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Resetting the Table: Straight Talk About the Food We Grow and Eat
A bold, science-based corrective to the groundswell of misinformation about food and how it's produced, examining in detail local and organic food, food companies, nutrition labeling, ethical treatment of animals, environmental impact, and every other aspect from farm to table
Consumers want to know more about their food--including the farm from which it came, the chemicals used in its production, its nutritional value, how the animals were treated, and the costs to the environment. They are being told that buying organic foods, unprocessed and sourced from small local farms, is the most healthful and sustainable option. Now, Robert Paarlberg reviews the evidence and finds abundant reason to disagree. He delineates the ways in which global food markets have in fact improved our diet, and how "industrial" farming has recently turned green, thanks to GPS-guided precision methods that cut energy use and chemical pollution. He makes clear that America's serious obesity crisis does not come from farms, or from food deserts, but instead from "food swamps" created by food companies, retailers, and restaurant chains. And he explains how, though animal welfare is lagging behind, progress can be made through continued advocacy, more progressive regulations, and perhaps plant-based imitation meat. He finds solutions that can make sense for farmers and consumers alike and provides a road map through the rapidly changing worlds of food and farming, laying out a practical path to bring the two together.
Consumers want to know more about their food--including the farm from which it came, the chemicals used in its production, its nutritional value, how the animals were treated, and the costs to the environment. They are being told that buying organic foods, unprocessed and sourced from small local farms, is the most healthful and sustainable option. Now, Robert Paarlberg reviews the evidence and finds abundant reason to disagree. He delineates the ways in which global food markets have in fact improved our diet, and how "industrial" farming has recently turned green, thanks to GPS-guided precision methods that cut energy use and chemical pollution. He makes clear that America's serious obesity crisis does not come from farms, or from food deserts, but instead from "food swamps" created by food companies, retailers, and restaurant chains. And he explains how, though animal welfare is lagging behind, progress can be made through continued advocacy, more progressive regulations, and perhaps plant-based imitation meat. He finds solutions that can make sense for farmers and consumers alike and provides a road map through the rapidly changing worlds of food and farming, laying out a practical path to bring the two together.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2021
47 people are currently reading
516 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
April 17, 2021
Mr. Paarlberg makes some important points that I believe are essentially correct. As much as we may like to bash agricultural science and large scale commercial farming, they have brought us an unprecedented bounty of food so that today we feed more people in the world better than we have ever done in history. If we were to go back to the ways of the past or to mandate widespread organic farming or implement some of the other parts of the progressive agenda for agriculture, the result would be less food, higher prices and a greater negative impact on the planet. And the people who would suffer the most would be the poor. What we need to do is to keep implementing the science better to continue to improve yields and quality, to spread these benefits to parts of the world where old methods are still followed and hunger is still a problem and to keeping finding more ways to reduce the environmental impact of farming. Mr. Paarlberg acknowledges some of the problems of industrial agriculture - runoff, carbon emissions, unequal benefits for the rich, and the end of the cherished (but hard) way of life of the small scale family farmer, but I agree with him that trying to turn back the clock isn't the answer. I'm fine with GMOs though I do think that they need to be regulated. I like to buy and eat organic locally grown foods, but I agree that they aren't ever going to be the way to feed the world. And I'm frustrated when compassionate smart people who I usually agree with take unscientific positions that, if realized, may do more harm than good to the people who they champion.
I don't agree with everything that Mr. Paarlberg says. I think that he makes the proponents of local foods and organic farming and the opponents of GMOs look dumber than most of them really are. He takes their worst arguments as if they were their best and then knocks them down with ease. I guess it's a legitimate technique of persuasive writing, but not quite as even handed as it purports to be.
In the end Mr. Paarlberg's heart is mostly in the right place. He does care about the poor, the environment and animal welfare, and he makes a good case that people who share those values should support large scale scientific agriculture.
I don't agree with everything that Mr. Paarlberg says. I think that he makes the proponents of local foods and organic farming and the opponents of GMOs look dumber than most of them really are. He takes their worst arguments as if they were their best and then knocks them down with ease. I guess it's a legitimate technique of persuasive writing, but not quite as even handed as it purports to be.
In the end Mr. Paarlberg's heart is mostly in the right place. He does care about the poor, the environment and animal welfare, and he makes a good case that people who share those values should support large scale scientific agriculture.
February 15, 2021
In ‘Resetting the Table,’ author Robert Paarlberg takes readers on an information-dense, thorough, surprising, accessible, palatable, clear-eyed, straightforward, down-to-earth [in more ways than one], fascinating, and illuminating tour through a complex subjectscape. Commonly accepted views regarding organic and locally-grown food, as well as GMOs and Big Ag in general, are systematically dissected and exposed as the unrealistic and simplistic notions they are. Reading this book has most definitely made me a more savvy consumer. In fact, it’s not hyperbole to declare that ‘Resetting the Table’ may increase my savings and enhance my life. This is a seminal read for anyone interested in their own health as well as the health of the planet.
February 19, 2021
I interviewed the author here: https://youtu.be/3NvdejfZ0jc about this book, after reading it. This science-forward book is a much needed narrative against the coastal pro-local pro-organic echo chamber.
April 10, 2021
Honestly, very disappointing. I was looking for a balanced review of our modern food system and a reasonable criticism of some of the "new wave" organic movement. Unfortunately, in this book, I find a lot of the arguments for organic food and a more tradition style food system are misrepresented. This effectively leads to lots of strawman being knocked down in this book. For someone who might not be as informed on traditional/local/organic food systems they might then misunderstand the arguments for such systems.
March 30, 2021
The book is information dense and I would have benefited by reading more slowly. Based on my understanding of the text, I’ve attached a letter grade to some of the book’s topics to state how well each item serves the American diet. Industrial row crop farming (when precision farming is used) B+
Grocery item manufacturing and restaurant industry C. The author’s argument that this is where most of the damage is done to the American diet.
Local or organic farming B-
Farming in developing countries cannot be industrialized as in US, but NGO’s approaches can be weak or a poor fit. Author praised good south Asian adoption of advanced seed technologies.
Biotech food included info on plant based meat substitutes as well as lab grown meat. Author favors these as environmental protection.
Farm animals C. Author sides with Humane Society while giving a fairly even handed description of livestock farming.
