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Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty

Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman
Public Affairs, 2010

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative

Recommendation

Farm subsidies started out as a good way to protect hardworking US and European farmers against the vagaries of the marketplace and the weather. But they’ve morphed into a major reason why the developing world suffers regular, devastating famines. The effects of subsidies on commodity prices often mean that poor farmers, particularly those in Africa, cannot make any money selling their harvests, so they cannot buy the seeds and fertilizers they need to grow future crops. Without incomes, they and their families starve. In this revealing, shocking book, Wall Street Journal reporters Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman examine how – as they contend – practices by rich nations keep developing nations poor and hungry. getAbstract recommends this book to those who want to know why, in the 21st century, people still starve to death, and what’s to be done about it.

Take-Aways

  • Agricultural advances made since the mid-20th century constitute a “Green Revolution” that once promised an end to global hunger.
  • Yet periodic famines continue, despite the Earth’s capacity to feed everyone.
  • In 2008, almost one billion people globally were undernourished, the most in decades.

About the Authors

Roger Thurow is a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, where Scott Kilman covers agriculture. In 2005, the United Nations honored them for their reporting.

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