This article was downloaded by: [Mr Eric Holt-Giménez]

On: 15 August 2013, At: 11:42

Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Agroecology and Sustainable Food

Systems
Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wjsa21

One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the

World? by Gordon Conway
a
Eric Holt-Giménez
a
Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy
Published online: 15 Aug 2013.

To cite this article: Eric Holt-Gimnez (2013) One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World? by Gordon
Conway, Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 37:8, 968-971

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21683565.2013.809398

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the
“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,
our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to
the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,
and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content
should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources
of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or
howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising
out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &
Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-
and-conditions
 Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 37:968–971, 2013
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 2168-3565 print/2168-3573 online
DOI: 10.1080/21683565.2013.809398

Book Review

One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World? by Gordon Conway.

Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York. 2012. 439 pp., paperback,
$24.95. ISBN 978-0-8014-7802-4.
Sir Gordon Conway’s One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World? is the
Downloaded by [Mr Eric Holt-Giménez] at 11:42 15 August 2013

authoritative text for the 21st century iteration of what Raj Patel (2013)
calls the “long Green Revolution.” In it, Conway outlines an approach
for ending hunger and poverty by reaching out to the world’s hungriest
people—peasant farmers.
One Billion Hungry is an expanded update of Conway’s earlier work,
The Doubly Green Revolution (Conway 1997). During the 15-year hiatus
between books, an explosive combination of global warming, peak oil,
water scarcity, agrofuels, grain-fed meat, land grabbing, and financial specu-
lation has ushered in a new era of high, volatile food prices and widespread
peasant dispossession and impoverishment. Notwithstanding record global
harvests following an average annual rise in food per capita of 12% over the
last 40 years, in 2008 and 2011, over one billion people went hungry, trig-
gering food riots and full-scale rebellions. The resulting human suffering and
political instability have called the legitimacy of the global food system—and
the Green Revolution—seriously into question.
One Billion Hungry attempts to reestablish the imperative of the Green
Revolution under conditions of global markets, monopoly concentration, and
the privatization of pretty much everything—including the hallmark public
research of the original Green Revolution. Conway laments these develop-
ments, but, ultimately, accepts the liberalization of food systems and avoids
questioning heroic assumptions of endless global economic growth. This
steers One Billion Hungry to the standard Green Revolution proposal: To
feed nine billion people, we must double food production by 2050.
For Conway, the routes to world food security are: technological inno-
vation, fair and efficient markets, people, and political leadership. He’s right,
but just how these routes are traveled is where followers and critics will part
ways. Situated at the nexus of productivity, resilience, equitability, and stabil-
ity, Conway asserts that sustainable intensification will end world hunger by
using less land, less water, and fewer chemicals—along with more biotech-
nology and more free markets. The bulk of the 439-page tome is a dry, not
entirely uncritical, reaffirmation of high-yielding varieties and biotechnology,

968
 Book Review 969

as well as many profiles of what most agroecologists would consider good

agricultural practices (sustainable rice intensification, integrated pest man-
agement, soil and water conservation, intercropping, etc.). Conway claims
that because the problem of global hunger is so great, we will need all
solutions—as well as “enabling conditions”—to raise the incomes of the
world’s 2.5 billion smallholders and feed the world.
Conway is spot on about the need for enabling conditions, but he
skips lightly over the structural determinants inherent in today’s corpo-
rate food regime and underplays their regressive impact. He invites us to
believe that, despite the overwhelming financial power of neoliberal markets
and chemical-based plantation agriculture, a Doubly Green Revolution will
somehow provide complimentary opportunities for agroecology and peasant
farmers, bringing an end to hunger without changing the agrarian status quo.
Downloaded by [Mr Eric Holt-Giménez] at 11:42 15 August 2013

Conway clearly cares very deeply for the struggling farmers of the
world. He knows that the Green Revolution’s packages are ineffective on
the fragile lands to which smallholders—who feed over half the world—
have been marginalized. Without sound agroecological management, Green
Revolution inputs are not sustainable; they degrade agroecosystems and
destroy livelihoods. (Given the increase in severe weather events, with-
out extensive agrarian reform, nothing will save smallholders on extremely
fragile lands . . . although Conway does not consider land distribution an
enabling condition.)
In the wake of the Green Revolution’s widespread failures, success-
ful, peasant-driven agroecological practices have raised yields and increased
resiliency for millions of farmers worldwide. Incorporating agroecology into
the Green Revolution is a good idea for someone who is trying to re-green it.
But do peasant farmers using agroecological practices need another Green
Revolution? Or is it the Green Revolution that needs them? What conditions
and mechanisms would specifically enable development of agroecological
peasant agriculture? One Billion Hungry fails to reflect on these critical
questions.
Despite Conway’s path-breaking work in integrated pest management
and ecological resilience, he provides little agroecological analysis. The
“Farmers as Innovators” chapter is largely limited to the experiences with
which he is personally familiar. References to the vast literature chronicling
40 years of agroecological research are sparse, outdated, and do not recog-
nize the development of a science that has expanded from the field to the
food system (Gliessman 2013; Sevilla Guzmán and Woodgate 2013). There
is no mention of the remarkable agroecological successes in food security
and national-scale resiliency in Cuba (Rosset et al. 2011; Chan and Freyre
Roach 2012) or of how social movements have effectively spread sustainable
practices across Central America (Holt-Giménez 2006), East Africa (Wilson
2011) and Brazil (Petersen et al. 2013). These are the tip of the iceberg for
 970 Book Review

