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Food Security,
Nutrition and
Sustainability
Edited by
Geoffrey Lawrence,
Kristen Lyons and
Tabatha Wallington

Food Security, Nutrition
and Sustainability

To our friend and colleague
David Burch

Food Security, Nutrition
and Sustainability
Geoffrey Lawrence, Kristen Lyons and
Tabatha Wallington
London • Sterling, VA
publishing for a sustainable future

First published by Earthscan in the UK and US in 2010
Copyright © Professor Geoffrey Lawrence, Dr Kristen Lyons and Dr Tabatha Wallington,
2010
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-1-84407-775-5
Typeset by JS Typesetting Ltd, Porthcawl, Mid Glamorgan
Cover design by Susanne Harris
Mural on front cover by Miranda Bergman and O’Brien Theile (1984) entitled ‘Culture
Contains the Seed of Resistance that Blossoms the Flower of Liberation’.
For a full list of publications please contact:
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Earthscan publishes in association with the International Institute for Environment and
Development
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lawrence, Geoffrey.
Food security, nutrition and sustainability / Geoffrey Lawrence, Kristen Lyons and Tabatha
Wallington.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-84407-775-5 (hardback)
1. Food supply. 2. Food industry and trade. 3. Sustainable agriculture. 4. Diet–Research. 5.
Nutrition–Research. 6. Agricultural innovations. I. Lyons, Kristen. II. Wallington, Tabatha.
III. Title.
HD9000.5.L394 2009
338.1’9–dc22
2009026247
At Earthscan we strive to minimize our environmental impacts and carbon footprint through
reducing waste, recycling and offsetting our CO2 emissions, including those created through
publication of this book. For more details of our environmental policy, see www.earthscan.
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This book was printed in the UK by MPG Books Ltd,
an ISO 14001 accredited company. The paper used
is FSC certiﬁed.
[logo to go here]

Contents
List of Figures, Tables and Boxes vii
List of Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xvii
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations xx
Foreword by Eric Holt-Giménez xxiii
1 Introduction: Food Security, Nutrition and Sustainability in a
Globalized World 1
Geoffrey Lawrence, Kristen Lyons and Tabatha Wallington
Part I Global Food Security
2 Breadbasket Contradictions: The Unstable Bounty of Industrial
Agriculture in the United States and Canada 27
Tony Weis
3 Security for Whom? Changing Discourses on Food in Europe in
Times of a Global Food Crisis 41
Gianluca Brunori and Angela Guarino
4 The Re-emergence of National Food Security on the United
Kingdom’s Strategic Policy Agenda: Sustainability Challenges and
the Politics of Food Supply 61
David Barling, Tim Lang and Rosalind Sharpe
5 Neoliberalism and Food Vulnerability: The Stakes for the South 79
Gabriela Pechlaner and Gerardo Otero
6 Energy Security, Agriculture and Food 97
Jago Dodson, Neil Sipe, Roy Rickson and Sean Sloan
Part II Food Systems, Diet and Nutrition
7 Unequal Food Systems, Unhealthy Diets 115
Sharon Friel and Wieslaw Lichacz

vi FOOD SECURITY, NUTRITION AND SUSTAINABILITY
8 Explaining Patterns of Convenience Food Consumption 130
Lisa Schubert, Megan Jennaway and Helen Johnson
9 Public Health and Moral Panic: Sociological Perspectives on the
‘Epidemic of Obesity’ 145
Stewart Lockie and Susan Williams
10 The Food Regulatory System – Is it Protecting Public Health
and Safety? 162
Mark Lawrence
11 The ‘Wellness’ Phenomenon: Implications for Global
Agri-food Systems 175
David Burch and Geoffrey Lawrence
12 Supermarkets, Food Systems and Public Health:
Facing the Challenges 188
Libby Hattersley and Jane Dixon
Part III Towards a Sustainable Agri-food Future
13 Bodies, Bugs and Dirt: Sustainability Re-imagined in
Community Gardens 207
Kelly Donati, Susan Cleary and Lucinda Pike
14 Biofuels: Finding a Sustainable Balance for Food and Energy 223
Sophia Murphy
15 Examining the Mythologies of Organics: Moving Beyond the
Organic/Conventional Binary? 238
Hugh Campbell, Chris Rosin, Solis Norton, Peter Carey,
Jayson Benge and Henrik Moller
16 Nanotechnology and the Techno-corporate Agri-food Paradigm 252
Gyorgy Scrinis and Kristen Lyons
17 Conclusion – Big Choices about the Food System 271
Tim Lang
Index 289

