Mobilize Food!: Wartime Inspiration for Environmental Victory Today

by Eleanor Boyle, Tim Lang (Foreword by)

Overview

Faced with a climate crisis, can people commit to action? Faced with evidence that our agriculture and our diets fuel that crisis-producing significant greenhouse gases-can we muster the vision to produce and consume food differently? Transforming food systems to meet a threat has been done before, as revealed in Mobilize Food! Wartime Inspiration for Environmental Victory Today. The book recounts the dramatic story of World War II Britain, its Ministry of Food, and its millions of citizens who fought for their democracy partly by growing more, wasting less, and sharing scarce foods equitably so that everyone could feed themselves during an emergency and beyond. Highly relevant to today as we fight our battles for healthy environments and a liveable global climate, Mobilize Food! offers strategies for action and hope in our time. It shows that entire populations can remake food systems to be sustainable, healthy, and fair-and that just as people in the past were capable of greatness, so are we.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781039123663
Publisher:	FriesenPress
Publication date:	05/24/2022
Pages:	294
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.66(d)

About the Author

Eleanor Boyle is a Vancouver, BC-based writer, speaker and activist focusing on how we can eat more sustainably. A long-time college instructor and former journalist, she is also the author of High Steaks: Why and How to Eat Less Meat (New Society 2012).

Editorial Reviews

2022-06-20
Canadian journalist and college instructor Boyle’s nonfiction work seeks a way to combat climate change by taking a lesson from European history.

The first half of this book delineates the United Kingdom’s approach to food-supply problems during the turbulent years leading up to and during the Second World War. At the time, the U.K. depended greatly on food importation, which would certainly be threatened by a military conflict. Led by Lord Woolton, the newly appointed Minister of Food, the government instigated a bold campaign to change citizens’ expectations and approaches to farming and eating. A rationing system was implemented, and government intervention aimed to make agricultural practices more productive. The government also made use of the media to encourage more food production in home gardens or allotments and discourage food waste, among other actions. Interestingly, despite the restrictions, this system resulted in better nutrition for poorer people in the nation and led to an overall healthier citizenry with better morale. Boyle argues that our modern war is against climate change, to which our current food production system contributes. In order to face this threat, she asserts, humankind must “fundamentally change the way we grow and consume food.” She talks about current projects and programs that are making positive change, such as private companies committing to ethically sourced produce, apps for finding farmers markets, and farmers and ranchers aiming to “produce healthy food that is affordable and kinder to animals, local environments, and climate.” In this informative book, Boyle effectively outlines applicable lessons from the U.K.’s WWII–era food-supply approach to problems of today, noting that change can occur in systems as well as individual choices; that strong public leadership is a necessity; and that nations need to come together in common cause. Overall, this thoroughly researched and referenced book is compelling, and many readers’ eyes will be opened to a large-scale problem and the potential for addressing it through concerted, deliberate action. Throughout, Boyle argues her points convincingly, and many will find a sense of hope in her ideas.

An optimistic yet realistic look at the problems and possibilities of global food production.

Kirkus Reviews