World Hunger: Twelve Myths - Softcover

The completely revised Second Edition includes:

o Substantial new material on hunger in the aftermath of the Cold War

o Global food production vs. population growth

o Changing demographics and falling birth rates around the world

o The shifting focus of foreign assistance in the new world order

o Structural adjustment and other budget-slashing policies

o Trade liberalization and free trade agreements

o Famine and humanitarian interventions

o The Third Worldization of First World nations

In this completely revised and updated edition of the most authoritative book on world hunger, three of our foremost experts on food and agriculture expose and explode the myths that prevent us from effectively addressing the problem. Drawing on and distilling the extensive research of the Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First), Lapp, Collins, and Rosset examine head-on the policies and politics that have kept hungry people from feeding themselves around the world, in both Third and First World countries, as well as the misconceptions that have obscured our own national, social, and humanitarian interests. Written in a straightforward, easy-to-read style, World Hunger: Twelve Myths shakes many tenaciously held beliefs; but most important, it convinces readers that by standing together with the hungry we can advance not only humanitarian interests, but our own well-being.

"World Hunger addresses problems of enormous human significance with valuable and often surprising information, much insight, sound common sense, and fundamental decency. It should become not only a book for study, but a guide to action."-Noam Chomsky, MIT

"A marvelously lucid message: the most important cause of death and disease is hunger; the remedy is food; the remedy exists. Their message swiftly demolishes the myths and powerfully arms us for the political task of ending hunger, here and throughout the world."-Dr. Barry Commoner

Frances Moore Lapp is the author of twelve books including the international bestseller, Diet for a Small Planet, and co-director of the Center for Living Democracy in Brattleboro, Vermont. In 1975, she and Joseph Collins founded the Oakland-based Institute for Food and Development Policy. Dr. Collins' many books include Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity, and Aid as Obstacle: Twenty Questions About Our Foreign Aid and the Hungry (both with Lapp, as well as No Free Lunch: Food and Revolution in Cuba, and Chile's Free Market Miracle: A Second Look. An author, lecturer and consultant on international development issues, Collins makes his home in Santa Cruz, California. Peter Rosset is the Executive Director of the Institute for Food and Development Policy. Dr. Rosset's many books include A Cautionary Tale: Failed U.S. Development Policy in Central America, The Greening of the Revolution: Cuba's Experiment with Organic Agriculture, and Agroecology. Dr. Luis Esparza is a Geographer from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).