Matilda is a big sow or pig who lives in Provence, France. She has a very big snout and is an expert at digging for truffle mushrooms which are the most expensive food in the world. This makes Matilda, the most valuable pig in the world!

This book examines the changing roles and functions of the soybean throughout world history and discusses how this reflects the complex processes of agrofood globalization. The book uses a historical lens to analyze the processes and features that brought us to the current global configuration of the soybean commodity chain. From its origins as a peasant food in ancient China, today the protein-rich soybean is by far the most cultivated biotech crop on Earth; used to make a huge variety of food and industrial products, including animal feed, tofu, cooking oil, soy sauce, biodiesel and soap. While there is a burgeoning amount of literature on how the contemporary global soy web affects large tracts of our planet’s social-ecological systems, little attention has been given to the questions of how we got here and what alternative roles the soybean has played in the past. This book fills this gap and demonstrates that it is impossible to properly comprehend the contemporary global soybean chain, or the wider agrofood system of which it is a part, without looking at both their long and short historical development. However, a history of the soybean and its changing roles within equally changing agrofood systems is inexorably a history about globalization. Not only does this book map out where soybeans are produced, but also who governs, wields power and accumulates capital in the entire commodity chain from inputs in production to consumption, as well as identifying the institutional context the global commodity chain operates within. The book concludes with a discussion of the main challenges and contradictions of the current soy regime that could trigger its rupture and end. This book is essential reading for students, practitioners and scholars interested in agriculture and food systems, global commodity chains, globalization, environmental history, economic history and social-ecological systems.

Americans would swear that the Maryland blue crab, Maine lobster, morel mushroom, or perhaps shrimp DeJonghe are delicacies out of this world because they are surprisingly unique and tasty. But have you ever heard of delicacies such as hakari, smalohove, casu marzu, stracatto dasino, and lutefisk? Meanwhile, others talk about lox, tete de veau, and balutthe list goes on. Welcome aboard to the Global Delicacies gravy trip around the world. Fasten your belts and relax. Our chefs and waitresses are going to serve you with some global delicacies on our expedition. Each and every delicacy will be explained to you, including the source of the foodmammal, reptile, insect, fish, plant, or seaweedand the location that the delicacy comes from. You will be provided with recipes, medicinal properties, and nutritional values of each delicacy. Be warned, however, that you may find some delicacies offensive and distasteful. You may choose what you want to eat and discard what you do not want to eat. This is a learning curve on your part about global delicacies. This might bring cultural relativism at your doorstep.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice "A brilliant and empathetic guide to the far corners of global capitalism." --Jenny Odell, author of How to Do Nothing From FSGO x Logic: stories about rural China, food, and tech that reveal new truths about the globalized world In Blockchain Chicken Farm, the technologist and writer Xiaowei Wang explores the political and social entanglements of technology in rural China. Their discoveries force them to challenge the standard idea that rural culture and people are backward, conservative, and intolerant. Instead, they find that rural China has not only adapted to rapid globalization but has actually innovated the technology we all use today. From pork farmers using AI to produce the perfect pig, to disruptive luxury counterfeits and the political intersections of e-commerce villages, Wang unravels the ties between globalization, technology, agriculture, and commerce in unprecedented fashion. Accompanied by humorous “Sinofuturist” recipes that frame meals as they transform under new technology, Blockchain Chicken Farm is an original and probing look into innovation, connectivity, and collaboration in the digitized rural world. FSG Originals × Logic dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives. The titans of Silicon Valley, for all their utopian imaginings, never really had our best interests at heart: recent threats to democracy, truth, privacy, and safety, as a result of tech’s reckless pursuit of progress, have shown as much. We present an alternate story, one that delights in capturing technology in all its contradictions and innovation, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and PR hype, and past doom and gloom. Our collaboration features four brief but provocative forays into the tech industry’s many worlds, and aspires to incite fresh conversations about technology focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools that reorganize and redefine life today.

Chocolate is an adventurous pony and is the color of chocolate. She gets lost beyond the meadow one day and loses sight of her Mom and her home. Her adventures take her to become the star of a pet zoo, the star of a circus where she performs pony tricks and living a life of luxury with a littlegirl who adores her. Will she find her way home?

Follow the life of Bill, the "one dollar bill" on his adventures from the bank, to the streets of New York City, to a Coca-Cola Machine, to a fun taxi cab ride, on a rollercoaster ride in Disney World; Florida and to a classroom in Austin; Texas. Every dollar counts and so does this one dollar bill!

The farm, the garden, the fireside.