Overview
In the early nineteenth century, as the American population grew rapidly, demands on crop output increased. Seeing an opportunity to play upon fears from market demand, chemical companies declared war on the vile, profitsucking, output-wreaking, arch-nemesis of the average American farmer - bugs. With precision, pesticide manufacturers delivered a 'shock and awe' media campaign, that can only be compared to the current blitzkrieg from today's pharmaceutical companies. Bugs were the threat to the American dream - and there was a cure available to every farmer in spray, granule, dust, or systemic form that could be applied to your crops. Will Allen's The War on Bugs reveals how advertisers, editors, scientists, large scale farmers, government agencies, and even Dr. Seuss, colluded to convince farmers to use deadly chemicals, hormones, and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in an effort to pad their wallets and control the American farm enterprise. Utilizing dozens of original advertisements and promotions to illustrate the story, Allen details how consumers and activists have struggled against toxic food. The War on Bugs shouts that the time to stop poisoning our food, water, air, and ourselves is now!
Full Product Details
Author: Will Allen
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Co
Imprint: Chelsea Green Publishing Co
Dimensions:
Width: 23.40cm
, Height: 2.40cm
, Length: 23.40cm
Weight: 0.948kg
ISBN: 9781933392462
ISBN 10: 1933392460
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 01 January 2008
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
Because of Will Allen, and other organic farmers and advocates like him, we now can choose to eat foods without industrial chemicals, wear clothes made from cotton grown without pesticides, and look again at farms-at least the organic ones-as places of natural harmony, not as industrial wastelands. In The War on Bugs, Allen documents how chemical weapons manufacturers, among others, convinced farmers to spray their toxic wastes on our soil, devastating our land and our health. You won't believe what they didn't teach you in school. The produce aisle will never look the same to you again. <br>--John Passacantando, Executive Director, Greenpeace USA
Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment- This book is useful and important to anthropologists not because of the answers that it gives but because of the questions that it asks and the answers it suggests that we need to find. ... Allen's work asks us to dig deeper into the history of the small family farmer and to understand in detail the process by which the image imposed on American farming by agribusiness came to dominate public consciousness. ... Allen's ambitiousness in writing this book has brought broad and related themes into view that converge in the historical processes and public consciousness surrounding chemical farming in the United States. It is a highly useful book for under-graduate classes and for scholars seeking to develop new ideas and critical perspectives on the history of current issues in agriculture.
Author Information
Will Allen has been farming organically since 1972 in Oregon, California, and Vermont, where he now co-manages Cedar Circle Farm. He founded the Sustainable Cotton Project and is a board member of the Organic Consumers Association, Rural Vermont, and is a co-chair of Farms Not Arms.
