The industrial consolidation of agriculture is systematically destroying the genetic diversity of our crops, recreating the conditions for famine in an age of technological agriculture. Shattering is an expert look at the dramatic decline of genetic diversity in agriculture, and the threat it poses to our food supply.
It was through control of the shattering of wild seeds that humans first domesticated plants. Now control over those very plants threatens to shatter the world's food supply, as loss of genetic diversity sets the stage for widespread hunger.
Large-scale agriculture has come to favor uniformity in food crops. More than 7,000 U.S. apple varieties once grew in American orchards; 6,000 of them are no longer available. Every broccoli variety offered through seed catalogs in 1900 has now disappeared. As the international genetics supply industry absorbs seed companies--with nearly one thousand takeovers since 1970--this trend toward uniformity seems likely to continue; and as third world agriculture is brought in line with international business interests, the gene pools of humanity's most basic foods are threatened.
The consequences are more than culinary. Without the genetic diversity from which farmers traditionally breed for resistance to diseases, crops are more susceptible to the spread of pestilence. Tragedies like the Irish Potato Famine may be thought of today as ancient history; yet the U.S. corn blight of 1970 shows that technologically based agribusiness is a breeding ground for disaster.
Shattering reviews the development of genetic diversity over 10,000 years of human agriculture, then exposes its loss in our lifetime at the hands of political and economic forces. The possibility of crisis is real; this book shows that it may not be too late to avert it.
This book was originally published in 1990 and remains as relevant today as it was then.
Fowler, Cary: - Cary Fowler is the President of the Food Security Leadership Council. He was U.S. Special Envoy for Global Food Security in the Biden Administration. He headed the first UN assessment of the state of the world's plant genetic resources and oversaw negotiations for an associated 150-country Global Plan of Action. Considered the "father" of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, he is the author of Seeds on Ice about this initiative. He has an earned doctorate from Uppsala University in Sweden and several honorary doctorates including from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences where he is Professor Emeritus of Environment and Development Studies. In 2024, he was awarded the World Food Prize.
Mooney, Pat: - "For 60 years, Pat Mooney has worked within international civil society as a co-founder of ETC Group, retired chair of IATP and a member of IPES - Food, He is author or co-author of several books on the politics of seeds, agrobiodiversity, biopiracy and new technologies including geo-engineering and Big Data. Pat is a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, Canada's Pearson Peace Prize and received honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Waterloo (Canada) and the 17 Advanced Institutes (Mexico). He is retired and living with his wife, Susie Walsh, in rural Québec where they share six children and 13 grandchildren."
