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  • Published: 12 November 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241645406
  • Imprint: Viking
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $36.99
Categories:

How to Feed the World

A Factful Guide





A myth-busting book about how the world produces and consumes its food and how to do so without killing the planet

In this ambitious, myth-busting book, leading scientist and internationally bestselling author Vaclav Smil investigates many of the burning questions facing the world today: Why are some of the world’s biggest food producers also the countries with the most undernourished populations? Why is food waste a colossal 1,000kcal per person daily, and how can we solve that? Could we all go vegan and be healthy? Should we? How will we feed the ballooning population without killing the planet?

How Food Really Works shows how we misunderstand the essentials of where our food really comes from, how our dietary requirements shape us, and why this impacts our planet in drastic ways. Ultimately, this data-based, rigorously researched guide explains how we will survive and thrive long into the future.

  • Published: 12 November 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241645406
  • Imprint: Viking
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $36.99
Categories:

Also by Vaclav Smil

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Praise for How to Feed the World

A compelling, fascinating, and most important, realistic portrait of the world and where it's going

STEVEN PINKER on NUMBERS DON’T LIE

A fact-filled, punchy book . . . Smil's fascination with numbers is infectious

THE TIMES on NUMBERS DON’T LIE

Another masterpiece from one of my favourite authors

BILL GATES on the New York Times bestseller HOW THE WORLD REALLY WORKS

Very informative and eye-opening in many ways

HA-JOON CHANG, author of 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism on the New York Times bestseller HOW THE WORLD REALLY WORKS

There is perhaps no other academic who paints pictures with numbers like Smil . . . The nerd's nerd

GUARDIAN

The word "polymath" was invented to describe people like him

BILL GATES

There is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil

BILL GATES

Smil’s art is that he immerses readers rather than overpowering them, while delivering clear takeaway messages: that we must learn to do more with less, that we ought to be wary of any radical solutions, and that we must accept that any gains will be gradual

Caroline Eden, Financial Times

Concise and erudite . . . How to Feed the World is weighted with statistics, but there is something light and irresistible about the way Smil structures his argument and propels his narrative . . . The breadth of Smil’s knowledge is as impressive as the depth

Talha Burki, Lancet
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