Tim Lang, David Barling, and Martin Caraher: Food policy: integrating health, environment, and society
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Tim Lang, David Barling, and Martin Caraher: Food policy: integrating health, environment, and society Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2009, 313 pp, ISBN 978-0-19-856788-2 Michael J. Miller
Published online: 29 January 2013 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
In Food Policy: Integrating Health, Environment, and Society, Tim Lang et al. analyze and effectively illustrate the increasing complexity and tension between environmental and social-ecological issues and their connections to food policy. In doing this they provide copious evidence of the shortcomings of contemporary food policies across the globe. They identify problems and discuss solutions that would move global food policy toward an ‘‘ecological public health’’ model that acknowledges food as an important intersection of society, economy, and culture. In numerous respects, planetary health is declining. The authors clearly illustrate this throughout the book and indicate that policies dealing with such complex issues can be organized to improve and sustain planetary health (p. 6). A holistic view of ‘‘planetary health’’ and food policy itself allows the authors to effectively illustrate the complexity of modern food policy, which has as its core task the balancing of numerous competing issues. Basically, the condition of the earth’s social-ecology is determined in large part by collective decisions on food production and consumption and food policy. The authors trace the development of global food policy phases that have occurred since World War II (pp. 27–46). These have been: (1) 1940s and 1950s agricultural productionism as a response to famine and rising oil prices; (2) worries in the 1970s regarding under-nutrition and over/ mal-nutrition coupled with adherence to rational perspectives, neo-liberal economics, and market liberalization; (3) the 1980s through the 2000s and more widespread acknowledgement of ecological crises (social and environmental) and increased ideological tensions surrounding M. J. Miller (&) Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66502, USA e-mail: [email protected]
the best way to approach these crises e.g. science and technology versus community empowerment, high versus low tech., and people versus expert-centered approaches (p. 38); and (4) the 21st century where there are myriad ecological issues, evidence of food system un-sustainability, and the beginnings of efforts to integrate these pressing issues with food policy. By establishing a global framework of food policy development, the authors set the stage to discuss the globalized food system and tease out interconnected problems among global actors. This broad framework has its strengths and weaknesses. On the one hand, the complex and interconnected nature of food policy problems demands a global perspective in order to completely understand them. On the other hand, idiosyncrasies of particular locations are masked by such a broad viewpoint. This leads to unsatisfactory conclusions in terms of outlining a particular strategy for effectively changing the
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