The epilogue gives a strong argument that crop farmers in particular should side with healthy diets to stop giving cover to grocery item manufacturers whose predatory marketing and lobbying degrade the American diet particularly the diet of school children.
Grocery item manufacturing and restaurant industry C. The author’s argument that this is where most of the damage is done to the American diet.
Local or organic farming B-
Farming in developing countries cannot be industrialized as in US, but NGO’s approaches can be weak or a poor fit. Author praised good south Asian adoption of advanced seed technologies.
Biotech food included info on plant based meat substitutes as well as lab grown meat. Author favors these as environmental protection.
Farm animals C. Author sides with Humane Society while giving a fairly even handed description of livestock farming.
The epilogue gives a strong argument that crop farmers in particular should side with healthy diets to stop giving cover to grocery item manufacturers whose predatory marketing and lobbying degrade the American diet particularly the diet of school children.
February 16, 2021
This one is tough for me to review. It is mostly well written, well documented and quite thorough. It was, perhaps, a little too thorough in places, but that is only the impression of this reader, who is a generalist with only a generic interest in the subject. I did notice one glaring mistake that should have been caught by the author or the editor. On page 199, the author suggests that egg production, in the US, had risen to 100 trillion annually. That's would be a fancy trick! That would be equal to eight eggs per day per every living, breathing soul in the US. The correct number is greater than 100 billion.
In any case, I recommend the book to anyone wanting a broad review of agriculture and food.
In any case, I recommend the book to anyone wanting a broad review of agriculture and food.
December 16, 2021
This book presents a balanced view in the discussion of modern farming and meeting the food needs of the world.
January 11, 2022
Robert Paarlberg is an emeritus professor who studies international food and agricultural policy, poverty reduction, nutrition, and sustainability: https://wcfia.harvard.edu/people/robe.... His book, Resetting the Table: Straight Talk About the Food We Grow and Eat, looks at a number of controversial areas. As a preview to the book I listened to Paarlberg being interviewed in Dec, 2021 on Paul Shapiro’s Business for Good podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast....
Some, but not all, of what Paarlberg states runs counter to what might be considered progressive ideas on food. Thus, I found reading the book a useful exercise in questioning my beliefs. The book’s eight chapters cover, in the following order, industrial farming, the impact of modern food on poor health, the limits of local food, the pros and cons of organic food, the Green Revolution, genetically engineered foods, farmed animals, and the future of food. Most of the data and stories in the book are from the U.S. where Paarlberg is based.
Chapter 1 “Testing the Case Against Industrial Farming” makes a distinction between Big Agriculture and Big Food. Big Ag grows the food; Big Food (almost seven times larger than Big Ag) processes the food and brings it to eateries and stores. While Paarlberg puts most of the blame for bad diets on Big Food, Big Ag also gets some blame, “farm crops and farm animals were developed to deliver things like rapid growth, cosmetic appearance, shelf life, processing traits, and resistance to pests and disease. There was little or no emphasis on nutrition.” As a result, nutrient quality of plants has declined.
I had thought that subsidies given to Big Ag made the wrong foods, such as meat, cheaper. Paarlberg claims that the purpose of the subsidies is to support farmers’ income. Higher, not lower, prices provides one way that this is accomplished. For example, using subsidies to pay some farmers not to plant, decreases supply, thereby raising prices. Other policies, such as restricting imports and mandating purchase of plants for non-food uses, including corn bought to produce ethanol, also raises prices.
A contrasting perspective on the impact of food subsidies on U.S. prices for meat and dairy can be seen in this Columbia University report - https://jia.sipa.columbia.edu/removin... - that states, “the U.S. government spends up to $38 billion each year to subsidize the meat and dairy industries, with less than one percent of that sum allocated to aiding the production of fruits and vegetables. … while shoppers pay lower immediate prices at the checkout counter, their tax dollars fund major meat operations and advertising.”
Does Big Ag harm the environment? Yes, but that is because more food is being produced, as the population increases and incomes rise. “The scale of the damage [caused by Big Ag] is indeed quite large, but this is due to the expanded quantity of food now being produced, not the way it is produced.” The technology of Big Ag actually reduces environmental damage because Big Ag is so efficient. Low-tech farming is much less efficient and, thus, if it was the main way the world was fed, would require clearing more land, and food would cost much more. “Modern farming protects the environment not only by using less land compared to several decades ago; it also uses less water, less fossil energy, and fewer chemicals for every bushel produced.” Paarlberg also asks the question of what would farmers prefer: backbreaking, hands-on-under-the-hot-sun low-tech methods or letting technology do much of the work?
Chapter 2, titled Food Swamp Nation, blames Big Food for the bad diets most American eat. Nothing controversial here, except Paarlberg denies the prevalence of “food deserts,” places where poor people live with little access to healthy food. “The real problem has not been a lack of access to healthy foods, but a dramatically increased exposure to unhealthy foods from fast-food restaurants, corner mini-marts, take-out pizza joints—and also, alas, from supermarkets. Low-income Americans are in trouble not because they are stranded in food deserts but because they are drowning in food swamps.”
Big Food companies employ thousands of scientists whose focus lies not in making foods healthier, but on “taste, aroma, texture, color, shelf life, convenience, low manufacturing cost, and basic safety.” The blame for the resulting unhealthy food, these companies contend, lies with the consumers; Big Food is merely giving the people what they want. Paarlberg quotes Hank Cardello, a former director for marketing at Coca-Cola USA and a former brand manager for General Mills, as stating, “What do you do when a company’s focus-grouped, test-marketed, $20 million advertising campaign for doughnuts is designed to ensure that people in your precise demographic will struggle to select a healthier alternative over their product?”
In Chapter 3, The Limits of Local Food, Paarlberg counters the locavore trend, a trend toward eating food grown near to where the consumers of that food live. Paarlberg acknowledges the social advantages of knowing that people who grow our food. However, he refutes claims about local food being healthier or more environmentally-friendly.
“For climate protection, how food is grown matters far more than how far it travels, or even how it travels. Of all the carbon dioxide attributable to food in the United States, 83 percent reflects what is happening on the farm, compared to only a 4 percent share attributable to transport from producer to retailer. Local tomatoes produced in a heated greenhouse generate almost four times as much carbon per pound compared to imported tomatoes grown outdoors.”