List of Figures, Tables and Boxes
Figures
5.1 NAFTA region food consumption 88
5.2 NAFTA region protein consumption 89
5.3 NAFTA region vegetable consumption 89
5.4 NAFTA region fat consumption 90
6.1 Transport energy flows in agricultural production and
consumption 104
7.1 Retail sales of sweet and savoury snacks in Thailand 121
7.2 Healthy food basket cost as a proportion of weekly welfare
entitlements, Republic of Ireland, June 2003 123
12.1 Pathways between supermarket operations, intermediary
indicators and population health 198
13.1 The mess of the composting area 214
13.2 The ‘food boat’ garden bed 215
13.3 Former wasteland transformed into a cultivated garden vista 216
17.1 FAO Food Price Index 2005–2009 277
17.2 Commodity prices 2008–2009 278
Tables
4.1 Major statements on UK food security 65
4.2 Indicative UK self-sufficiency rates for food production at
different periods 66
4.3 Decline in UK self-sufficiency rates for food production,
1998–2007 67
4.4 EU-25/EU-27 self-sufficiency, selected products,
2005–2006 (per cent) 68
4.5 Major UK government policy statements on food and
sustainability 69
4.6 Defra’s proposed headline and supporting food security
indicators (July 2008) 74
8.1 Four frames for approaching the study of convenience food
consumption 133
9.1 Relative risk of health problems associated with obesity 147

viii FOOD SECURITY, NUTRITION AND SUSTAINABILITY
9.2 Evidence table for factors that might promote or protect against
weight gain and obesity 152
10.1 Twenty years of food-related regulatory reforms – selected
examples 165
Boxes
7.1 Implications for diet: Changes in the Indian food
and social system 120

List of Contributors
David Barling is Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Food Policy at City University,
London. His research is focused on the government of the agri-food sector
and of food supply, including its relation to sustainability and the politics of
food standard-setting at UK, EU and global levels. He has written numerous
journal articles and book chapters on food policy, and is co-editor of Ethical
Traceability and Communicating Food (Springer, 2008) and co-author of Food
Policy: Integrating Health, the Environment and Society (Oxford University
Press, 2009). He was a member of the expert advisory panel for the UK Prime
Minister’s Strategy Unit project on Food Policy in 2007–2008.
Jayson Benge is the Field Research Manager for kiwi fruit in the Agriculture
Research Group on Sustainability project – a six-year programme of research
studying agricultural sustainability on New Zealand farms and orchards. This
role primarily involves facilitating and undertaking research on participating
orchards. He is a graduate of Massey University and gained a PhD from
working on the nutritional aspects of kiwi fruit production. He is based in
Tauranga, New Zealand.
Gianluca Brunori is Professor of Rural Development at the Faculty of
Agriculture in Pisa, Italy. His research is focused on issues of rural governance,
innovation processes in agriculture and in rural development, the survival
strategies of small farms, and the link between food and rural development.
He has published on a range of topics, including social representations and
governance patterns in rural areas, local food and alternative food networks,
and the relationships between multifunctionality, changing rural identities and
institutional arrangements. Recent co-authored papers have appeared in the
Journal of Rural Studies, Anthropology of Food and the International Journal
of Agricultural Resources, Governance and Ecology.
David Burch is a Professor in the School of Biomolecular and Physical Sciences,
Grifﬁth University, Brisbane, Australia, teaching in the area of science and
technology studies. He has published widely on agriculture and social change
in Australia and Southeast Asia. His most recent works includes Agri-food
Globalization in Perspective: International Restructuring in the Processing
Tomato Industry (Ashgate, 2003), co-authored with Bill Pritchard, and

x FOOD SECURITY, NUTRITION AND SUSTAINABILITY
Supermarkets and Agri-food Supply Chains: Transformations in the Production
and Consumption of Foods (Edward Elgar, 2007), co-edited with Geoffrey
Lawrence.
Hugh Campbell is Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for the
Study of Agriculture, Food and Environment (CSAFE) at the University of
Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. He is a member of the Project Executive
which leads the Agriculture Research Group on Sustainability project – a
six-year programme of research studying agricultural sustainability on New
Zealand farms and orchards. His specialist research areas are rural sociology,
sustainable agriculture, new forms of agri-food governance, and the emergence
of food audits and quality assurance.
Peter Carey is a soil scientist with over 25 years’ experience in analytical and
applied research. He began his own company in 2004 (LRS – Land Research
Services Ltd.) in Christchurch, New Zealand. He is currently leading the
analysis of soils in the Agriculture Research Group on Sustainability project
studying sustainability in New Zealand farming systems. Current research
interests include sustainability of New Zealand farming systems, farm run-
off and water quality, improving water quality of dairy effluent, nitrification
inhibitor field trials and development of new soil test procedures.
Susan Cleary is a PhD candidate at the School of Land and Environment at the
University of Melbourne, Australia. She studied gastronomy at the University
of Adelaide. Her research is focused on understanding the relation between
producing food and everyday practice and innovation. She also works on
topics as broad as entrepreneurship and creativity, the ethics of agriculture
and artisanal cheese-making. She has recently helped to develop and teach the
graduate unit Transdisciplinary Thinking and Learning at the University of
Melbourne.
Jane Dixon is a Fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population
Health at the Australian National University, Australia. Her research interests
focus on food sociology and the public health impacts of food system
transformations, including the socio-cultural determinants of obesity, along
with resilient food systems for population health in a changing climate. She
has published in numerous international journals, including the Journal of
Sociology, British Food Journal and Critical Public Health. Her most recent
co-edited book is The Seven Deadly Sins of Obesity: How the Modern World
is Making Us Fat (University of New South Wales Press, 2007).
Jago Dodson works as a senior research fellow in the Urban Research Program
at Griffith University, Australia. He has published widely in the areas of urban
planning, housing, transport and infrastructure. His recent research has focused
on the problem of urban oil vulnerability and the distribution of adverse impacts
of higher energy prices on urban households. He is also leading a major project

