In the last decade, the world has grown richer and produced more food than ever before. Yet in that same period, hunger has increased and 925 million remain underfed and malnourished. Exploring this troubling paradox, The Feeding of Nations: Re-Defining Food Security for the 21st Century offers a glimpse into how the simple aspiration of global foo

To Feed a Nation takes the reader on a journey over the centuries, describing the slow and arduous development of Australian food technology and science from before European settlement to the latter half of the twentieth century. The first part of the book gives a fascinating glimpse into Aboriginal food and culture, outlines the primitive state of European food technology at the time of the First Fleet, and shows how the colonists tried to transfer to Australia the village technologies they knew in England. The second part describes how, for most of the nineteenth century, technology preceded science – the processing and storage of food relied on methods which, by trial and error, had been shown to work – and food science was slow to emerge. The final part of the book highlights the twentieth century watershed — how a growing understanding of the nature of food, the principles of nutrition, and the role of micro-organisms, was able to propel food technology to where it is today. The publication of To Feed a Nation has been sponsored by the Food Technology Association of Victoria.

This book recalls how the housewives of Britain learned to make do and kept the nation 'fighting fit'. Contains a vast collection of recipes, including Steak and Potato Pie, Stuffed Marrow and Eggless Sponge Pudding, showing how war-time food is still delicious. Includes food from street parties and other victory celebrations that marked the end of the war. These celebratory dishes feature both home cooking and inspiration from the countries of our allies. Savour the tastes of the war years with this nostalgic collection of recipes.

Food insecurity poses one of the most pressing development and human security challenges in the world. In Feeding the Hungry, Michelle Jurkovich examines the social and normative environments in which international anti-hunger organizations are working and argues that despite international law ascribing responsibility to national governments to ensure the right to food of their citizens, there is no shared social consensus on who ought to do what to solve the hunger problem. Drawing on interviews with staff at top international anti-hunger organizations as well as archival research at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the UK National Archives, and the U.S. National Archives, Jurkovich provides a new analytic model of transnational advocacy. In investigating advocacy around a critical economic and social right—the right to food—Jurkovich challenges existing understandings of the relationships among human rights, norms, and laws. Most important, Feeding the Hungry provides an expanded conceptual tool kit with which we can examine and understand the social and moral forces at play in rights advocacy.

One of the main dangers to Britain during the Second World War was the possibility of the country being starved out of the war. Indeed, it was what Churchill feared the most. Before the war, Britain was hugely dependent upon foreign imports of food and supplies, but with unrestricted submarine warfare these lifelines were in danger of being cut and the amount of imports hugely reduced. Britain was not unprepared. Lessons had been learned during the First World War, when people had been encouraged to grow more of their own food. The Ministry of Food, in particular, had detailed plans in the event of a future war and the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign rightly went down in history as one of the great successes of the British Home Front. For the farmers of Britain the war meant a massive upheaval, as the government ordered them to plough up millions of acres of land to grow valuable arable crops. Meanwhile, with rationing a daily and inescapable part of life, the people of Britain had to get used to different foodstuffs, including powdered egg, Spam and even whale meat. Incredibly, the diets of many British people actually improved during the war and the fact that the country avoided starvation demonstrated not only the success of government planning, but also the determination and ingenuity of the wartime generation.

We can win the fight against global poverty. Combining penetrating economic analysis with insightful theological reflection, this book sketches a comprehensive plan for increasing wealth and protecting stability at a national level.

In the world’s most affluent and food secure societies, why is it now publicly acceptable to feed donated surplus food, dependent on corporate food waste, to millions of hungry people? While recognizing the moral imperative to feed hungry people, this book challenges the effectiveness, sustainability and moral legitimacy of globally entrenched corporate food banking as the primary response to rich world food poverty. It investigates the prevalence and causes of domestic hunger and food waste in OECD member states, the origins and thirty-year rise of US style charitable food banking, and its institutionalization and corporatization. It unmasks the hidden functions of transnational corporate food banking which construct domestic hunger as a matter for charity thereby allowing indifferent and austerity-minded governments to ignore increasing poverty and food insecurity and their moral, legal and political obligations, under international law, to realize the right to food. The book’s unifying theme is understanding the food bank nation as a powerful metaphor for the deep hole at the centre of neoliberalism, illustrating: the de-politicization of hunger; the abandonment of social rights; the stigma of begging and loss of human dignity; broken social safety nets; the dysfunctional food system; the shift from income security to charitable food relief; and public policy neglect. It exposes the hazards of corporate food philanthropy and the moral vacuum within negligent governments and their lack of public accountability. The advocacy of civil society with a right to food bite is urgently needed to gather political will and advance ‘joined-up’ policies and courses of action to ensure food security for all.

By 2050, we will have ten billion mouths to feed in a world profoundly altered by environmental change. How will we meet this challenge? In How to Feed the World, a diverse group of experts from Purdue University break down this crucial question by tackling big issues one-by-one. Covering population, water, land, climate change, technology, food systems, trade, food waste and loss, health, social buy-in, communication, and equal access to food, the book reveals a complex web of challenges. Contributors unite from different perspectives and disciplines, ranging from agronomy and hydrology to economics. The resulting collection is an accessible but wide-ranging look at the modern food system.

Global food prices have eased significantly from their record highs in the first part of 2008. As a worldwide economic downturn has gathered pace, commodity markets have weakened significantly. By October 2008, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's Food Price Index stood at 164, the same level as in August 2007, and 25% lower than the Index's high of 219 in June 2008. However, this does not mean that policy-makers around the world can start to breathe a sigh of relief. For one thing, even at their somewhat diminished levels current prices remain acutely problematic for low-income import-dependent countries and for poor people all over the world. The World Bank estimates that higher food prices have increased the number of undernourished people by as much as 100 million from its pre-price-spike level of 850 million.