Chapter 4, The Panic for Organic, looks at organically grown food. Firstly, the book differentiates between synthetic fertilizers (good) and synthetic insecticides (problematic). “Consumers tend to favor organic food because they believe the claims that it is safer and more nutritious to eat, but there is little or no scientific evidence to support these claims. Others buy organic food because they assume it comes from farms that are smaller, more traditional, and more diverse, but this is not a safe assumption either. Most organic food on the market today comes from highly specialized, industrial-scale farms, not so different from those that produce conventional food.”
As to insecticides, Paarlberg sees progress, “Pesticide risks have also been diminished thanks to integrated pest management (IPM), a crop protection technique that advises spraying only when monitored pest damage threatens a commercial loss, and only after nonchemical control options (for example, using good bugs to kill bad bugs) are no longer working.” For a somewhat different view, the Mayo Clinic says organic foods have potential health benefits: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-li....
The main message of Chapter 5, Should Peasants Stay Poor?, is that the Green Revolution (pouring large amounts of technology into agriculture) was a great success, helping farmers and consumers. Anyone who advocates for low-tech farming does not have farmers’ interests at heart: poor farmers are “happy to leave behind the laborious hand-tending of complex garden-like systems. They let modern science do more of the work.”
Nor does the idealistic vision of low-tech ag serve the interests of the billions of poor people whose diets have greatly improved due to higher yields produced by the Green Revolution: “In 1964, before the green revolution, India produced twelve million tons of wheat on fourteen million hectares of land. Thirty years later it was producing fifty-seven million tons of wheat on twenty-four million hectares.”
To his credit, Paarlberg gives some space to scholars who disagree with his views. For example, he quotes Dr Vandana Shiva, perhaps the leading critic of high-tech farming, as follows:
“It [the Green Revolution] was based not on the intensification of nature’s processes, but on the intensification of credit and purchased inputs like chemical fertilizers and pesticides. It was based not on self-reliance, but dependence. It was based not on diversity but uniformity. Advisors and experts came from America to shift India’s agricultural research and agricultural policy from an indigenous and ecological model to an exogenous, and high input one.”
The Green Revolution has not succeeded everywhere, such as in Latin America. Paarlberg blames social injustice, including severe inequity in land ownership for this: “Equalizing access to good agricultural land is an obvious place to start, but this would mean attacking rural injustice at its strongest point of resistance. A second-best approach is to create more rural jobs off the farm, reduce racial discrimination against citizens of non-European descent, improve public education for the poor, and end the second-class status of women and girls. Ills such as these remain the real source of poverty in Latin America’s countryside, not improved seeds, fertilizers, and monocultures.”
Chapter 6, Rejecting Biotech Foods, makes a case for GMO foods as safe and efficient. Also explained is gene editing, a more recent technology. Paarlberg wonders why so many scientists argue with climate change deniers by pointing to the scientific consensus that human activity is the main cause of climate change, yet these same scientists ignore what Paarlberg says is a scientific consensus about the safety of GMO. Paarlberg also points to what he sees as a contradiction – people accept genetically engineered drugs while rejecting genetically engineered food.
Paarlberg is not naïve about the self-interested actions of Big Ag. “Corporate mischief is also a risk. We can imagine agribusiness companies wanting to alter insect populations that are currently resistant to their chemicals to be vulnerable once again, in order to sell more chemicals.” However, Paarlberg also sees selfish motives on the part of those who oppose GMO foods: “Perhaps if the rural poor in Africa were making the rules [about whether to use GMO foods], we would see outcomes less timid (i.e., more approval of GMO foods).”
Farmed animals are the focus of Chapter 7, The Fate of Farm Animals. The book acknowledges the horrendous conditions that these nonhuman animals experience in their greatly attenuated lives. At the same time, Paarlberg seems to have a very human-centric view, such as, “Gene editing has considerable potential to improve farm animals.” For example, human manipulation has resulted in chickens who can barely walk, but they do reach slaughter weight faster, availing humans of cheaper foods and corporations of higher profits. The book illustrates this.
Maybe the above quote was an outlier. Elsewhere, Paarlberg states, “Animal confinement thus looks like a great achievement, so long as we ignore the welfare of the animals. To a sorry extent, that is exactly what we did.” Similarly, he quotes an agricultural economist as estimating that the lives of egg-laying hens are so miserable that they would be better off dead.
However, Paarlberg does see the benefits to farmed animals of being confined, no matter how horrible that confinement might be. After all, predators (other than one particular species of two-legged predators) cannot attack them. Furthermore, death by, for example, foxes might evoke more suffering by chickens than death at a slaughterhouse. At the slaughterhouse, death is, at least according to humans’ vision of it, unexpected and fast. The chapter then proceeds to discuss efforts to raise meat more “humanely.”
The book’s final chapter, Chapter 8, explores The Brave New Future of Food. The chapter begins by recognizing that despite the increased efficiency of high-tech ag, hundreds of millions of people face death, stunting, and other ill effects of undernutrition. Animal agriculture takes some of the blame: “Eighty-three percent of the Earth’s agricultural land is now being used to feed animals, even though they provide only 18 percent of total food calories.” The substantial role of animal agriculture in climate change is also acknowledged.
Paarlberg sees moving away from meat, especially red meat and dairy, as a big part of the future of food. At the same time, he asks, “What would happen if animal-based foods were avoided entirely?” He cites a study that found “completely eliminating animal products from our diet would reduce the use of land for food (mostly pastureland) by more than three-quarters, with a 19 percent reduction in cropland specifically.”
The book devotes many pages to alternative protein foods as a major part of the solution, although well-known names in food, such as Vandana Shiva and Michael Pollan, are quoted as expressing scepticism. At the same time, Paarlberg warns that for food to be healthy, many other changes need to be made. A healthy burger loses much of its beneficial impact when eaten with fries and a Pepsi.
To conclude, Resetting the Table: Straight Talk About the Food We Grow and Eat deserves to be read and considered. Paarlberg writes clearly in a style accessible to lay readers such as me and provides references for further reading. He also spices the book with individual accounts of his own experiences and those of people he interviewed.
