Learn more: Reading List

 

A reading list on food and hunger – Books to help you learn more

Ploughing Up the Farm: Neoliberalism, Modern Technology and the State of the World’s Farmers
Author Jerry Buckland writes that around the world, farmers’ livelihoods and food security have eroded in the past 20 years. The book explores the reasons why and calls for farm security policies led by farmers and changes to the global institutions that he argues have had detrimental effects on farmers.

Stations of the Banquet: Faith Foundations for Food Justice
Cathy C. Campbell, rector of St. Matthew Anglican Church in Winnipeg, draws extensively on Scripture to explore the Christian story as a food story. In doing so, the book jacket notes, she “highlights the power of our Biblical and theological traditions to name the root issues of the day, shape hope and define horizons for action.”

Freedom from Want: The Human Right to Adequate Food
Everyone should have adequate food. Author and political science professor George Kent argues that the ideals of that statement won’t be met until people take seriously the idea that everyone has the right to adequate food.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Fiction writer and essayist Barbara Kingsolver chronicles a year’s endeavor to buy food raised in their neighborhood, grow it themselves or learn to live without it.

Food Wars: Public Health and the Battle for Mouths, Minds and Markets
This book by Tim Lang and Michael Heasman explores how the “emergence of global markets has a far-reaching impact on health, food security, social justice and quality of life,” the book cover says. “What matters now is not just what we eat but how and where it has been produced, distributed and processed, and the assumptions on which this production is based – a global politics of food and health.”

Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope
Author Brian McLaren, a leader in the emerging church movement, explores what the life and teachings of Jesus have to say about critical global problems today.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Author Micheal Pollan follows – in the words of the book jacket – “each of the food chains that sustain us – industrial food, organic or alternative food and food we forage ourselves – from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating.”

Agri-Culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature
Despite progress in agriculture and food systems, millions of people are hungry and malnourished. Author Jules Pretty, a professor at the University of Essex, draws on stories of successful transformation to make a case that the time has come for a new agricultural revolution.

The Essential Agrarian Reader
Hear from farmers, philosophers and environmentalists – including renowned author Wendell Berry – in this compilation of essays edited by Norman Wirzba. “Before I had read this book,” writes Barbara Kingsolver, “I would have hesistated to suggest that one’s relationship to the land, to consumption and food, is a religious matter. But it’s true; the decision to attend to the health of one’s habitat and food chains is a spiritual choice…”

Note: Information compiled from book jackets and publishers’ descriptions. Titles were provided by Dan Wiens, MCC’s water and food security coordinator.

 

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