funded by the Australian government which is examining Australian rural and
regional oil vulnerability, and the implications for regional systems, including
agriculture, of an energy-constrained future.
Kelly Donati is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne in the School of
Land and Environment and a member of the teaching staff for the Gastronomy
Program at the University of Adelaide, where she also completed her MA on the
ethical, ecological and political dimensions of the Slow Food movement. Her
research interests include gardening, cooking, and the politics and ethics of
urban food practices. She is also the President of Slow Food Victoria.
Sharon Friel is a Fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Popula-
tion Health, the Australian National University, and Principal Research
Fellow and Director of the Global Health Equity Group at the Department
of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London (UCL). She
was Head of the Secretariat of the World Health Organization Commission
on Social Determinants of Health (2005–2008), and a lead writer of its ﬁnal
report. She has been involved for many years in research and policy relating to
global health – including social determinants of health inequities, food systems
and food security, climate change, urbanization and health equity.
Angela Guarino is a sociologist with a research focus on rural development and
food movements. She has a PhD in International Cooperation and Sustainable
Development Policies from the University of Pisa in Italy. She is currently
working at the Department of Agronomy and Agro-ecosystem Management at
the University of Pisa. Angela is a member of the Laboratory of Rural Studies
‘Sismondi’. She has previously been a visiting scholar with the School of City
and Regional Planning at the University of Cardiff.
Libby Hattersley is a doctoral candidate at the National Centre for Epidemi-
ology and Population Health at the Australian National University. She is
researching the community health impacts arising from supermarket engage-
ment in Australian food supply chains. She has previously worked with the
New South Wales Centre for Overweight and Obesity. Recent co-authored
papers have been published in Public Health Nutrition, Australian and New
Zealand Journal of Public Health and Health Promotion International.
Megan Jennaway is a medical anthropologist specializing in women’s health,
climate change and social dislocation, in several Asian contexts, including Bali,
Indonesia, East Timor, Vietnam and South Asia. She has been a lecturer in
the School of Population Health, and in the Department of Asian Languages
and Studies, at the University of Queensland. She is currently writing an
ethnographic novel set in Afghanistan.
Helen Johnson holds degrees from Monash University and lectures in
Anthropology in the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland,
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS xi

xii FOOD SECURITY, NUTRITION AND SUSTAINABILITY
Australia. She has received Visiting Fellowships at the French University of the
Paciﬁc in New Caledonia, the University of British Columbia and Dalhousie
University in Canada, and the University of Hawai’i – Manoa, as well as the
Five Colleges Centre for Women’s Studies in the United States. Her articles and
chapters have appeared in a range of international and national journals, and
edited collections.
Tim Lang is Professor of Food Policy at City University’s Centre for Food Policy
in London. He was appointed Natural Resources and Land Use Commissioner
on the UK Government’s Sustainable Development Commission in 2006, and
led the ‘Green, Healthy and Fair’ report on the government’s relations with
supermarkets in 2008. He has been a regular adviser to the World Health
Organization at global and European levels, and a special adviser to four
House of Commons Select Committee inquiries. He is co-author of 180 articles,
reports, chapters and papers. His eight books include Food Wars (Earthscan,
2004) and The Atlas of Food (Earthscan, 2008).
Geoffrey Lawrence is Professor of Sociology and Head of the School of Social
Science at the University of Queensland. His work spans the areas of agri-food
restructuring, globalization and localization, rural and regional governance,
and social aspects of natural resource management. In 2003, and again in
2009, he was appointed by the Federal Government to the Scientiﬁc Advisory
Panel of the Lake Eyre Basin Ministerial Forum. During his career he has raised
some AUS$10 million in research grants and has published 25 books. Recent
co-authored and co-edited books include: Supermarkets and Agri-food Supply
Chains (Edward Elgar, 2007), Rural Governance (Routledge, 2007), Going
Organic (CAB International, 2006) and Agricultural Governance (Routledge,
2005). He is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.
Mark Lawrence is Associate Professor of Public Health Nutrition at Deakin
University, Victoria, Australia. He has 25 years’ experience working in food
policy at local, state, national and international levels. He is currently a member
of the Council of the World Public Health Nutrition Association and the
National Health and Medical Research Council’s Dietary Guidelines Working
Committee. He is also a technical adviser to the World Health Organization.
His research interests include the analysis of policies to protect and promote
the nutritional health of populations from environmental, social, political,
biological and economic perspectives. He has published extensively, including
co-editing the reference book Public Health Nutrition: From Principles to
Practice (Allen and Unwin, 2007).
Wieslaw Lichacz is an Accreditation Auditor with the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change Clean Development Mechanisms
Accreditation Team, and Principal of WiseLaw Consulting and Trading. His
interests include natural, indigenous and historic heritage, renewable energy
strategies on a local and global scale, climate change impacts abatement,