agroecological transformation and cannot be ignored, precisely because they

soundly contradict the Green Revolution paradigm.
The intrinsic weakness of One Billion Hungry is its lack of a frame
for understanding the agrarian transitions of capitalist agriculture. The rise
of the agrifood monopolies and global markets driving the differentiation
and dispossession of the peasantry take place on the margins of Conway’s
explanations, even though he knows that the farmers he must reach are los-
ing their seeds, soil, land, and livelihoods as a result of the expansion of
the large-scale, capitalist agriculture the Green Revolution enables. Conway
insists that with a Doubly Green Revolution, things will be different. This
time the monopolization of agriculture’s genetic resources will lead to more,
not less agrobiodiversity; global markets will enrich, not impoverish peas-
ants; agroecological methods and landraces will be supported on par with
Downloaded by [Mr Eric Holt-Giménez] at 11:42 15 August 2013

the support given to chemicals and genetically modified organisms (GMO);

research funding will be equitably directed to soil building, conservation,
and nonproprietary materials. The book’s conclusion consists of a 24-point
to-do list that elides the conflicts that exist between these recommendations.
The arc of Conway’s experience has drawn him into the technocratic
vortex of the Green Revolution’s episteme in which conventional assump-
tions regarding agriculture and society are accepted as fact. One Billion
Hungry’s chapter on “Political Economy” avoids asking “who owns what?
who does what? who gets what? what do they do with it?” (22). The the-
ory of change is an analytical tautology affirming a “highly productive,
stable, resilient, equitable and sustainable” Green Revolution in order to
have another Green Revolution. The implicit hypothesis that only a Doubly
Green Revolution will save the world from hunger, is never seriously tested.
Conway’s lack of systemic analysis lead us back, lemming like, to the pre-
dictable conclusion: Despite the egregious failures of the Green Revolution,
to end hunger, we need another one.
One Billion Hungry signals important shifts in global, capitalist agricul-
ture. Introduced by the Rockefeller Foundation and led by Norman Borlaug,
the original Green Revolution was driven by crop breeding and petroleum.
Research centers were publicly financed and high-yielding varieties were
public goods. The World Bank’s downsizing and restructuring of the
Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research in 1996 opened
the Green Revolution to private financing and modern genetic engineering.
That the Gates Foundation replaced Rockefeller as philanthropic flagship
reflects the ascendance of proprietary technologies. Ironically, Conway, an
agricultural ecologist, has succeeded Borlaug, the crop scientist, as the new
champion for the triad of genetic engineering, sustainable intensification and
free markets.
The Green Revolution is entering its seventh decade. By the time global
population levels off in 2050 the promise to end world hunger by dint
of a continuous flow of new crop varieties and external inputs will span
 Book Review 971

a century. One Billion Hungry is not a revolutionary call, but a plea for
kinder, gentler industrial agriculture during a period of late agrarian capi-
talism in which smallholders and the planet’s natural resources are being
systematically ravaged by global monopolies.
Conway wants to feed the world while satiating the global appetite of
the beast in whose belly he sits. Outside the Green Revolution, many are
clamoring for its passing, and for a farmer-led, agroecological revolution.

REFERENCES

Bernstein, H. 2010. Class dynamics of agrarian change. Halifax: Fernwood

Downloaded by [Mr Eric Holt-Giménez] at 11:42 15 August 2013

Publishing.
Chan, M. L., and E. F. Freyre Roach. 2012. Unfinished puzzle: Cuban agriculture:
The challenges lessons and opportunities. Oakland, CA: Food First Books.
Conway, G. 1997. The doubly green revolution: Food for all in the 21st century.
Oxford, UK: Penguin Books.
Gliessman, S. 2013. Agroecology: Growing the roots of resistance. Agroecology and
Sustainable Food Systems 37:19–31.
Holt-Giménez, E. 2006. Campesino a Campesino: Voices from Latin America’s farmer
to farmer movement. Oakland, CA: Food First.
Patel, R. 2013.The long green revolution. Journal of Peasant Studies 40:1–63,
Petersen, P., E. M. Mussoi, E. Dal Soglio. 2103. Institutionalization of the agroecolog-
ical approach in Brazil: Advances and challenges. Agroecology and Sustainable
Food Systems 37:103–144.
Rosset, P., B. Sosa, A. Jaime, and D. Lozano. 2011. The Campesino-to-Campesino
agroecology movement of ANAP in Cuba: Social process methodology in the
construction of sustainable peasant agriculture and food sovereignty. Journal of
Peasant Studies 38:29–30.
Sevilla Guzmán, E., and G. Woodgate. 2013. Agroecology: Foundations in agrar-
ian social thought and sociological theory. Agroecology and Sustainable Food
Systems 37:32–44.
Wilson, J. 2011. Irrepressibly towards food sovereignty. In Food movements unite!
Strategies to transform our food systems. ed. E. Holt-Giménez, 71–92. Oakland,
CA: Food First Books.

Reviewed by Eric Holt-Giménez

Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy