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Title details for The New Breadline by Jean-Martin Bauer - Available

The New Breadline

Hunger and Hope in the Twenty-First Century

by Jean-Martin Bauer
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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • A humanitarian leader with more than two decades of experience working for the United Nations takes aim at the global food crisis—revealing how hunger anywhere affects lives everywhere and what steps we can take to change course.
"This book should be required reading for the entire human race."
—Jonathan Safran Foer, author of We Are the Weather
At the turn of the twenty-first century, more than 150 countries pledged to eradicate hunger by 2030. But with only a few years left, we’re far from reaching that goal. Instead, hunger is on the rise—America itself recently experienced levels of food insecurity not seen since the Great Depression. How could the richest nation in the world have so many people going hungry?
In The New Breadline, aid worker and activist Jean-Martin Bauer unravels this paradox. Bauer’s family fled to America during the terrors of the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti. Now on the brink of mass starvation, Haiti and its grim history inspired Bauer to make food justice his life's work. During his long career with the UN, Bauer learned firsthand that the problem of hunger is always political—and like all political conditions, hunger, he knew, was something we could work to change.
Drawing from his fieldwork in the most hunger-prone countries across the globe—from Haiti, where elites hoard imported French cheese, to Madagascar, where foreign corporations are snatching up valuable land from local farmers, to right here in America, where the lines at food banks continue to grow—Bauer weaves profound personal insight with a keen understanding of the structural systems of racism, classism, and sexism that thwart true progress in the battle against hunger. The New Breadline is an inspiring call to action to end what he persuasively argues is one of the greatest threats to our society, boldly envisioning a world where we can always feed ourselves and one another.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 25, 2024

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780593321690

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780593321690
      • File size: 2007 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      January 1, 2024

      Bauer, who has served with the World Food Programme in the Republic of the Congo and in Haiti, considers the global and local aspects of food insecurity, exploring the causes and structures of hunger and mass starvation, while also offering solutions. Prepub Alert.

      Copyright 2023 Library Journal

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Kirkus

      June 15, 2024
      A noted food activist paints a dire picture of the likelihood of growing world hunger. Bauer, former director of the World Food Programme's operations in the Sahel, opens with a haunting anecdote as a mob breaks into a WFP warehouse in Haiti, loots it, and sets the now-empty building on fire. Doubtless much of the stolen food went into the storage rooms of the powerful. "We are in a broad, resurgent emergency that is unfolding because of extended conflict, emerging diseases, resource scarcity, and climate change," notes the author. Indeed, he writes, chronic hunger affects nearly one in nine people on the globe, and with the world population growing by 80 million people per year, remedies are in short supply. Bauer proposes many practical improvements at the local and macro levels. As to the latter, for instance, he argues that aid consisting of pallets of rice and beans is no longer sufficient; what we need is "sophisticated assistance, including analytics on humanitarian needs, digital platforms to manage benefits, and bridges to longer-term solutions." The author deeply explores the social-justice dimensions of hunger. Racial bias figures into aid equations, unintentionally or not; the global economy undercuts local ones so that, for instance, in Liberia, it's cheaper to import rice from Asia rather than grow it at home; legislation in many American states banning the sale of food from home kitchens discourages both entrepreneurship and allows food deserts to proliferate. Much of Bauer's discussion is economic in nature, but not inaccessibly so. He advocates for expanding digital payment platforms to encourage agricultural e-commerce for people without bank accounts, which could, he adds, "democratize banking and trade"--and feed the hungry, too, precisely by promoting small-scale, local, artisanal production. A clear-voiced call for ways to address the urgent need to feed billions of hungry people.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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