Some, but not all, of what Paarlberg states runs counter to what might be considered progressive ideas on food. Thus, I found reading the book a useful exercise in questioning my beliefs. The book’s eight chapters cover, in the following order, industrial farming, the impact of modern food on poor health, the limits of local food, the pros and cons of organic food, the Green Revolution, genetically engineered foods, farmed animals, and the future of food. Most of the data and stories in the book are from the U.S. where Paarlberg is based.
Chapter 1 “Testing the Case Against Industrial Farming” makes a distinction between Big Agriculture and Big Food. Big Ag grows the food; Big Food (almost seven times larger than Big Ag) processes the food and brings it to eateries and stores. While Paarlberg puts most of the blame for bad diets on Big Food, Big Ag also gets some blame, “farm crops and farm animals were developed to deliver things like rapid growth, cosmetic appearance, shelf life, processing traits, and resistance to pests and disease. There was little or no emphasis on nutrition.” As a result, nutrient quality of plants has declined.
I had thought that subsidies given to Big Ag made the wrong foods, such as meat, cheaper. Paarlberg claims that the purpose of the subsidies is to support farmers’ income. Higher, not lower, prices provides one way that this is accomplished. For example, using subsidies to pay some farmers not to plant, decreases supply, thereby raising prices. Other policies, such as restricting imports and mandating purchase of plants for non-food uses, including corn bought to produce ethanol, also raises prices.
A contrasting perspective on the impact of food subsidies on U.S. prices for meat and dairy can be seen in this Columbia University report - https://jia.sipa.columbia.edu/removin... - that states, “the U.S. government spends up to $38 billion each year to subsidize the meat and dairy industries, with less than one percent of that sum allocated to aiding the production of fruits and vegetables. … while shoppers pay lower immediate prices at the checkout counter, their tax dollars fund major meat operations and advertising.”
Does Big Ag harm the environment? Yes, but that is because more food is being produced, as the population increases and incomes rise. “The scale of the damage [caused by Big Ag] is indeed quite large, but this is due to the expanded quantity of food now being produced, not the way it is produced.” The technology of Big Ag actually reduces environmental damage because Big Ag is so efficient. Low-tech farming is much less efficient and, thus, if it was the main way the world was fed, would require clearing more land, and food would cost much more. “Modern farming protects the environment not only by using less land compared to several decades ago; it also uses less water, less fossil energy, and fewer chemicals for every bushel produced.” Paarlberg also asks the question of what would farmers prefer: backbreaking, hands-on-under-the-hot-sun low-tech methods or letting technology do much of the work?
Chapter 2, titled Food Swamp Nation, blames Big Food for the bad diets most American eat. Nothing controversial here, except Paarlberg denies the prevalence of “food deserts,” places where poor people live with little access to healthy food. “The real problem has not been a lack of access to healthy foods, but a dramatically increased exposure to unhealthy foods from fast-food restaurants, corner mini-marts, take-out pizza joints—and also, alas, from supermarkets. Low-income Americans are in trouble not because they are stranded in food deserts but because they are drowning in food swamps.”
Big Food companies employ thousands of scientists whose focus lies not in making foods healthier, but on “taste, aroma, texture, color, shelf life, convenience, low manufacturing cost, and basic safety.” The blame for the resulting unhealthy food, these companies contend, lies with the consumers; Big Food is merely giving the people what they want. Paarlberg quotes Hank Cardello, a former director for marketing at Coca-Cola USA and a former brand manager for General Mills, as stating, “What do you do when a company’s focus-grouped, test-marketed, $20 million advertising campaign for doughnuts is designed to ensure that people in your precise demographic will struggle to select a healthier alternative over their product?”
In Chapter 3, The Limits of Local Food, Paarlberg counters the locavore trend, a trend toward eating food grown near to where the consumers of that food live. Paarlberg acknowledges the social advantages of knowing that people who grow our food. However, he refutes claims about local food being healthier or more environmentally-friendly.
“For climate protection, how food is grown matters far more than how far it travels, or even how it travels. Of all the carbon dioxide attributable to food in the United States, 83 percent reflects what is happening on the farm, compared to only a 4 percent share attributable to transport from producer to retailer. Local tomatoes produced in a heated greenhouse generate almost four times as much carbon per pound compared to imported tomatoes grown outdoors.”
Chapter 4, The Panic for Organic, looks at organically grown food. Firstly, the book differentiates between synthetic fertilizers (good) and synthetic insecticides (problematic). “Consumers tend to favor organic food because they believe the claims that it is safer and more nutritious to eat, but there is little or no scientific evidence to support these claims. Others buy organic food because they assume it comes from farms that are smaller, more traditional, and more diverse, but this is not a safe assumption either. Most organic food on the market today comes from highly specialized, industrial-scale farms, not so different from those that produce conventional food.”
As to insecticides, Paarlberg sees progress, “Pesticide risks have also been diminished thanks to integrated pest management (IPM), a crop protection technique that advises spraying only when monitored pest damage threatens a commercial loss, and only after nonchemical control options (for example, using good bugs to kill bad bugs) are no longer working.” For a somewhat different view, the Mayo Clinic says organic foods have potential health benefits: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-li....
The main message of Chapter 5, Should Peasants Stay Poor?, is that the Green Revolution (pouring large amounts of technology into agriculture) was a great success, helping farmers and consumers. Anyone who advocates for low-tech farming does not have farmers’ interests at heart: poor farmers are “happy to leave behind the laborious hand-tending of complex garden-like systems. They let modern science do more of the work.”
Nor does the idealistic vision of low-tech ag serve the interests of the billions of poor people whose diets have greatly improved due to higher yields produced by the Green Revolution: “In 1964, before the green revolution, India produced twelve million tons of wheat on fourteen million hectares of land. Thirty years later it was producing fifty-seven million tons of wheat on twenty-four million hectares.”
To his credit, Paarlberg gives some space to scholars who disagree with his views. For example, he quotes Dr Vandana Shiva, perhaps the leading critic of high-tech farming, as follows:
“It [the Green Revolution] was based not on the intensification of nature’s processes, but on the intensification of credit and purchased inputs like chemical fertilizers and pesticides. It was based not on self-reliance, but dependence. It was based not on diversity but uniformity. Advisors and experts came from America to shift India’s agricultural research and agricultural policy from an indigenous and ecological model to an exogenous, and high input one.”
