Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It

The evils of industrial agriculture are rehashed in this impassioned but sketchy exposé. Food activist and blogger Richardson ticks off a familiar menu of food-system dysfunctions: overreliance on pesticides and fertilizer, exploited farmers and workers, horribly abused livestock, obese children who are fed subsidized junk food in school. (She personalizes her critique with reportage from a stint working at Whole Foods and recollections of a period in her life when a lack of access to fresh produce led her to gain weight on a diet of ice cream and beer.) She contrasts these ills with a vision of sustainable agriculture long on bucolic impressionism—“the baby lambs head-butted their mothers enthusiastically and wagged their tails”—and short on systematic analysis. The author's rabid advocacy of locavorism is especially myopic; she brushes past the costliness and impracticality—“When buying eggs I ask the farmer how many chickens they own and if these chickens are on pasture”—and ignores critics who argue that locavorism is an energy-inefficient fad. Only the choir will be convinced by Richardson's shallow take on these complex issues. (Aug.)