Results by title

3 books match the query 'Genetically modified foods'

cover of Food, Farms, and Solidarity: French Farmers Challenge Industrial Agriculture and Genetically Modified Crops

Food, Farms, and Solidarity

French Farmers Challenge Industrial Agriculture and Genetically Modified Crops

Chaia Heller

Duke University Press, 2012

The Confédération Paysanne, one of France's largest farmers' unions, has successfully fought against genetically modified organisms (GMOs), but unlike other allied movements, theirs has been led by producers rather than consumers. In Food, Farms, and Solidarity, Chaia Heller analyzes the group's complex strategies and campaigns, including a call for a Europe-wide ban on GM crops and hormone-treated beef, and a protest staged at a McDonald's. Her study of the Confédération Paysanne shows the challenges small farms face in a postindustrial agricultural world. Heller also reveals how the language the union uses to argue against GMOs encompasses more than the risks they pose; emphasizing solidarity has allowed farmers to focus on food as a cultural practice and align themselves with other workers. Heller's examination of the Confédération Paysanne's commitment to a vision of alter-globalization, the idea of substantive alternatives to neoliberal globalization, demonstrates how ecological and social justice can be restored in the world.
[more]
cover of Genetically Modified Food: A Short Guide For the Confused

Genetically Modified Food

A Short Guide For the Confused

Andy Rees

Pluto Press, 2006

Genetically modified food has been headline news for years, but it's difficult to know how far the genetic revolution has affected our lives. Is the food on our shelves free of genetically engineered ingredients? How much power to food corporations wield? Andy Rees provides the answers. He shows that, while corporations that produce genetically modified food have met with resistance in Europe, their hold on the U.S. market is strong. They're also expanding operations in less-regulated countries in Africa, Asia, and the former Soviet bloc. The United States has launched a legal suit to attempt to force the European market open to genetically modified food. What does the future hold? Written by a leading campaigner for GM Watch, one of the world's leading lobbying groups, this brilliantly readable book tells us all we need to know.
[more]
cover of Seeds of Power: Environmental Injustice and Genetically Modified Soybeans in Argentina

Seeds of Power

Environmental Injustice and Genetically Modified Soybeans in Argentina

Amalia Leguizamón

Duke University Press, 2020

In 1996 Argentina adopted genetically modified (GM) soybeans as a central part of its national development strategy. Today, Argentina is the third largest global grower and exporter of GM crops. Its soybeans—which have been modified to tolerate being sprayed with herbicides—now cover half of the country's arable land and represent a third of its total exports. While soy has brought about modernization and economic growth, it has also created tremendous social and ecological harm: rural displacement, concentration of landownership, food insecurity, deforestation, violence, and the negative health effects of toxic agrochemical exposure. In Seeds of Power Amalia Leguizamón explores why Argentines largely support GM soy despite the widespread damage it creates. She reveals how agribusiness, the state,  and their allies in the media and sciences deploy narratives of economic redistribution, scientific expertise, and national identity as a way to elicit compliance among the country’s most vulnerable rural residents. In this way, Leguizamón demonstrates that GM soy operates as a tool of power to obtain consent, to legitimate injustice, and to quell potential dissent in the face of environmental and social violence.
[more]