The Green Revolution has not succeeded everywhere, such as in Latin America. Paarlberg blames social injustice, including severe inequity in land ownership for this: “Equalizing access to good agricultural land is an obvious place to start, but this would mean attacking rural injustice at its strongest point of resistance. A second-best approach is to create more rural jobs off the farm, reduce racial discrimination against citizens of non-European descent, improve public education for the poor, and end the second-class status of women and girls. Ills such as these remain the real source of poverty in Latin America’s countryside, not improved seeds, fertilizers, and monocultures.”
Chapter 6, Rejecting Biotech Foods, makes a case for GMO foods as safe and efficient. Also explained is gene editing, a more recent technology. Paarlberg wonders why so many scientists argue with climate change deniers by pointing to the scientific consensus that human activity is the main cause of climate change, yet these same scientists ignore what Paarlberg says is a scientific consensus about the safety of GMO. Paarlberg also points to what he sees as a contradiction – people accept genetically engineered drugs while rejecting genetically engineered food.
Paarlberg is not naïve about the self-interested actions of Big Ag. “Corporate mischief is also a risk. We can imagine agribusiness companies wanting to alter insect populations that are currently resistant to their chemicals to be vulnerable once again, in order to sell more chemicals.” However, Paarlberg also sees selfish motives on the part of those who oppose GMO foods: “Perhaps if the rural poor in Africa were making the rules [about whether to use GMO foods], we would see outcomes less timid (i.e., more approval of GMO foods).”
Farmed animals are the focus of Chapter 7, The Fate of Farm Animals. The book acknowledges the horrendous conditions that these nonhuman animals experience in their greatly attenuated lives. At the same time, Paarlberg seems to have a very human-centric view, such as, “Gene editing has considerable potential to improve farm animals.” For example, human manipulation has resulted in chickens who can barely walk, but they do reach slaughter weight faster, availing humans of cheaper foods and corporations of higher profits. The book illustrates this.
Maybe the above quote was an outlier. Elsewhere, Paarlberg states, “Animal confinement thus looks like a great achievement, so long as we ignore the welfare of the animals. To a sorry extent, that is exactly what we did.” Similarly, he quotes an agricultural economist as estimating that the lives of egg-laying hens are so miserable that they would be better off dead.
However, Paarlberg does see the benefits to farmed animals of being confined, no matter how horrible that confinement might be. After all, predators (other than one particular species of two-legged predators) cannot attack them. Furthermore, death by, for example, foxes might evoke more suffering by chickens than death at a slaughterhouse. At the slaughterhouse, death is, at least according to humans’ vision of it, unexpected and fast. The chapter then proceeds to discuss efforts to raise meat more “humanely.”
The book’s final chapter, Chapter 8, explores The Brave New Future of Food. The chapter begins by recognizing that despite the increased efficiency of high-tech ag, hundreds of millions of people face death, stunting, and other ill effects of undernutrition. Animal agriculture takes some of the blame: “Eighty-three percent of the Earth’s agricultural land is now being used to feed animals, even though they provide only 18 percent of total food calories.” The substantial role of animal agriculture in climate change is also acknowledged.
Paarlberg sees moving away from meat, especially red meat and dairy, as a big part of the future of food. At the same time, he asks, “What would happen if animal-based foods were avoided entirely?” He cites a study that found “completely eliminating animal products from our diet would reduce the use of land for food (mostly pastureland) by more than three-quarters, with a 19 percent reduction in cropland specifically.”
The book devotes many pages to alternative protein foods as a major part of the solution, although well-known names in food, such as Vandana Shiva and Michael Pollan, are quoted as expressing scepticism. At the same time, Paarlberg warns that for food to be healthy, many other changes need to be made. A healthy burger loses much of its beneficial impact when eaten with fries and a Pepsi.
To conclude, Resetting the Table: Straight Talk About the Food We Grow and Eat deserves to be read and considered. Paarlberg writes clearly in a style accessible to lay readers such as me and provides references for further reading. He also spices the book with individual accounts of his own experiences and those of people he interviewed.
February 6, 2022
Appreciated the second half of this book more than the first half. The information presented about CRISPR, precision ag, livestock ag, and the politics of agriculture and food companies were helpful. However, I found the very negative treatment of organic farming and agroecology quite strange and lacking the full scope of the issues presented. For example, in the section about precision ag, the author rightly says that small and medium sized producers cannot afford the technology needed for precision ag and thus miss the benefits of lower inputs and less waste. Does agroecoloy not provide an opportunity to fill this gap for smaller farms? The treatment of food sovereignty was also concerning; the author’s dismissal of this movement entirely ignored social justice implications, particularly for indigenous people. Overall, an ok read, but I suggest reading this in conjunction with other books about American agriculture to get a fuller view.
July 9, 2021
A strong addition to the ongoing conversation about eating in our first-world lives. Paarlberg criticizes many elements of progressive food movements, both as a pragmatic environmentalist and as a globally-minded economist, yet I certainly sensed his sympathies with the ethical stances of those movements. After multiple chapters in defense of the improving efficiencies of industrial farming, I was then quite pleasantly surprised by his evaluation of livestock farming.
April 27, 2021
Even disagreeing with some of the author’s conclusions, I say this is the best, most balanced analysis of modern American nutrition, agriculture, and food production. Well worth the read.
June 16, 2022
This book bills itself as an objective, straightforward treatment of current debates over food, specifically addressing arguments for local, organic food and alternative agriculture movements. I was hopeful that I'd find in it a text I could teach in my college-level courses to introduce students to ethical and justice issues concerning food and agriculture. I ended up being rather disappointed.
Although Paarlberg raises some important points and provides valuable insight into transformations in mainstream agriculture - such as the growing use of precision agriculture and the reduction in agricultural inputs (water, pesticide) it enables - much of the argument suffered from inflated rhetoric and important issues were left unaddressed.
The basic argument of the book is that "industrial agriculture" is the only way to feed the world and the criticism of it have been overstated, and local, organic, small-scale, and other alternative agricultural methods and values are impractical, don't hold up to their promises, and are basically just niche trends with no real economic or ethical value.
