Rate this book

Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest To End Famine (2008)

by Gary Paul Nabhan(Favorite Author)

3.94 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1597263990 (ISBN13: 9781597263993)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Shearwater

review 1: This short book is less a biography of Vavilov than it is an argument for the importance of seed saving and maintaining crop diversity in the world. With that said, it's an interesting read, and makes a strong argument for the idea that the loss of crop diversity is something we should all be concerned about, as it has very strong implications for food security (or the lack thereof). I would have liked more detail about Vavilov's adventures, and Nabhan's modern-day ones as well, but this was still an enlightening read.
review 2: Nabhan travels in the footsteps of Russian food crop explorer Vavilov and in doing so he gives us a glimpse of how traditional agriculture in the agro-biodiveristy hotspots of the world have changed the last 70-80-90 years. The situatio... moren is not good. Where farmers used to rely on many types of crops and many varieties within crops, all with different characteristics for nutrition, drought and blight resistance and ecosystem sensitivity in general, there is now an ever increasing reliance on industrial cultivars. Nabham shows wonderfully well how indigenous farmers use their knowledge of plants and ecosystems to create food security for themselves. The big problem with this book is that it's written to convince us rather than inform us. It's slow food propaganda disguised as pop science. Vavilov is unduly, and often annoyingly, lionized but the main thing that lets this book down is its failure to back up its main claim. Crop and seed diversity is important for global food security in the (near) future. I believe it but Nabham repeats it so often that it makes you desirous for good evidence and good data that will establish without doubt the casual link between the two. The world is changing and diversity is diminishing and is a bad thing but without elaborating a proper connection between crop diversity and food security the central argument of this book should have been dealt with more critically. less

Download links for: Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine

Advertising