environmental impact assessment, and Clean Development Mechanisms under
UN and Kyoto protocols. He has qualiﬁcations in applied environmental
science, and constitutional and environmental law.
Stewart Lockie is Professor of Sociology in the Research School of Social Sciences
at the Australian National University. His research addresses the governance
and management of social and environmental impacts in agriculture and other
resource-based industries. He is co-author of Going Organic: Mobilizing
Networks for Environmentally Responsible Food Production (CABI, 2006)
and co-editor of Agriculture, Biodiversity and Markets: Livelihoods and
Agroecology in Comparative Perspective (Earthscan, 2009).
Kristen Lyons has been engaged in social research, advocacy and education
on topics related to food, agriculture and the environment, as well as new
technologies and social justice, for the last 15 years. She currently teaches
food politics and science and technology studies in the School of Biomolecular
and Physical Sciences at Grifﬁth University, Australia. In her current research,
Kristen is analysing the impacts of organic agriculture, along with the meaning
of food sovereignty, in Africa. She is one of few social scientists examining the
social and environmental implications of emerging agri-food nanotechnologies,
including questions of governance, public participation and regulation.
Henrik Moller is Associate Professor and Co-Director of the University of
Otago’s Centre for Study of Agriculture, Food and Environment in Dunedin,
New Zealand. Over the past 30 years he has applied population and community
ecology principles to wildlife and conservation management in natural and
production landscapes for sustainable agriculture and wild-food gathering. He
currently leads the Environment objective of the Agriculture Research Group
on Sustainability.
Sophia Murphy is a public policy analyst with degrees from Oxford
University and the London School of Economics, UK. Her work is focused on
agricultural trade rules, resilient agricultural practices and the right to food.
She has published many reports and articles, including analysis of the effects
of international trade rules on development and food security, the impact of
corporate concentration in the global food system, and trade and poverty-
related issues in the global biofuels sector. Sophia is a senior adviser on trade
and global governance issues for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
in Minneapolis, and has worked with the United Nations Non-Governmental
Liaison Service in Geneva and the Canadian Council for International Co-
operation in Ottawa.
Solis Norton has a background in agricultural science and veterinary epi-
demiology. He also has a growing interest and involvement in energy-related
research, particularly with respect to Peak Oil. He is based at the Centre for
the Study of Agriculture, Food and Environment at the University of Otago,
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS xiii

xiv FOOD SECURITY, NUTRITION AND SUSTAINABILITY
Dunedin, New Zealand. He is currently working as a Postdoctoral Fellow with
the Agriculture Research Group on Sustainability project, comparing organic,
integrated and conventional agricultural production systems.
Gerardo Otero is Professor of Sociology and Latin American Studies at Simon
Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and Adjunct Professor in the Doctoral
Program in Development Studies at Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas in
Mexico. He has written and edited four books, and over 60 scholarly articles
and book chapters. His latest edited book is Food for the Few: Neoliberal
Globalism and Biotechnology in Latin America (University of Texas Press,
2008). His current research is focused on the neoliberal food regime and its
impacts on food vulnerability, the new division of labour and migration in
North America.
Gabriela Pechlaner is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics
(CESAGen) at Lancaster University. She works on the sociology of agriculture
and food, with a particular emphasis on the legal and regulatory aspects of
agricultural biotechnology. Her current research focuses on the effectiveness of
legal mobilization as a strategy for social change in the technology’s regulation
in the US.
Lucinda Pike is a research assistant and a graduate student in Landscape
Architecture at the Melbourne School of Design. Her research interests are
based on the social dimensions of food production, and range from community
gardens, contract farming and catchment management, to the relationship
between governance structures and the realities of food production practices.
She is particularly interested in the role of landscape design in creating
sustainable and productive urban environments.
Roy E. Rickson is Emeritus Professor at the Griffith School of Environment,
Australia. His primary research interests are in the changing structure of
agricultural production, particularly the increasing importance of contract
farming. The social assessment of development, and community democracy, are
also research interests. Relations between globally organized corporate groups
of companies and local rural communities are a consistent focus across these
substantive areas. He has published widely on these topics in journals such as
Rural Sociology, Society and Natural Resources and Ecological Economics.
Chris Rosin is a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Food, Agriculture
and Environment at the University of Otago, New Zealand, and a member of
the social research team in the Agriculture Research Group on Sustainability
project. His research interests include the justifications that are used to support
particular sets of practices and courses of action in the production of food
and fibre, including the commitment to organic principles. More recently he

has begun to examine farmers’ responses to the increased responsibility for
environmental impacts associated with greenhouse gas emissions on farms.
Lisa Schubert is a lecturer and public health nutritionist at the School of
Population Health at the University of Queensland, Australia. Her teaching and
research interests lie at the intersection of the social and nutritional sciences.
Her recently completed doctoral thesis – entitled Diet and Domestic Life in
21st Century Australia: An Exploration of Time and Convenience in Family
Food Provisioning – used feminist ethnography and rationalization theory to
explore dependency food work in households with working parents.
Gyorgy Scrinis is a research associate in the Globalism Research Centre at
RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. His research focuses on the ways
that the technosciences shape structural, cultural and ecological relations,
particularly across the food system. This includes the new biotechnologies and
nanotechnologies of food production, and the way nutritional reductionism
(or nutritionism) within the nutrition and food sciences frames the scientific
and public understanding of food and the body, along with the production and
marketing practices of food companies.
Rosalind Sharpe has an MA in English from Somerville College, Oxford, and
an MA in Food Policy from Thames Valley University. After working for many
years as a journalist, she now researches and writes on various aspects of
food supply. Her contribution to this book is based on research into UK food
security, self-sufficiency and sustainability conducted for the Centre for Food
Policy at City University. She has also worked on food poverty for Sustain – the
alliance for better food and farming – and on food and social justice for the
new economics foundation (nef).
Neil Sipe is Associate Professor at the Griffith School of Environment, Australia.
His research interests include energy security and patterns of oil vulnerability
in urban areas, the influence of land use and urban form on travel behaviour,
corner stores and neighbourhood sustainability, and the role of mediation in
resolving environmental and public policy disputes. He has published on a
range of these issues in journals such as Ecological Economics, Australian
Planner and Urban Policy and Research. His recent co-authored book is
Shocking the Suburbs: Oil Vulnerability in the Australian City (University of
New South Wales Press, 2008).
Sean Sloan is a PhD candidate in the School of Resource Management and
Geography at the University of Melbourne, where he is undertaking research
investigating rainforest regeneration processes in Panama. Prior to com-
mencing his PhD studies Sean worked as a Senior Research Assistant at Griffith
University, where he contributed to a major project investigating rural and
regional oil vulnerability.
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS xv

