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Farming ... who needs it?(Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization)(Book Review)
Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization By Richard Manning North Point Press, 240 pages, $24
Richard Manning is not happy with the way that the human race has evolved. In Against the Grain, he places the fall of man at about the time the first human grew the first crop--since then, everything bad that has happened to the human race can be blamed on what he calls "catastrophic agriculture."
Yep, hunter-gathering is the way to go. After all, agriculture is responsible for poverty, and genocide, and malnutrition, and obesity, and, who knows, the common cold. Manning does lay many diseases directly at the foot of agriculture. It's a heavy burden we farmers bear, as we go about decreasing mental and physical alertness and ruining the egalitarianism that was mankind's good fortune before potato, corn, and wheat plants made their cursed appearance on the world stage.
Manning is nothing if not doggedly single-minded. If he were a football coach, he'd call a time-out in the final minute of a football game with a 50-point lead in order to score again. From smallpox epidemics, to wars, to the Soviet-engineered famine in the Ukraine, to the millions starved by China's "Great Leap Forward" it is all agriculture's fault. In case you missed the point, he'll add to the litany in the next breath, and on every page of this book until you've sworn off eating anything but roots and nuts and whatever squirrels you can trap in your front yard, just in the hope that he'll stop.
Manning is also a fervent critic of processed food, with special scorn reserved for corn, the most prevalent crop on American farms. Corn as cattle feed is bad, but corn as sweetener is worst of all. He drags up decade-old legal problems of a major corn processor as his main evidence in his indictment of the unsuspecting maize plant. He credits the inspiration for this book to his observation that Americans are fat, and that obesity is caused by corn, or at least the foodstuffs made from corn. While our society would probably have survived without the 64-ounce Big Gulp soda, it's doubtful that corn deserves the designation of public enemy number one.
Manning blames the ...
- Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization.(Brief...
- Magazine article from: Science News July 31, 2004 700+ words
AGAINST THE GRAIN: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization RICHARD MANNING Manning looks at the seedy side of agriculture since the beginning of time. He recounts how human disease, imperialism, colonialism...
- Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization.(Book Review)
- Magazine article from: OnEarth Connors, Philip March 22, 2004 700+ words
AGAINST THE GRAIN How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization BY RICHARD MANNING North Point Press, 240 pp., $24 We've...through 10,000 years of human history, author Richard Manning isn't so sure. Instead of freeing humanity...
- Manning, Richard. Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked...
- Magazine article from: Library Journal Wiese, William H. February 1, 2004 700+ words
North Point: Farrar. Feb. 2004. c.240p. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-86547-622-5. $24. AGRI Manning is a Montana-based writer whose books (e.g., Inside Passage; Food's Frontier) frequently focus on environmental themes. His latest takes a sweeping, critical look at agriculture's social, economic, and
- Manning, Richard. Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked...
- Magazine article from: Booklist Monaghan, Patricia February 1, 2004 700+ words
Feb. 2004. 240p. index. Farrar/North Point, $24 (0-86547-622-5). 630. A growing body of somewhat controversial scholarship ties the beginnings of war to the "culture of scarcity" that emerged with the invention, sometime in the Neolithic era and probably in the eastern Mediterranean, of
- A manifesto on reinventing agriculture.(The Seattle Times)
- Newspaper article from: Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service Mapes, Lynda V. March 17, 2004 700+ words
...Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization" by Richard Manning; North Point Press ($24) ___ At times prescient, at times preposterous, Richard Manning's newest book, "Against the Grain...
- A manifesto on reinventing agriculture.
- News wire article from: Seattle Times (Seattle, WA) March 17, 2004 700+ words
...Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization" by Richard Manning; North Point Press ($24) ___ At times prescient, at times preposterous, Richard Manning's newest book, "Against the Grain...
- Development assistance: towards a better model: Richard Manning reflects on...
- Newspaper article from: New Zealand International Review Manning, Richard May 1, 2006 700+ words
In looking at progress in 2005 from the perspective of development, I should prefix my comments by emphasising that what donors do can only be complementary to the efforts of developing countries themselves. No country has developed simply by accepting aid: all successful countries have based their
- Journal Star, Peoria, Ill., agriculture briefs column.
- Newspaper article from: Journal Star (Peoria, Illinois) October 26, 2004 700+ words
...County. For more information, call (309) 686-7070. HARVEST DINNER: Richard Manning, author of "Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization," is the speaker for the Land Connection benefit dinner at 5 p.m. on...
- Agritopia gone wrong.(Required Reading)(Book Review)
- Magazine article from: Top Producer Phipps, John October 1, 2004 700+ words
...quite another to read that agriculture is the problem. Indeed, Richard Manning's polemic against farming (Against the Grain: How Agriculture Hijacked Civilization) is essentially a 10,000-year-old grudge nursed by a hunter...
- Incurable optimist.(Editorial)
- Magazine article from: OnEarth Barasch, Douglas S. January 1, 2005 700+ words
...to feed the hungry in developing countries. In his review of the book, Richard Manning, the author of Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization, points to the important distinction between the science of genetics...
Source: HighBeam Research, Farming ... who needs it?(Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has...