


issues hit home in the summer of 2012 when drought impacted Ontario farmers’ crops, leading to a shortage of feed for livestock. The issue was addressed through financial aid from government, and trucking in hay from other provinces. But this is one small piece of a much larger and multi-


faceted global problem that is succinctly explained in Lester Brown’s new book Full Planet Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity. Brown is head of the Earth Policy Institute, and his


book maps out the food security/food sovereignty issue as it relates to population growth, meat consumption, agrofuel, soil erosion, water scarcity, grain yields, climate change, and land grabbing. How did we get to a world food crisis? Brown explains


that recent decades have seen the decline of global carryover (surplus) stocks of grain, and the loss of idle cropland, both critical safety cushions. Meanwhile, as the global population grows by 80 million people per year, as rising incomes bring more


meat eaters to the table, and as agrofuels intercept food crops to create transport fuel, the global demand for grain becomes ever more unsustainable. The idea of a world food crisis is not new. Academics


and specialists like Amartya Sen were discussing the onset of a world food crisis over 30 years ago. Brown makes it clear that the solutions to these


problems are not elusive: they have already been conceived. The solutions involve restructuring the energy


economy, stabilizing world population, rebuilding world grain stocks, raising water productivity, conserving soil, reducing excessive meat consumption, cancelling agrofuel mandates, stabilizing our climate, and eradicating poverty. But success requires bold action from world leaders. We cannot separate our fate from our food supply. Food is power.


// Jack Litster is Fundraising Manager at Inter Pares in Ottawa. He served on the iAM Editorial Board in 2011-12.


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