xvi FOOD SECURITY, NUTRITION AND SUSTAINABILITY
Tabatha Wallington is a Research Scientist with CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems,
and an Honorary Research Consultant with the Institute for Social Science
Research at the University of Queensland, Australia. Key research interests
include the democratic governance of natural resource management, the role
of lay and expert knowledge in environmental policy, and institutional designs
for urban water management. Her work has been published in international
journalssuchastheJournalofRuralStudies,theJournalofEnvironmentalPolicy
and Planning and BioScience. She has previously lectured in environmental
sociology in the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland.
Tony Weis is Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Western
Ontario, London, Canada. His research is principally concerned with the
political economy of agriculture and the struggles of small farmers. He is the
author of The Global Food Economy: The Battle for the Future of Farming
(Zed Books, 2007), which examines the structural imbalances, social tensions
and ecological instabilities in the global system of agricultural production and
trade, and how these features have been institutionally entrenched.
Susan Williams is a Research Fellow in the Institute of Health and Social
Science Research at Central Queensland University, Australia. Key research
interests include bridging gaps between research, policy and practice through
collaborative research with stakeholders, and understanding food consumption,
food behaviours and health. Her research has focused on socio-ecological
factors associated with adolescent obesity and associated behaviours. She
has previously held academic teaching positions in the area of public health
nutrition.

Acknowledgements
The idea for this book emerged from the 2007 annual meeting of the
Australasian Agri-food Research Network. Formed in 1992, the Network is
a loose afﬁliation of over 100 political scientists, sociologists, geographers,
anthropologists, agricultural scientists, food policy experts, public servants
and postgraduate students – all bound by a shared commitment to build theory,
inform policy and shape practice in relation to agriculture and food futures.
Through the presence of guest speakers, Network organizing committees
have sought to provoke and enthuse conference participants and to bring
new ideas to the Australasian agri-food table. Notable among past speakers
have been Philip McMichael, Harriet Friedmann, Brian Wynne, Patricia Allen,
Brian Ilbery, Reidar Almas, Katherine Gibson, Tim Lang and the late Fred
Buttel. All have introduced fresh concepts, theories and debates to the group
and most have penned chapters in the various collected volumes that have
appeared, post-conference. Books that have emerged over the last two decades
have included: Globalization and Agri-food Restructuring (Avebury, 1996),
Australasian Food and Farming in a Globalised Economy (Monash University,
1998), Restructuring Global and Regional Agricultures (Ashgate, 1999) and
Consuming Foods, Sustaining Environments (Australian Academic Press,
2001), along with a special Australasian edition of the inﬂuential US-based
journal Rural Sociology.
On top of this, members of the Network – including David Burch, Hugh
Campbell, Jane Dixon, Ian Gray, Richard Le Heron, Barbara Pini, Stewart
Lockie, Bill Pritchard and Roy Rickson – have produced their own books dealing
with topics as diverse as social dimensions of the ‘triple bottom line’; cross-
continental food chains; the cultural economy of the humble chicken; global
restructuring in the processing tomato industry; masculinities and management
in agricultural organizations; the social aspects of genetic engineering in
agriculture; global governance of farming; organics and environmentally
responsible production; the place of supermarkets in contemporary agri-food
supply chains; and the future of rural communities in a globalizing world.
At the Agri-food XIV meeting held in Brisbane in 2007, the invited speaker
was the internationally renowned scholar and food activist Professor Tim Lang
from the Centre for Food Policy at City University, London. Not only were
his talks at the conference inspirational, but he also made a concerted effort
to speak with the many academics and postgraduate students in attendance,

