Perilous Bounty
The Looming Collapse of American Farming and How We Can Prevent It
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Narrated by:
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Eric Meyers
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By:
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Tom Philpott
About this listen
Bloomsbury presents Perilous Bounty by Tom Philpott, read by Eric Meyers.
New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
An unsettling journey into the disaster-bound American food system, and an exploration of possible solutions, from leading food politics commentator and former farmer Tom Philpott.
More than a decade after Michael Pollan's game-changing The Omnivore's Dilemma transformed the conversation about what we eat, a combination of global diet trends and corporate interests have put American agriculture into a state of "quiet emergency," from dangerous drought in California—which grows more than 50 percent of the fruits and vegetables we eat—to catastrophic topsoil loss in the "breadbasket" heartland of the United States. Whether or not we take heed, these urgent crises of industrial agriculture will define our future.
In Perilous Bounty, veteran journalist and former farmer Tom Philpott explores and exposes the small handful of seed and pesticide corporations, investment funds, and magnates who benefit from the trends that imperil us, with on-the-ground dispatches featuring the scientists documenting the damage and the farmers and activists who are valiantly and inventively pushing back.
Resource scarcity looms on the horizon, but rather than pointing us toward an inevitable doomsday, Philpott shows how the entire wayward ship of American agriculture could be routed away from its path to disaster. He profiles the farmers and communities in the nation's two key growing regions developing resilient, soil-building, water-smart farming practices, and readying for the climate shocks that are already upon us; and he explains how we can help move these methods from the margins to the mainstream.
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Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for a greener planet for decades. He helped save the world’s last unprotected redwoods. He co-created the predecessor to today’s Green New Deal. And he led a successful effort by climate scientists and activists to keep nuclear plants operating, preventing a spike of emissions. But in 2019, as some claimed "billions of people are going to die", contributing to rising anxiety, including among adolescents, Shellenberger decided that he needed to speak out to separate science from fiction.
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Environmentalist with integrity!
- By Wayne on 07-01-20
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Farmageddon
- The True Cost of Cheap Meat
- By: Philip Lymbery, Isabel Oakeshott
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Farm animals have been disappearing from our fields as the production of food has become a global industry. We no longer know for certain what is entering the food chain and what we are eating - as the UK horsemeat scandal demonstrated. We are reaching a tipping point as the farming revolution threatens our countryside, health, and the quality of our food wherever we live in the world.
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Excellent insight of industrial farming
- By Grazyna on 04-19-14
By: Philip Lymbery, and others
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Silent Earth
- Averting the Insect Apocalypse
- By: Dave Goulson
- Narrated by: Dave Goulson
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking environmental classic Silent Spring, an award-winning entomologist and conservationist explains the importance of insects to our survival and offers a clarion call to avoid a looming ecological disaster of our own making.
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Important book for all
- By Wren Jen on 03-24-24
By: Dave Goulson
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Slime
- How Algae Created Us, Plague Us, and Just Might Save Us
- By: Ruth Kassinger
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In Slime we'll meet the algae innovators working toward a sustainable future: from seaweed farmers in South Korea, to scientists using it to clean the dead zones in our waterways, to the entrepreneurs fighting to bring algae fuel and plastics to market. Ruth Kassinger takes listeners on an around-the-world, behind-the-scenes, and into-the-kitchen tour. Whether you thought algae was just the gunk in your fish tank or you eat seaweed with your oatmeal, Slime will delight and amaze with its stories of the good, the bad, and the up-and-coming.
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Fairly entertaining and informative...but
- By Timothy on 08-27-19
By: Ruth Kassinger
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Enough
- Why the World's Poorest Starve in An Age of Plenty
- By: Roger Thurow, Scott Kilman
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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For more than 30 years, humankind has known how to grow enough food to end chronic hunger worldwide. Yet while the Green Revolution succeeded in South America and Asia, it never got to Africa. More than 9 million people every year die of hunger, malnutrition, and related diseases every yearmost of them in Africa and most of them children. More die of hunger in Africa than from AIDS and malaria combined. Now, an impending global food crisis threatens to make things worse.
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It's Time For Us To Be More Compassionate
- By James on 07-18-10
By: Roger Thurow, and others
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An Edible History of Humanity
- By: Tom Standage
- Narrated by: George K. Wilson
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout history, food has acted as a catalyst of social change, political organization, geopolitical competition, industrial development, military conflict, and economic expansion. An Edible History of Humanity is a pithy, entertaining account of how a series of changes---caused, enabled, or influenced by food---has helped to shape and transform societies around the world.
