A forceful argument for an agricultural regulatory environment that puts public interest above corporate profits.
Uncovering corporate malfeasance at “perhaps the world’s best-known agricultural powerhouse.”
Former Reuters senior correspondent Gillam shows how Monsanto has suppressed indications that its popular weed killer Roundup, “the most widely used herbicide in the world,” has been found to trigger endocrine disruptions “linked to some cancers, birth defects, and developmental problems in children.” Two decades ago, the author was covering finance and real estate when she was switched to the agriculture beat. She admits to being disappointed at first, even though the choices farmers make amount to “billions of dollars in combined sales of seeds and herbicide” for corporations like Monsanto, which also markets genetically modified seeds able to withstand glyphosate, the major chemical component in Roundup. In the author’s well-informed opinion, Monsanto has hit upon a brilliant marketing strategy in showing how farmers can kill weeds without endangering the survival of their genetically modified crops. The widespread use of Roundup on farms, golf courses, and lawns reaches into every corner of our lives, and this is reflected in Monsanto’s balance sheet. However, as Gillam notes, the human health costs have yet to be determined. The Environmental Protection Agency has set the level of legally allowed residues higher than those considered acceptable in any other country, and it has failed to mandate across-the-board testing for residues on food. For example, tests of some “organic” honey revealed toxin levels five times the legal limit allowed by the European Union. As the author relates, some studies have concluded that the evidence of glyphosate’s toxicity is mixed regarding humans but definitive with animals. In this hard-hitting, eye-opening narrative, Gillam calls for widespread reform of the American regulatory system, which would mandate that the Department of Agriculture conduct routine tests of food products for glyphosate residues and release the results for public scrutiny.
A forceful argument for an agricultural regulatory environment that puts public interest above corporate profits.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61091-832-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Island Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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