Important insights for me included 1. Paarlberg's emphasis on how pesticide use has actually decreased since the 1970s, 2. his critique in Chapter 2 of food swamps, and food and beverage manufacturing companies, and 3. his breakdown of the problem with an ideal of purity and absolutism in the case for organic ag.
Important issues that were ignored or not addressed adequately included the ecological effects of industrial animal agriculture: Paarlberg merely mentions the problem of run-off from animal ag (nutrient pollution from the vast quantities of animal waste), but doesn't address it at any length or take into account its effects -- "dead zones", notably in the Gulf of Mexico but also in the Chesapeake Bay, where excess amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus have created hypoxic areas lacking sufficient oxygen for aquatic life. Air and water pollution from intensive animal ag also cause significant environmental injustices (exacerbating asthma and other respiratory problems for people who live in communities close to industrial animal ag operations, preventing them from spending time outside, decreasing the market value of their homes, etc.). He also doesn't address the issue of soil health and soil degradation at all. Despite arguing for large scale, consolidated agriculture - which has the effect of distancing decision-makers (CEOs) from workers - workers and working conditions are only addressed in a few pages at the end of the book when Paarlberg discusses the coming future of automation: farm work is arduous and we should want it to end via automation, is the message, but how consolidation (which is not just consolidation of agricultural operations but of *power*) has contributed to the misery and immiseration of farmworkers is unaddressed. Despite the focus on pesticide use, there's no mention of rates of pesticide exposure among farmworkers and the severe health consequences.
Overall, too much was omitted from this text in order to sustain the author's argument for me to endorse it as an "objective" treatment of the subject. The chapter criticizing organic food was overly reliant on anecdotes about quacks and fringe figures associated with organic ag (e.g., the irrational beliefs of Rudolf Steiner and biodynamic ag) and actually used the "Reductio ad Hitlerum" fallacy (seeking to discredit something by associating it with Nazis). When there's no attempt to show how imperialist, fascist, or other harmful ideologies are part of alternative agricultural movements, these associations are really just red herrings. Maybe it was the author's (or an editor's) attempt to make the topic engaging for a popular audience, but I had higher standards than that for a science-based treatment of food and agriculture.
If I were picking this book up without much knowledge of the subject, I would be a bit wary and make sure to read from other perspectives as well.
Although Paarlberg raises some important points and provides valuable insight into transformations in mainstream agriculture - such as the growing use of precision agriculture and the reduction in agricultural inputs (water, pesticide) it enables - much of the argument suffered from inflated rhetoric and important issues were left unaddressed.
The basic argument of the book is that "industrial agriculture" is the only way to feed the world and the criticism of it have been overstated, and local, organic, small-scale, and other alternative agricultural methods and values are impractical, don't hold up to their promises, and are basically just niche trends with no real economic or ethical value.
Important insights for me included 1. Paarlberg's emphasis on how pesticide use has actually decreased since the 1970s, 2. his critique in Chapter 2 of food swamps, and food and beverage manufacturing companies, and 3. his breakdown of the problem with an ideal of purity and absolutism in the case for organic ag.
Important issues that were ignored or not addressed adequately included the ecological effects of industrial animal agriculture: Paarlberg merely mentions the problem of run-off from animal ag (nutrient pollution from the vast quantities of animal waste), but doesn't address it at any length or take into account its effects -- "dead zones", notably in the Gulf of Mexico but also in the Chesapeake Bay, where excess amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus have created hypoxic areas lacking sufficient oxygen for aquatic life. Air and water pollution from intensive animal ag also cause significant environmental injustices (exacerbating asthma and other respiratory problems for people who live in communities close to industrial animal ag operations, preventing them from spending time outside, decreasing the market value of their homes, etc.). He also doesn't address the issue of soil health and soil degradation at all. Despite arguing for large scale, consolidated agriculture - which has the effect of distancing decision-makers (CEOs) from workers - workers and working conditions are only addressed in a few pages at the end of the book when Paarlberg discusses the coming future of automation: farm work is arduous and we should want it to end via automation, is the message, but how consolidation (which is not just consolidation of agricultural operations but of *power*) has contributed to the misery and immiseration of farmworkers is unaddressed. Despite the focus on pesticide use, there's no mention of rates of pesticide exposure among farmworkers and the severe health consequences.
Overall, too much was omitted from this text in order to sustain the author's argument for me to endorse it as an "objective" treatment of the subject. The chapter criticizing organic food was overly reliant on anecdotes about quacks and fringe figures associated with organic ag (e.g., the irrational beliefs of Rudolf Steiner and biodynamic ag) and actually used the "Reductio ad Hitlerum" fallacy (seeking to discredit something by associating it with Nazis). When there's no attempt to show how imperialist, fascist, or other harmful ideologies are part of alternative agricultural movements, these associations are really just red herrings. Maybe it was the author's (or an editor's) attempt to make the topic engaging for a popular audience, but I had higher standards than that for a science-based treatment of food and agriculture.
If I were picking this book up without much knowledge of the subject, I would be a bit wary and make sure to read from other perspectives as well.
September 11, 2021
Resetting the Table~~~
Robert Paarlberg, author of 2021's Resetting the Table: Straight Talk about the Food we Grow and Eat, explains that a 2009 study produced by the EAT/Lancet Commission that's composed of 37 world- leading scientists from 16 countries developed a planetary health diet that targets for healthy diets and sustainable food production. Can you guess which developed country criticized its results the most?
If you guessed the United States, you can guess what the commission's findings were!
I'll quote from the book:
“To stay within planetary boundaries, Americans would have to eat 84 percent less meat and six times more beans and lentils....The North American Meat Institute called it a “bad diet solution,” out of step with genuine nutrition science. This was not a convincing charge since the cochair of the study was Dr. Walter Willet from Harvard's T. H. Chan School of Public Health....”
A more convincing argument against such a diet, coming from a team of economists, is that a billion of the world's poor couldn't afford it. In 2009? I wonder. Paarlberg has noted that two thirds of today's obese population live in Africa, Asia (largely China), and India.
It's not only eating too much that's the problem in what he calls food swamps, but eating too much rich,animal foods without balancing your diet with nutrient and fiber-rich plant foods.
The author believes that most Americans will not be deprived of the taste they developed for meat and so plant-based foods need to be really delicious. I can tell you that your taste buds change after only a few weeks eating less fat, sugar, and salt. As a vegan for nearly two decades, I lost my taste for animal food and sugary junk many, many years ago.
