The Hunger Machine: Politics of Food - Softcover

The number of people who die of malnutrition each year is equivalent to dropping a Hiroshima bomb every three days. This horrifying fact is explored by Jon Bennett and Susan George in this book, published to coincide with the Channel Four and Yorkshire Television series "The Politics of Food". This study dissects the anatomy of world starvation, showing how it is manufactured by many of the policies of powerful industrial nations; sustained by the self-interest and narrow visions of many elites in the Third World; and in control of the destinies of those least able to resist it. It challenges the myths that hunger is caused by over-population, inadequate food resources and bad weather. The book clearly demonstrates that there is not only adequate food produced today to feed the world's population, but that there is enough to feed the population of the year 2000. This book shows that it is how we produce and distribute our food which determines who shall live and who shall die. Jon Bennett uses detailed case studies of the Sudan, Bangladesh, Nicaragua and Brazil to examine the varying causes of hunger and the powerful forces which operate daily to privilege some and destroy others. He and Susan George conclude by taking a positive look at alternative ways of organizing the production and distribution of food. The book is extensively illustrated with photographs, maps and figures. It is a sobering but not relentlessly pessimistic book and an excellent permanent record of the debates which have been so prominent in the media in recent months.