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Food Fight
Misguided Policies, Supply Challenges, and the Impending Struggle to Feed a Hungry World
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2025
About this book
Society's most basic challenge is arguably to produce and distribute enough food for its citizens. In 2023, 733 million people faced hunger and 2.3 billion were moderately or severely food insecure. Feeding a growing world population is becoming more difficult in the face of climate change, pest resistance to traditional treatments, and misguided government policies that limit how much food ends up on our plates. Policies to support biofuels, organic agriculture, local foods, and small farms and to oppose genetically modified foods all reduce food production on existing land. This leads to higher food prices, increased carbon emissions, and less natural habitat as cropland expands. Food Fight documents the challenges to adequately feeding the world in the twenty-first century and illustrates the ways in which contemporary food policies in the United States, Europe, and beyond imperil food security. Richard J. Sexton provides a window into the world of modern agriculture and food supply chains. He separates the wheat from the chaff to distinguish policies that will limit, or expand, the global food supply, and he explains how we can construct a food system that forestalls future hunger and environmental degradation.
Author / Editor information
Contributor: Richard J. Sexton
Richard J. Sexton is Distinguished Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at University of California, Davis. He is founder and coeditor of Agricultural and Resource Economics Update, a University of California magazine devoted to contemporary food and environmental issues. He has published extensively in leading economics and agricultural journals.
Topics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
v -
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Preface
vii -
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Acknowledgments
ix -
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Chapter 1 Setting the Table
1 - Part One. Demand for Agricultural Products in the Twenty-First Century
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Chapter 2 Population and Income Growth and Food Demand in the Twenty-First Century
17 -
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Chapter 3 Biofuels
34 -
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Chapter 4 What Will We Eat, and Why Does It Matter?
49 - Part Two. Food Supply and the Challenges to Expanding It
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Chapter 5 Agricultural Productivity Growth
59 -
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Chapter 6 Producing Food in the Right Places and with the Right Inputs Matters a Lot
71 -
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Chapter 7 Climate Change and Pest Resistance Threaten Food Production
81 -
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Chapter 8 Foods That Come with Claims and Policies That Support Them
88 -
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Chapter 9 Organic Foods
94 -
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Chapter 10 Genetic Engineering and Gene Editing
103 -
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Chapter 11 Small Farms
114 -
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Chapter 12 Local Foods
125 -
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Chapter 13 Animal Welfare
131 -
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Chapter 14 Food Manufacturers and Retailers
138 - Part Three. Good, Bad, and Useless Policies to Increase Food Availability
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Chapter 15 Waste Not, Want Not?
153 -
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Chapter 16 Meatless Mondays . . . and Tuesdays and Wednesdays . . . ?
166 -
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Chapter 17 Climate-Smart Agriculture
181 -
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Chapter 18 Policies and Strategies to Sustainably Expand Food Production
187 -
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Notes
195 -
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Recommended Readings
221 -
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Index
225
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
August 26, 2025
eBook ISBN:
9780520400375
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
246