xviii FOOD SECURITY, NUTRITION AND SUSTAINABILITY
providing them with the most up-to-date ideas in the field of food and
nutrition, and supporting their studies by helping them to make contact with
leading scholars in their subfields of research. He encouraged the conference
organizers to consider producing an edited book based on material presented
at the conference – and then went one step further, talking to his friend and
publisher, Tim Hardwick, the Commissioning Editor for Earthscan, based
in London. We therefore acknowledge, and thank, Tim Lang for, ultimately,
assisting us to publish what we hope will be a very important collection of
papers on topics pertinent to the future of agri-food industries.
Tim Hardwick examined our initial proposal and provided some excellent
feedback in relation to the focus of the book, the order of chapters, as well as
some detectable weaknesses in our earlier draft outline. As a consequence – and
along with Philip McMichael’s assistance – we directly approached a number
of new writers for various sections of the book. We trust that this collection
will not only provide insights into the issues of food security, nutrition and
sustainability, but will also discuss these issues on a global plane and thereby
help to explain and unravel some of the ‘big’ issues of our time.
Given that the genesis of this book was the Agri-food meeting in Brisbane,
we acknowledge the sponsors of that conference – the University of Queensland,
Griffith University and Central Queensland University. We also thank the other
members of our organizing committee – David Burch, Samantha Neal, Brendon
Radford and Kiah Smith. Carol Richards provided some excellent comments
on a number of original drafts of papers. Claire Lamont, Editorial Assistant
at Earthscan, assisted us in the early preparation, and later production, of the
book, while Sarah Thorowgood gave invaluable support during the editing
phase. We would also like to acknowledge the support of Food First/Institute
for Food and Development Policy for providing a supportive environment
for Kristen Lyons during the compilation of this collection. Our partners and
family members provided strong support and, from the beginning, backed our
efforts in compiling this book – allowing us the ‘space’ to undertake the editing
at nights and on weekends. In particular, Kristen’s partner Sean assisted in the
preparation of the index – at a time when both were supposed to be enjoying
vacation fun along the sunny coast of California.
We also thank the many contributors to this volume. All delivered their
manuscripts to us in a timely manner and in a form that allowed for ease of
editing. They accepted our comments in a positive and collegial way – making
the production of this volume a great pleasure. The book has a specific
purpose: we trust that readers will, in assimilating the contents of this volume,
recognize the many contradictory, harmful and destructive elements of current
global agri-food production and seek – as we have, albeit in a limited way – to
identify new alternatives to production regimes that undermine food security,
polarize the world in terms of nutritional availability, pollute the environment
and, ultimately, undermine attempts to move world agriculture onto a more
sustainable footing.
We dedicate this book to Professor David Burch, the co-founder of the
Australasian Agri-food Research Network, who will be retiring from Griffith

University at the end of 2009 after some 30 years of service. David not only
helped to pioneer critical agri-food studies in Australia, but also introduced
many of its important conceptual and theoretical underpinnings. He also
inspired a generation of agri-food scholars to produce research which has
become known internationally for its incisiveness and global relevance.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xix

List of Acronyms and
Abbreviations
ABS Australian Bureau of Statistics
ACC UN Administrative Committee on Coordination
ACF Australian Conservation Foundation
ADM Archer Daniel Midland
AGPS Australian Government Publishing Service
AGRA Alliance for the Green Revolution in Africa
AIHW Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
AMAPs Associations pour le maintien de l’agriculture paysanne
ANZFA Australia New Zealand Food Authority
AoA Agreement on Agriculture
ARGOS Agriculture Research Group on Sustainability
BMI body mass index
BSE bovine spongiform encephalopathy
CAP Common Agricultural Policy
CDCP Center for Disease Control and Prevention
CLBA Country Land and Business Association
COAG Council of Australian Governments
DAA Dietitians Association of Australia
Defra Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
DFID Department for International Development
EC European Commission
ECLAC Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
ECOSOC Economic and Social Council of the United Nations
EFFP English Food and Farming Partnerships
EIA Energy Information Administration
ER energy ratio
EROEI energy return on energy invested
ETC Group Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration
ETP European Technology Platform
EU European Union
EurepGAP Euro Retailer Produce Working Group’s Good Agricultural
Practice – now GlobalGAP
FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

LIST OF ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS xxi
FAOSTAT Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Statistics Division
FDA Food and Drug Administration
FFA Farmers for Action
FoE Friends of the Earth
FRRC Food Regulation Review Committee
FRSC Food Regulation Standing Committee
FSANZ Food Standards Australia New Zealand
G-20 Group of 20
G8 Group of Eight
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GDP gross domestic product
GlobalGAP Global Good Agricultural Practice
GM genetically modified
GMO genetically modified organism
GoE Garden of Eden
GRAS generally recognized as safe
I$ International Dollars
IAASTD International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science
and Technology for Development
ICTSD International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development
IEA International Energy Agency
IFPRI International Food Policy Research Institute
IMF International Monetary Fund
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
ISC Implementation Sub-Committee
ITUC International Trade Union Confederation
LEADER Liaison Entre Actions de Développement de lÉconomie Rurale
LOHAS lifestyles of health and sustainability
MAFF Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement
NCCR Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research
NFA National Food Authority
NFU National Farmers Union
NGO non-governmental organization
NHMRC Australian National Health and Medical Research Council
NSW New South Wales
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
PCFF Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Food
PFFP primary family food provisioner
PMA The Prince Mahidol Award
PMSU Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit
R&D research and development
RCEP Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution
RCT randomized controlled trial
RFid radio frequency identification tags

xxii FOOD SECURITY, NUTRITION AND SUSTAINABILITY
RS and RAE Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering
SCN UN Sub-Committee on Nutrition
SFFS Sustainable Farming and Food Strategy
SPG Solidarity Purchasing Group
SPS Single Payment Scheme
TNCs Transnational Corporations
UK United Kingdom
UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
UNEP United Nations Environment Programme
US EPA US Environmental Protection Agency
US United States
USDA ERS US Development Association Economic Research Service
USDA NASS US Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics
Service
VAT value-added tax
WFTD Work for the Dole
WHO World Health Organization
WRAP Waste and Resources Action Programme
WTO World Trade Organization