Plant-based food has often fooled many a meat lover these days. I'm glad.
The most striking part of this book, for me, turned up in the Epilogue.
It was frustrating to read Paarlberg's critique of the slow food movement and organic farming as being impractical economically and only important for social, nostalgic benefits.
I struggled to be convinced that agriculture doesn't create obese people, but food companies and distributors do. He states that Big Food is seven times bigger than Big Ag,.
Okay, sure. Precision Agriculture (PA) helps crop farmers leave a much smaller carbon footprint and environmental pollution than before it was used. I grew up on a midwest farm, like Paarlberg, and there was a great deal of water waste, chemicals, and pollution. PA's a good thing for the big, rich farmers.
The problem with commercial farmers, which may not include the hippie-ish local producers, is that they vote Republican and so do food companies. Neither of them show any interest, in spite of many opportunities, to provide nutrient-rich food. Farmers sell to any food company for profit and don't express concern about how their crop is made into obesity-causing food.
Even when Trump started disastrous trade wars, they blindly supported him for the most part.
Paarlberg is right when he says that farmers could really influence how their crops are used. Food companies want their business. How about it, farmers? Your image will greatly improve if you start to care about the rest of us.
It's a challenging book with lots to absorb, which is good. I did skim a couple chapters, but found it a worthwhile read.
Paarlberg has decades of global and governmental experience.
Robert Paarlberg, author of 2021's Resetting the Table: Straight Talk about the Food we Grow and Eat, explains that a 2009 study produced by the EAT/Lancet Commission that's composed of 37 world- leading scientists from 16 countries developed a planetary health diet that targets for healthy diets and sustainable food production. Can you guess which developed country criticized its results the most?
If you guessed the United States, you can guess what the commission's findings were!
I'll quote from the book:
“To stay within planetary boundaries, Americans would have to eat 84 percent less meat and six times more beans and lentils....The North American Meat Institute called it a “bad diet solution,” out of step with genuine nutrition science. This was not a convincing charge since the cochair of the study was Dr. Walter Willet from Harvard's T. H. Chan School of Public Health....”
A more convincing argument against such a diet, coming from a team of economists, is that a billion of the world's poor couldn't afford it. In 2009? I wonder. Paarlberg has noted that two thirds of today's obese population live in Africa, Asia (largely China), and India.
It's not only eating too much that's the problem in what he calls food swamps, but eating too much rich,animal foods without balancing your diet with nutrient and fiber-rich plant foods.
The author believes that most Americans will not be deprived of the taste they developed for meat and so plant-based foods need to be really delicious. I can tell you that your taste buds change after only a few weeks eating less fat, sugar, and salt. As a vegan for nearly two decades, I lost my taste for animal food and sugary junk many, many years ago.
Plant-based food has often fooled many a meat lover these days. I'm glad.
The most striking part of this book, for me, turned up in the Epilogue.
It was frustrating to read Paarlberg's critique of the slow food movement and organic farming as being impractical economically and only important for social, nostalgic benefits.
I struggled to be convinced that agriculture doesn't create obese people, but food companies and distributors do. He states that Big Food is seven times bigger than Big Ag,.
Okay, sure. Precision Agriculture (PA) helps crop farmers leave a much smaller carbon footprint and environmental pollution than before it was used. I grew up on a midwest farm, like Paarlberg, and there was a great deal of water waste, chemicals, and pollution. PA's a good thing for the big, rich farmers.
The problem with commercial farmers, which may not include the hippie-ish local producers, is that they vote Republican and so do food companies. Neither of them show any interest, in spite of many opportunities, to provide nutrient-rich food. Farmers sell to any food company for profit and don't express concern about how their crop is made into obesity-causing food.
Even when Trump started disastrous trade wars, they blindly supported him for the most part.
Paarlberg is right when he says that farmers could really influence how their crops are used. Food companies want their business. How about it, farmers? Your image will greatly improve if you start to care about the rest of us.
It's a challenging book with lots to absorb, which is good. I did skim a couple chapters, but found it a worthwhile read.
Paarlberg has decades of global and governmental experience.
August 23, 2024
someone who is involved in the reguiation of biotechnology writes an extreme screed against organic food
who would imagine?
........
Only eat organic? You're paying too much, and it's not worth it, author says. Not safer, better nutritionally
........
What planet is he on?
/////
Foreign Affairs
Paarlberg, an economist, takes issue with the slow-food movement, which emphasizes organic and locally sourced food. He shows that without modern, science-based farming, it would be impossible to provide adequate nutrition at affordable prices either in the United States or globally.
In his view, popular critiques of industrial farming are often wide of the mark; in truth, technological advances are making farming less damaging to the environment. Precision agriculture utilizing satellite positioning, drone-based sensors, and machine learning allows farmers to produce more food using less water, less energy, and fewer chemicals. Paarlberg highlights plant-based protein as a substitute for meat and dairy as yet another science-based innovation working in the same direction.
///////
from the loopy site
In Defence of Processed Food
Big Ag! What is it good for? Absolutely Nothing! suggests Mark Bittman. Robert Paarlberg comes to Big Ag’s defense. Bittman gives his assessment on Big Ag and Big Food in Animal, Vegetable, Junk. Paarlberg counters him in Resetting the Table.
///////
My guess is Mark Bittman going organic is going to be the guy not getting cancer eating Pumpkin Pie
March 27, 2022
Some friends were discussing whether or not growing food locally is really better than concentrated, large-scale, industrial farming, and this book was mentioned in the discussion. The relevant statistics cited from this book was, the emission of someone in the UK driving 6 miles to the grocery store to buy green beans is more than the emission of transporting the green beans from Africa, where they were grown. Of course, there are probably caveats in this number, e.g. did they assume the 6 mi grocery trip is solely for buying this bag of green beans? But I still find points like this very illuminating and powerful. Overall, this fits into my newly discovered lens of examining the impact of every policy factually, instead of by the sentiment behind it and wishful thinking. I think this book makes a number of great points like this, e.g. about organic farming, GMOs, animal agriculture, and is overall very value-aligned with me.
