"Who wants to spend nearly all of one's income on food, and rely on sugared tea as a key source of calories, as did the 19th-century British working class?"

Um, the prices appear to be headed that direction, and we have soda instead of tea...

Very interesting post - thank you.  All this suffering over the millenia seems so tragic and stupid.  Malthusian, really. Can we stop it from repeating again?  Should we just allow the population explosion to continue? Should we sit back and allow meat eaters and "breeders" to ravage the planet completely? Perhaps it is time for governments around the world to make some hard decisions.  But is this in principle almost impossible?

The ecological economists Daly and Cobb in their 1989 book opined that capitalists/corporates like high birth rates, to create an expanding labour supply and keep wages low.  

I have heard the usual view that if all nations get rich enough, population growth will decrease.  I don't consider this as anything more than theory, and I have read somewhere that emerging evidence is contradicting it.  In any case when people get rich, they'll probably want western-style consumption, so it might simply take us collectively from the frying pan into the fire. And if there are powerful forces wanting high population growth and cheap labour (as Cobb and Daly contended), will these forces win out anyway?

Popularity politics - the need for politicians to be popular - also makes it very hard for governments to take hard steps, I think.  I wonder whether it might be in principle impossible to stop the population explosion in any humane way under democracies.  Perhaps this is an odd thought, but thousands of years ago Plato had serious criticisms of democracy, and he favoured a completely different form of government.  

Meat Free Week sounds good in principle. Good luck with it. What about something longer lasting and allowing a little meat?  

Referring to a "meat explosion" up above makes me think of Peter Jackson and his early movie "Bad Taste".  It might be a useful phrase, for its emotional associations, in discouraging people from eating meat.

Again, thank you for the post.

A couple of points to add to your comment.
More than cheap labour, I believe that large populations are encouraged because they mean bigger markets and the creation of more wealth, most of which accrues to the very forces which control public opinion.
The failure of democracy to deal with overpopulation will soon plunge us back into the cyclical famines which marked mans first period on the planet.
It seems that we have the intelligence to recognise these issues before they become problems, but not to deal with them.

"It is always important to balance personal changes, like buying local food, with a mass confrontation of an unjust and destructive global system. So often in the environmental movement, demanding widespread change stops at our personal doorsteps - how far can "living by example" really take us? It seems that with all movements, all fronts must be pursued at once. Both making changes within our own life, like consumer choices, as well as taking action and demanding a more sustainable system."

What are you trying to say here? "It seems that with all movements, all fronts must be pursued at once."? What kind of "action" are you advocating?

Spending hours a day preparing food like peasant women? But is there a more worthwhile human undertaking? Oh, yes, art. Yet some would argue that the preparation and presentation of food is art.

"Spending hours a day preparing food like peasant women? But is there a more worthwhile human undertaking?"

I live in a place where a lot of people live a day to day existence, struggling to put food on the table. They are subsistence farmers who break their backs 12 hours or more a day to eke out a living. 150 years ago that's the way it was all over the world. Please stop romanticizing the idea that subsistence farming is a great way of life. It's not - anytime anyone wants to come out here and live for a few months with some subsistence farmers, come on out for an up close and personal look. It ain't little house on the prairy. In real life Laura gets appendicitis and dies, mom and dad need serious dental work, and the youngest decides being a hooker is a better life than this.

Thanks for the review, Tom.  I hope to read the book.

In reading these comments and others, such as the many threads on COMFOOD, I'm struck by how frequently the writer refers to the source of the problem in terms of someone else.  Industrial agriculture is the problem.  The multinational corporations are the problem.  The government is the problem (you choose any agency or all of them).  The benighted consumer is the problem.  The benighted farmer is the problem.  The population is the problem.  "I" am never the problem.  But maybe "I" or we are the problem.

Let's take the point that the locavore and local food systems advocates needs to get serious about the need to address the important social need to have a steady supply of healthy food.  (By the way, all of those famines in the past occured when the world population was a fraction of its current state.)  How do we--not someone else, but we--organize ourselves locally to produce the food we want and need to consume?  How do we conceive, design, build and operate local food systems that both ensure a steady supply of the basic food we need to eat and bring us the delicacies and delights that we want?  We cannot leave this critical social task to someone else.  We cannot rest easily knowing that we seek and eat local food (a locavore is, by definition, one who eats local food--but what is the word for the people who produce, pack, package, process, distribute and sell local food?).

Allow me to suggest we match all of the creativity and energy we expend on our important critiques of the big "system" with equal creativity and energy expended on building the local alternatives in our own communities.

Hank

Tom, great review! Very informative.

@Hank Herrera: Your comments are right on the money! It is entirely up to you and me to think constructively about what action we need to take to get the results we want. Rest assured, if we just "rest assured" by others, it'll be them getting what they want, not us.

So often, organising local action just seems too hard (you can't even rely on family members who share similar views to take the trouble to join in planned activities), so much so that we can be tempted to give up on developing cooperative behaviours. But remember you can often lead by example, doing, in a little way, the kind of thing you'd like your family and friends to join in on. Want fresh beans? Plant some! Want fresh tomatoes too, but haven't got much space, or time, left? Swap your excess fresh beans with your neighbour. And give a few to your relatives in the next suburb or town; they just might develop a taste for fresh food.

BTW, Hank, you asked: "a locavore is, by definition, one who eats local food--but what is the word for the people who produce, pack, package, process, distribute and sell local food?"  

How about "farmer"? ;-)

I recently finished reading "Fast Food Nation" that I got at a garage sale for .25 cents (way cool!) and am almost finished reading "Don't Eat This Book" by Morgan Spurlock, you know the Super Size Me guy. I thought the books would be the same, but Eric Scholsser's is more "Just the facts, ma'am" and Morgan's is really funny and anecdotal. I really recommend them both. I have to say I like Morgan's better because of his quirky, opinionated writing style. Fast Food Nation was a little dry.