Foreword
Eric Holt-Giménez
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
Crises provide us with opportunities to change and improve the way we do
things. They can also end up reinforcing the status quo that provoked them in
the ﬁrst place. Little wonder institutions leap to advance solutions even before
the underlying causes of the problem have been determined. This is because
crises are profoundly political events in which, in the words of Italian thinker
Antonio Gramsci, ‘the old is dying and the new cannot be born.’
The current global food crisis, decades in the making, is such a political
event.
Everyone from the World Bank, the World Food Programme and the
transnational agrochemical companies invite us to believe that the old formula
of ‘technology + food aid + global markets’ will reverse the explosion of hunger,
poor health and environmental disasters destroying the world’s food systems.
A review of the public-private partnership solutions coming from the latest
global food summits indicates that the world’s seed, grain and retail monopolies
see the current food crisis as a perfect opportunity to further consolidate their
hold over the world’s food. This led the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to
Food, Olivier de Schutter, to warn the world’s leaders that ‘not all opportunities
are solutions’.
An enquiry into the root causes of the food crisis and a review of the
widespread grassroots responses to hunger, however, sheds light on an entirely
different set of opportunities, and leads to quite different solutions to the
problems of hunger, health and environment. Indeed, over the last 30 years,
the chronic global food crisis has given rise to a virtual explosion of food and
farming alternatives that have sprung up ‘like weeds breaking through the
asphalt’ quite independently of each other, around the world. On the one hand,
the growing number of farmers’ markets, sustainable and agroecologically
managed farms, community-supported agriculture, food policy councils and
fair trade networks are working to forge equitable and sustainable food chains
to replace the current, industrial forms of production and consumption. On
the other hand, the political issues of entitlement and the human right to

xxiv FOOD SECURITY, NUTRITION AND SUSTAINABILITY
food are being actively addressed by food justice movements in the industrial
North and growing agrarian movements for land reform, resource rights and
food sovereignty in the global South. These developments reﬂect the spread of
what is widely recognized as a global food movement. The increasing levels of
integration and engagement among these movements signal the stirrings of a
new food regime – one that is equitable, sustainable, that cools the planet, and
provides healthy food and prosperous livelihoods.
The authors of the chapters in this book belong to the research wing of
the global food movement. In the spirit of the path-breaking International
Assessment on Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for
Development (IAASTD), their research delves deeply into the global paradox
of ‘the stuffed and the starved’, analytically framing core issues and root
causes before positing solutions. Their work not only engages the academic
community and informs the general public, but also provides the ‘advocates
and practitioners’ of the food movement with the information and analysis
they need for informed engagement within the food system. Just as importantly,
their writings amplify the voices of those working for change, particularly those
for whom maintaining the corporate food regime is simply not an option.
Serious analysis into the political-economic nature of the current food
regime, and an objective look at the growing social and environmental externali-
ties, can be a brutally sobering exercise. For this reason, the focus on proximate
over root causes and reformist, rather than transformational, solutions is the
norm in the mass media and, unfortunately, in many global food policy circles.
The possibility of a new, sustainable and equitable food regime, demands that
food system researchers balance rigorous analysis with a vision of change, thus
illuminating the path between the hydra-headed trap of facile solutions and the
whirlpool of hopelessness. This road from old to new is made brighter with the
contributions from Food Security, Nutrition and Sustainability. Readers are
encouraged to walk it.
Eric Holt-Giménez, PhD
Executive Director
Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy
Oakland, California, US

1
Introduction: Food Security,
Nutrition and Sustainability
in a Globalized World
Geoffrey Lawrence, Kristen Lyons and Tabatha Wallington
Introduction
Before the global financial crisis became acutely visible in late 2008, the crisis
in food and agriculture had already taken hold. Accelerating food prices,
combined with increasing numbers of low-income families dropping below
the poverty line in the developing world, led to civil unrest on a large scale
as people demanded access to affordable food – an idea long championed by
many as a basic human right (Cresswell, 2009; Holt-Giménez et al, 2009).
Between 2006 and 2008, global food prices had risen by 83 per cent and, even
in the face of the price-deflating effects of the global recession, were predicted
to remain high until at least 2012 (Loewenberg, 2008, p1209). In the lead up to
2009, close to 1 billion of the world’s 6 billion people were chronically hungry,
with this number expected to rise as prices for food staples continue to increase
(Cresswell, 2009, p1). More than this, though – and notwithstanding the
Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) calculation that there is currently
enough food to feed the world’s population (FAO, 2008) – it is anticipated
that there will need to be an increase in food production of between 50 and
100 per cent over current levels if the world is to feed its people by the year
2030 (Cresswell, 2009, p2). Given the extent of the current food crisis, the
arrival of peak oil and evidence confirming that climate change is ‘real’, it is no
surprise that riots over food provision have become widespread (McMichael,
forthcoming 2009).
Seeking to establish the reasons for the rise in food prices, economists
and political leaders have explained the reduction in food availability as an
outcome of a number of factors: declining growth in productivity due to

