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| View Larger Image | Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds
by Claire Hope Cummings
| | List Price: | $24.95 | | Price: | $16.47 | | You Save: | $8.48 (34%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 119308 | | Studio: | Beacon Press | | | Binding: | Hardcover | | Number Of Pages: | 240 | | Publication Date: | March 03, 2008 | | Publisher: | Beacon Press |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Life on earth is facing unprecedented challenges from global warming, war, and mass extinctions. The plight of seeds is a less visible but no less fundamental threat to our survival. Seeds are at the heart of the planet's life-support systems. Their power to regenerate and adapt are essential to maintaining our food supply and our ability to cope with a changing climate.
In Uncertain Peril, environmental journalist Claire Hope Cummings exposes the stories behind the rise of industrial agriculture and plant biotechnology, the fall of public interest science, and the folly of patenting seeds. She examines how farming communities are coping with declining water, soil, and fossil fuels, as well as with new commercial technologies. Will genetically engineered and "terminator" seeds lead to certain promise, as some have hoped, or are we embarking on a path of uncertain peril? Will the "doomsday vault" under construction in the Arctic, designed to store millions of seeds, save the genetic diversity of the world's agriculture?
To answer these questions and others, Cummings takes readers from the Fertile Crescent in Iraq to the island of Kaua'i in Hawai'i; from Oaxaca, Mexico, to the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. She examines the plight of farmers who have planted transgenic seeds and scientists who have been persecuted for revealing the dangers of modified genes.
At each turn, Cummings looks deeply into the relationship between people and plants. She examines the possibilities for both scarcity and abundance and tells the stories of local communities that are producing food and fuel sustainably and providing for the future. The choices we make about how we feed ourselves now will determine whether or not seeds will continue as a generous source of sustenance and remain the common heritage of all humanity. It comes down to this: whoever controls the future of seeds controls the future of life on earth.
Uncertain Peril is a powerful reminder that what's at stake right now is nothing less than the nature of the future.
"With Uncertain Peril, Claire Hope Cummings offers an indispensable contribution to the debate over biotechnology. She rightly focuses our attention on the seed, and what its privatization and manipulation may mean for the future of food."
—Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore's Dilemma
"Our current approach to industrial agriculture will someday seem so bizarre that our descendants won't understand what we were thinking. This fine volume provides the details of the way we do things now—and the keys to getting towards a farming future that might actually work."
—Bill McKibben, author Deep Economy
"As agriculture continues to industrialize and globalize, more and more of the seeds farmers plant every year are owned by multinational corporations. And with the corporate focus on effeciency and rational product lines, monocultures continue to grow. Our society has not thought hard enough about whether this is the kind of agricultural system we want. Fortunately, along comes Claire Cummings with this timely and valuable book, to do a lot of important thinking for us. I hope everyone reads it."
—John Seabrook, The New Yorker
"Claire Hope Cummings has written the clearest analysis and overview of the biotech seeds debate I've ever encountered. Writing with passion, she tells the story of seeds as not only the first link in the food chain but also as our only hope for food security in the midst of global warming. I commend Uncertain Peril to anybody who wants to understand who owns, controls, and is directing the fate of our seeds."
—Pat Mooney, author of Shattering and Executive Director of the ETC Group
"Uncertain Peril gives us passionate and persuasive reasons why we need more public discussion of the risks and benefits of agricultural biotechnology. Cummings never loses sight of the key question: Who decides what foods we eat?"
—Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics and What to Eat
"Uncertain Peril is a wake up call about the threat to our seeds, and to the freedom of the seed."
—Vandana Shiva, author of Stolen Harvest and editor of Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed
"Claire Cummings now takes her place with Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva and other great philosophers and critics deeply concerned over the grim new directions of industrial, hi-tech agriculture, as it undermines ages-old traditional, highly successful relationships between the cultures, the earth and the seeds, that are at the core of all plant life and human existence. Uncertain Peril should be required reading for anyone interested in sustainable futures."
