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Shattering : food, politics, and the loss of genetic diversity / Cary Fowler and Pat Mooney.
1990
S 191 FOW.S
Available at WIPO Library
Items
Details
Title
Shattering : food, politics, and the loss of genetic diversity / Cary Fowler and Pat Mooney.
Description
xvi, 278 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
ISBN
0816511543
9780816511549 alk. paper
0816511810 paperback
9780816511815 paperback
9780816511549 alk. paper
0816511810 paperback
9780816511815 paperback
Alternate Call Number
S 191 FOW.S
Summary
"It was through control of the shattering of wild seeds that humans first domesticated plants. Now control over those very plants threatens to shatter the world's food supply, as loss of genetic diversity sets the stage for widespread hunger.Large-scale agriculture has come to favor uniformity in food crops. More than 7,000 U.S. apple varieties once grew in American orchards; 6,000 of them are no longer available. Every broccoli variety offered through seed catalogs in 1900 has now disappeared. As the international genetics supply industry absorbs seed companies--with nearly one thousand takeovers since 1970--this trend toward uniformity seems likely to continue; and as third world agriculture is brought in line with international business interests, the gene pools of humanity's most basic foods are threatened.The consequences are more than culinary. Without the genetic diversity from which farmers traditionally breed for resistance to diseases, crops are more susceptible to the spread of pestilence. Tragedies like the Irish Potato Famine may be thought of today as ancient history; yet the U.S. corn blight of 1970 shows that technologically based agribusiness is a breeding ground for disaster.Shattering reviews the development of genetic diversity over 10,000 years of human agriculture, then exposes its loss in our lifetime at the hands of political and economic forces. The possibility of crisis is real; this book shows that it may not be too late to avert it."--Amazon.com.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-256) and index.
Formatted Contents Note
Origins of agriculture
Development of diversity
Value of diversity
Genetic erosion: losing diversity
Rise of the genetics supply industry
Enter biotechnology
Global conservation begins
Politics of genetic resource control
Responsibility and commitment.
Development of diversity
Value of diversity
Genetic erosion: losing diversity
Rise of the genetics supply industry
Enter biotechnology
Global conservation begins
Politics of genetic resource control
Responsibility and commitment.
Series
Published
Tucson : University of Arizona Press, c1990.
Language
English
Record Appears in
all