Empires of Food: Feast, Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations

An evocative history that considers how food has shaped our world -- and what the future holds.For thousands of years we have grown, cooked and traded food, and over that time much has changed. Where once we subsisted on gritty, bland grains, we now enjoy culinary creations and epicurean delights made with vegetables from the New World, fish trawled from the deep sea, and flavoured with spices from the Orient.But how did we make that change from eating for survival to the innovations of modern cuisine? How has food helped to shape our culture? And what will happen when global warming and peak oil have their inevitable effect on agriculture? Empires of Food is an authoritative exploration of the innumerable ways that food has changed the course of history. The earliest cities, after all, were founded on the creation and exchange of food surpluses, and since then trade routes of ever greater sophistication have developed. We've built complex societies by shunting corn and wheat and rice along rivers, up deforested hillsides, and into the stockpots of history.But we cannot go on forever. As Evan D. G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas compellingly show, the abundance that we all enjoy comes at a price, and unless we think of a more sustainable way to grow, eat and enjoy food, we may find thatour civilization reaches its best before date.

Fraser, Evan D.G.

History

Arrow

Uncertain Harvest: The Future of Food on a Warming Planet (Digestions, 2)

Review\nShort-listed, Saskatchewan Book Awards, 2020 
Honourable Mention, Science Writers and Communicators of Canada Book Award, 2020\n"This book offers an amazing insight to the global food supply chain, the issues that climate change is likely to cause, a wealth of information on the history of our current system and several brilliant and well-researched solutions to certain issues we face. I would highly recommend this book." -Environmental Values\nA menu for an edible future\nIn a world expected to reach a staggering population of 9 billion by 2050, and with global temperatures rising fast, humanity must fundamentally change the way it grows and consumes food. But can we produce enough food to feed ourselves sustainably for an uncertain future? How will agriculture adapt to a climate change? How will climate change determine what we eat? Will we really be eating bugs?\nUncertain Harvest questions scientists, chefs, activists, entrepreneurs, farmers, philosophers, and engineers working on the global future of food on how to make a more equitable, safe, sustainable, and plentiful food future. Examining cutting-edge research on the science, culture, and economics of food, the authors present a roadmap for a global food policy, while examining eight foods that could save us: algae, caribou, kale, millet, tuna, crickets, milk, and rice.

Science & Math

Mosby, Ian

Rotz, Sarah

Technology

University of Regina Press

A menu for an edible future. &nbsp; In a world expected to reach a staggering population of 10 billion by 2050, and with global temperatures rising fast, humanity must fundamentally change the way it grows and consumes food. Uncertain Harvest brings together scientists, chefs, activists, entrepreneurs, farmers, philosophers, and engineers working on the global future of food to answer questions on how to make a more equitable, safe, sustainable, and plentiful food future. &nbsp; Navigating cutting-edge research on the science, culture, and economics of food, Ian Mosby, Sarah Rotz, and Evan D.G. Fraser present a roadmap for a global food policy, while examining eight foods that could save us: algae, caribou, kale, millet, tuna, crickets, milk, and rice. "Engaging, insightful, clever, sobering, and hard-hitting!" --Steffanie Scott, co-author of Organic Food and Farming in China&nbsp; "Uncertain Harvest offers an unflinching look at some of the biggest challenges we face today. By bringing together scholars from the fields of food studies, geography, and history, the book offers insightful answers to the questions: How did we get here and what lessons can we learn from our past? And how might the most commonly-touted 'future of food' solutions play out, both globally and locally?" --Ann Hui, author of Chop Suey Nation&nbsp; "What happens when a historian, an activist, and a techno-optimist come together to envision our food future? A surprisingly balanced and compelling snapshot of what's possible: local problems get local solutions, and the ancient art of feeding ourselves benefits from a much-needed update. At last, hope we might actually be able to count on." --Dan Barber, author of The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Using the colorful diaries of a sixteenth-century merchant as a narrative guide, Empires of Food vividly chronicles the fate of people and societies for the past 12,000 years through the foods they grew, hunted, traded, and ateand offers fascinating, and devastating, insights into what to expect in years to come. In energetic prose, agricultural expert Evan D.G. Fraser and journalist Andrew capture the flavor of places as disparate as ancient Mesopotamia and imperial Britain, taking us from the first city in the once-thriving Fertile Crescent to today’s overworked breadbaskets and rice bowls in the United States and China. Cities, culture, art, government, and religion were founded on the creation and exchange of food surpluses. Complex societies were built by shipping grain up rivers and into the stewpots of history’s generations. But evenutally, inevitably, the crops fail, the fields erode, or the temperature drops, and the center of power shifts. Cultures descend into dark ages of poverty, famine, and war. A fascinating, fresh history told through the prism of the dining table, Empires of Food offers a grand scope and a provocative analysis of the world today, indispensable in this time of global warming and food crises.

Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations

Literature & Fiction

Rimas, Andrew

Dramas & Plays

Counterpoint

From Impossible Burgers to lab-made sushi, two witty, plugged-in food scientists explore leading-edge AgTech for the answer to feeding a settlement on Mars - and 9 billion Earthlings too. When two food geeks, who also like sci-fi, imagine how to feed a colony on Mars, they also discover how food production on planet Earth can and must change. Will a Red Planet menu involve cheese and ice cream made from vats of fermented yeast? Will medicine cabinets overflow with pharmaceuticals created from engineered barley grown using geothermal energy? Will the protein of choice feature a chicken breast grown in a lab? Weird, wonderful, and sometimes disgusting, figuring out 'what's for dinner on Mars' is far from trivial. If we can figure out how to sustain ourselves on Mars, we will know how to do it on Earth too. In Dinner on Mars, authors Fraser and Newman show how setting the table off-planet will supercharge efforts to produce food sustainably here at home. For futurists, sci-fi geeks, tech

Dinner on Mars: The Technologies That Will Feed the Red Planet and Transform Agriculture on Earth

Politics & Social Sciences

Newman, Lenore

Social Sciences

ECW Press

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Books by Fraser, Evan D.G.