—Jerry Mander, director, International Forum on Globalization and author of In the Absence of the Sacred |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 9 reviews)
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From a Farmers point of view 
I used to work for Monsanto and thought they were wonderful to work for. i got caught up in their science. as i have got older and switched from conventional to organic farming i have been keenly made aware of just what is going on. Seeing my soil come back to life, diversity in wildlife, beneficial insects and microlife is short of a religous experience. to think i was an addict and they were my dealer!!! what corporations are doing with seeds, chemicals and our freedom to farm is true. Anyone denying this, is either bribed, employed by them, or they own lots of stock and could care less what the agenda is. as our culture transformed from a rural to mostly urban one it's easy to see how most people have tuned out what is going on with their food. what a shame. Claire wrote this book with passion, i read it with passion. God, i wish i could meet her. Claire, thank you for this book, great job.
July 24, 2008 | |
Our Food Supply Is At Risk - Uncertain Peril Is The Warning
As our western civilization "evolves" our connection with our food supply has diminished to the point where the basic understanding of farming and the processes involved has diminished. One thing we all know despite this is that food comes from seeds. But what if seeds were no longer available or if they were only viable with the purchase of support chemicals? What would happen if the world's food supply were contaminated with a corporate gene that eliminated our ability and right to save seeds? Bob Dylan wrote in one of his apocalyptic songs from the seventies "One day even your home garden will be against the law". This is what is happening in the name of "Feeding the World", the mantra of the corporations bringing us "better living" with genetic engineering. But so far there has not been a genetically engineered crop that has benefited anyone but corporations like Monsanto and Syngenta. Claire has weaved together a compelling call to action and a succinct report of the direction agriculture is heading. I recommend that you arm yourself with this book and prepare to defend.
June 25, 2008 | |
greenhorns to the issue?- This is your textbook
Young Farmers, urban food activists, locavores and Kingsolverites--those of us who are newly concious about the food we put in our mouths, and the landscape behind that food--> If we've arrived on the scene in recent years, then we never really knew agriculture pre-biotech.
We have learned too late of the gross contamination of our food supply, the 70% of processed foods on our super market shelves that have GMO ingredients, the vast plantations of GMO soybean in Brazil, the open air testing of experimental pharma-drugs and GMOs in Hawaii, the ever more hyperbolus corn fields in our own midwest. These tragedies of monoculture are the result of a deliberate process carried out before our time, and before our involvement in the food system.
While a lot of these biotech developments occurred before my generation got involved in sustainable agriculture, the approval for these technologies and the intellecutal property rights precedents occured at the highest levels. There is a wonderful French film that just came out about Monsanto ( The World According to Monsanto) with a clip of George Bush senior touring the Monsanto research facility and saying "Well if you have any trouble with the FDA let me know, we're in the DEREG business."
With current talk about the 'spike' in food prices funding development for yet another round of "Roundup Ready" crops, with unprecedented hunger pangs, and the recent focus of the Gates Foundation on Biotech for Africa-- what better time to learn what we can from the corrupt history of the Agro-bioscience industry. False promises, superweeds, hegemony and monoculture, lets stop the proliferation of GMO agriculture as soon as we can.
June 10, 2008 | |
Required Reading for Educators concerned with the Science, Food & Health
Uncertain Peril provides a vivid description of the crisis at hand for our food system and the seed source that provides the foundation for all of the ecosystems we depend upon. Claire Cummings describes the crisis in a way that allows for understanding and action, the two ingredients that offer the only solution at hand. The book covers the current socio-political landscape surrounding genetic materials in a fair and factual manner. The book should be on the reading list of all citizens and particularly educators, high school through college, concerned with the interface of science, food, farming and health.
June 06, 2008 | |
Uncertain Peril: an informative eye-opener
Uncertain Peril provides an excellent depiction of how corporations have gained control of our food supply. It clearly describes ways that the entire global community's inherent right to grow food is under attack by a multinational corporate agenda. Cummings beautifully describes the core connection between Indigenous cultures and food and how everyone's access to seeds is being eroded by premeditated greed that stops at nothing. Claire also provides specific ways out of the peril. An important work for everyone to fully understand how the future of our food supply is at serious risk. [...]
June 05, 2008 | |
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