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Flawed, but worthwhile
- By Ary Shalizi on 12-28-17
By: Tom Standage
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Climate Change
- What Everyone Needs to Know
- By: Joseph Romm
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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From Joseph Romm, Chief Science Advisor for National Geographic's Years of Living Dangerously series and one of Rolling Stone's "100 people who are changing America," Climate Change offers user-friendly, scientifically rigorous answers to the most difficult (and commonly politicized) questions surrounding what climatologist Lonnie Thompson has deemed "a clear and present danger to civilization."
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Religious not scientific claims and preachings
- By Jeanne Renzo on 09-19-19
By: Joseph Romm
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The Rational Optimist
- How Prosperity Evolves
- By: Matt Ridley
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Life is getting better at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people's lives as never before.
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Personal
- By Robert F. Jones on 09-15-17
By: Matt Ridley
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Let There Be Water
- Israel's Solution for a Water-Starved World
- By: Seth M. Siegel
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Let There Be Water illustrates how Israel can serve as a model for the United States and countries everywhere by showing how to blunt the worst of the coming water calamities. Even with 60 percent of its country made of desert, Israel has not only solved its water problem; it also has an abundance of water. Israel even supplies water to its neighbors - the Palestinians and the Kingdom of Jordan - every day.
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More water politics story than water technology
- By normal person on 04-12-21
By: Seth M. Siegel
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The Source
- How Rivers Made America and America Remade Its Rivers
- By: Martin Doyle
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In this fresh and powerful work of environmental history, Martin Doyle explores how rivers have often been the source of arguments at the heart of the American experiment - over federalism, taxation, regulation, conservation, and development. Doyle tells the epic story of America and its rivers, from the US Constitution's roots in interstate river navigation, the origins of the Army Corps of Engineers, the discovery of gold in 1848, and the construction of the Hoover Dam and the TVA during the New Deal, to the failure of the levees in Hurricane Katrina.
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Great historical read without compare.
- By Thomas P Dore on 04-10-18
By: Martin Doyle
What listeners say about Perilous Bounty
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Joe
- 10-21-20
please read this book
outstanding critique of American farming. clear warnings about the impact of climate change on agriculture and looming water shortages. highly recommended. we must act now
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- Brent Jackson
- 11-02-20
A Must Read for Everyone Who Eats
A phenomenal work!
Really does a terrific job of clearly explaining the unintended consequences of U.S. food policies.
Describes the forces at work in opposition to more sane, healthy, and sustainable agriculture.
Outlines possibilities to transition out of the agribusines-dictated status quo that impoverishes farmers, land and water resources, and people.
We have a shared responsibility to understand our part in this food chain.
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- Mike Callicrate
- 08-16-20
Without Water and Soil, We die!
Tom Philpot gives us the opportunity to understand that if we don't change our food system, we are finished.
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- Marjorie B.
- 03-02-23
Changes in Farming Practices to Save Our Food Sources and Environment
This well researched and well written book gives us all the information and incentive necessary to insist on change thru both our vote and our forks! Giant agri businesses will continue to place profit as a higher priority than the health and well-being of consumers and the soil and water resources needed to feed a hungry world. We need to change the way farm subsidies are awarded to incentivize rewarding wise farming practices and protect midsize and smaller farmers from extinction- especially when they are farming in environmentally safe ways.
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- Anonymous User
- 11-01-20
Communist nonsense
Full of facts. Fluffy solutions, summed up with communist nonsense. But the author makes one point clear, the only real solution is drastically fewer humans.
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- Ronald
- 11-14-20
A few fact and a lot of lecturing
I was fooled by the NYTimes review of this book. I wanted to know more about the US farm and food system, logistics, etc. Instead, Philpott includes some of that information, but the book came across to me as an overly detailed diatribe. Though it was less than 9 hours long, I had to struggle to complete the book. He simply kept hammering over and over again on how wrong the farmers and big agriculture are. OK, if that's true, why do those who've invested heavily in this sector keep doing the same thing? And the suggestions for alternatives that Philpott gives: can those be scaled up?
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- E. Rudzinski
- 08-28-21
Great book to bore you to sleep.
Ugh, rehash of all the gloom and doom of the climate, meat, and agribusiness. All which will be solved by simple policy shifts in the federal government. We are instructed in the book to vote with our “fork and our feet” many times. Of course there’s a plug for AOC, Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren who are rushing to our rescue. I listened to the whole book even to the painful plug for AOC, Warren, and Sanders.
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1 person found this helpful