February 28, 2023
I absolutely loved this book; not only was it extremely informative, but Paarlberg's personal experiences with farming communities and the in-depth case studies of different farmers and companies really adds a human element to the book that more dry policy-oriented texts might lack. Some points that stood out to me:
1. Organic, regenerative agriculture simply cannot scale to feed the world a cheap and diverse diet. Many of my PMC friends have adopted a cultural affectation for organic foods, anti-GMO, regenerative agriculture, and so on. While such fantasies are appealing to me as much as the next guy, they are extremely myopic. To someone who has only ever grown up with abundant supermarket shelves, it may not be clear just what a miracle the 20th century was for agriculture. But by taking us back to the 19th century, when all food was already organic, Paarlberg shows us just how bad it was. Nutrient deficiencies and food shortages were common; moreover, regionalism meant that people simply couldn't access vast swathes of food groups for much of the year! I for one like being able to eat fresh vegetables year-round.
2. GMOs are good, actually. The scientific debate here is pretty clear, but somehow people are wedded to this reactionary, anti-science view that GMOs are "too risky" or something. Just take a look at the comments on Pamela Ronald's TED talk. What was more interesting was the historical explanation going back over a century, to the bizarre early 20th century food movements around "natural" foods that predated our modern predicaments. As it turns out, we are not too far off from our ancestors.
3. Food swamps are worse than food deserts. Food deserts are another specter that liberals have latched onto as a catch-all explanation for the obesity epidemic. As it turns out, the evidence shows that it is the entire food environment that matters; adding grocery stores does not have meaningful impact on health outcomes.
4. Food technology, especially plant-based meat, is good! Again, the only scientific seeming points are on the matter of health, yet the denigration of such foods as "processed" misses so much nuance that it is an essentially empty remark.
1. Organic, regenerative agriculture simply cannot scale to feed the world a cheap and diverse diet. Many of my PMC friends have adopted a cultural affectation for organic foods, anti-GMO, regenerative agriculture, and so on. While such fantasies are appealing to me as much as the next guy, they are extremely myopic. To someone who has only ever grown up with abundant supermarket shelves, it may not be clear just what a miracle the 20th century was for agriculture. But by taking us back to the 19th century, when all food was already organic, Paarlberg shows us just how bad it was. Nutrient deficiencies and food shortages were common; moreover, regionalism meant that people simply couldn't access vast swathes of food groups for much of the year! I for one like being able to eat fresh vegetables year-round.
2. GMOs are good, actually. The scientific debate here is pretty clear, but somehow people are wedded to this reactionary, anti-science view that GMOs are "too risky" or something. Just take a look at the comments on Pamela Ronald's TED talk. What was more interesting was the historical explanation going back over a century, to the bizarre early 20th century food movements around "natural" foods that predated our modern predicaments. As it turns out, we are not too far off from our ancestors.
3. Food swamps are worse than food deserts. Food deserts are another specter that liberals have latched onto as a catch-all explanation for the obesity epidemic. As it turns out, the evidence shows that it is the entire food environment that matters; adding grocery stores does not have meaningful impact on health outcomes.
4. Food technology, especially plant-based meat, is good! Again, the only scientific seeming points are on the matter of health, yet the denigration of such foods as "processed" misses so much nuance that it is an essentially empty remark.
April 18, 2021
A somewhat more moderate take compared to Animal, Vegetable, Junk, but the message remains the same. The resources used to maintain excessive food intake, particularly red meat and dairy, is very damaging to the environment. With the projected substantial increase in meat and diary over the next 50 years, something will need to be done to help curb the environmental damage. Not only is the environment being destroyed, we our killing ourselves by overindulging and eating highly processed foods.
Americans need to take a bipartisan approach and focus on nutrition and the dietary needs of individuals to promote wellness in our citizens.
Americans need to take a bipartisan approach and focus on nutrition and the dietary needs of individuals to promote wellness in our citizens.
July 4, 2021
A very interesting analysis of food systems focusing on food production in the United States, but also comparing food systems globally. In contrast to several books I have read about the downside of the industrialization of agriculture, this books points out many of the benefits of industrialized agriculture and compares it to organic food production. I strongly recommend this book to see another perspective of modern agriculture in the US and globally.
May 8, 2021
This has some good information in it, but it is missing contextual information for some of the organic/local push for food. I found that it was misconstruing the arguments for the local/ no pesticides movement. I think food is an important thing to get right. There isn't a place for arguing for food practices that will damage human health and likely the earth in the long run.
April 30, 2021
A very dense book that is great to open up the other side of the conversation when it comes to "local" food. Whether I wholly believe in his argument or not, Paarlberg did an excellent job creating the necessary conversation on many areas of food that go unspoken.
March 4, 2022
Books like this remind me that there are drastic paradigms I accept to be true without thinking about it. This was a great deep dive into the food in the US and what we can improve upon. It was pretty dense but well worth the read.
August 20, 2022
Interesting challenge to idea that organic is the best way to go.
America and generally world wide consumption of bad "food" has led to health crisis.
Modern agriculture methods of micro application of fertilizer, water etc. has made great strides.
America and generally world wide consumption of bad "food" has led to health crisis.
Modern agriculture methods of micro application of fertilizer, water etc. has made great strides.
March 7, 2024
a very eye-opening perspective on food production (especially in terms of commercial vs small farm production), but i think it lacks consideration of certain perspectives and contains some questionable argumentation techniques
April 8, 2021
Interesting, balanced, factual - looks like fake meat, including fish and eggs, will be a big part of our future.
July 22, 2021
Learned a lot from this book, but did not like its unnecessary support of capitalism. It could have supported globalization and centralized food systems without supporting capitalism...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 27, 2022
A thoughful and sober assessment of our food system and its challenges, refreshingly free of Michael Pollanesque mysticism and class snobbery.
August 19, 2022
Some good points but essentially our food is good, local/organic are bad, and tech will save us
March 16, 2025
Read this for a class - farming class. Really interested in regenerative agriculture and found this book to be very lackluster. I wish they incorporated more evidence into their statements rather than simply showing the difference between GMO and non-GMO, organic vs. non-organic.
Could have gone much more in depth into the complexities of food growth but I feel like was more surface level.
Could have gone much more in depth into the complexities of food growth but I feel like was more surface level.
October 9, 2024
The first part of the book was more interesting. The chapter about Organic food was too long.
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