I thought I knew what I would think of Who Really Feeds the World by Vandana Shiva: a Wendell Berry-type work with a more global perspective, basically a beautiful reminiscence of an earlier time when farming was done right, but no real prescriptive solutions except for "not like we're doing it now." However, I was very pleasantly surprised that Shiva laid out her issues with modern, industrial agriculture clearly, and advocates for a similarly clear solution: smaller farms.
My interpretation of industrial agriculture has been that of a necessary evil: it sucks that there are so few farmers using too much petroleum, terrible pesticides, and corporate-owned GMOs, but that's what needs to happen in order to feed a world of 8+ billion people. However, Shiva makes a compelling argument that very few people are actually fed by the huge fields of corn and soybeans. She claims that most food is actually produced by small farmers, and that the huge farms are mostly successful at enriching corporations.
I need to spend some time sitting with these ideas, but I'm excited to have been introduced to this new way of thinking about this problem.
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