2 FOOD SECURITY, NUTRITION AND SUSTAINABILITY
drought, water scarcity and land degradation, along with the conversion of
food staples into biofuels (or agrofuels, as they have also been termed)1 – the
latter as a response both to spiralling oil prices and to state-based incentives
to reduce national dependency upon oil (Loewenberg, 2008; UNEP, 2009).
Two additional reasons have also been given. First, with the growth of the
middle classes in India and China, energy and food have been in high demand,
reducing the availability of these resources to people without the necessary
purchasing power. Second, there has been an increase in demand for artificial
fertilizers and pesticides derived from petrochemical-based processes. Oil price
hikes are therefore inflating the cost of agri-chemicals at the very time demand
for them is increasing, exacerbating the cost-price squeeze in agriculture and
ensuring that these farm-related costs are passed on to consumers as higher
food prices (see, for example, Cresswell, 2009).
While such explanations are logically appealing, and while the factors
listed above do, in combination, affect food availability, they nevertheless
mask broader socio-economic settings, along with the actions of powerful
corporations and global regulating bodies, which shape the ways foods are
grown, distributed and ultimately end up – or for a growing number, don’t
end up – in the mouths of consumers. In his book Food is Different, Peter
Rosset (2006, pxvi) argues that liberalized agricultural trade settings produce
an ‘inherent uncertainty’ in commodity markets. Rosset reasons that food
sovereignty – characterized by secure access to food across both local and
national markets, and produced in ways that support socially and ecologically
sustainable rural development (see for example Holt-Giménez et al, 2006)
– will be compromised by the neoliberal-based insistence of the World Trade
Organization (WTO) that the ‘law’ of comparative advantage should be the
determining mechanism for where foods are produced and in which markets
they are traded. For Rosset, liberalized trade in food reduces stocks of reserves
(which provide a major contribution to food security) because of the imperative
to sell into the global marketplace. Demonstrating this, by the end of 2008 world
cereal stocks had dropped to 405 million tonnes, representing their lowest level
since 1982, while US wheat stocks were at their lowest level in 60 years (FAO,
2008). Banks will not lend to farmers unless food is guaranteed to be sold
(traded) for cash to repay loans. The trajectory is to sell agri-commodities at
the highest price – which usually means ignoring local markets and local food
needs. Rosset is reminding us that there are ingrained structural reasons that
determine what foods will be produced, by whom and where, as well as to
whom these foods are destined. Similarly, as Holt-Giménez et al (2006) have
noted, agriculture should not be exclusively about trade. Rather, agriculture
should support local economic development, address poverty and hunger, and
support the sustainable management of natural resources.
Rosset (2006) was writing at a time when markets were being flooded by
cheap agricultural goods. He rightly expressed indignation and dismay that the
WTO-endorsed system of world agricultural trade was removing small-scale
producers from the land in the developing world and re-orienting production
in those countries to global rather than local markets. He also recognized and

INTRODUCTION 3
condemnedpoliciesthatopenedthedoortotheimportationofcheap‘firstworld’
foods that were not only subsidized by taxpayers, but were also produced in a
manner that compromised ecologies in their country of production. What we
know now is that if the developed world decides to convert its cropping system
to make ethanol for cars – a scenario that government and industry appear
increasingly committed to (see, for example, Jonasse, 2009) – those countries
which are dependent upon the importation of food crops may find such crops
are now beyond their reach. This scenario is set to play out at the same time
as import-dependent countries continue to produce food – including crops for
conversion to agrofuels – to supply the international market. The tragic irony
in some parts of the global South is that people are starving while staring over
fields of beans, plantations of coffee and tea, and stands of palms, all grown to
meet the demands of already well-fed consumers in the North. For Raj Patel
(2007), this is the polarized world of the ‘starved’ and the ‘stuffed’2 where
the global agri-food system – from farm input manufacturers, to producers,
packagers, suppliers and retailers – has been driven exclusively by profits rather
than by any social or moral imperative to ensure that healthy, affordable foods
produced in an ecologically sound manner are available to enrich and sustain
the lives of peoples around the world. Today, we live in a world of hunger
among plenty, at a time of a first-world obesity ‘plague’ alongside third-world
starvation, and in circumstances where highly productive ‘factory farms’ sit
within socially denuded, biologically fragile and heavily polluted agricultural
landscapes.
How did this happen?
Why does the world continue to experience food insecurity? Why, given our
ability to produce agricultural surpluses (albeit declining surpluses), do we not
see all of the world’s people reaping the benefits of adequate nutrition? And,
why – given our considerable and sophisticated scientific knowledge of soil,
water, bacteria, plants and animals, and the intricate biophysical connections
between them – isn’t the world producing foods in a more sustainable manner?
We will address these questions briefly here, before outlining how each of the
contributed chapters improves our understanding of food security, nutrition
and sustainability.
Continuing world food insecurity
Droughts, floods, disease, plagues and other so-called ‘natural disasters’ have
forever affected the amount of food available for human consumption. Such
events will continue to impact upon agriculture, with affected regions almost
inevitably experiencing food shortages. Since the 1960s, the applications of
agricultural science have combined with improved global transport networks
to increase food production and availability so that a drought in Ethiopia, or
torrential rains in Bangladesh, will be met with humanitarian aid which – albeit
sometimes constrained by national and international political agendas – aims
to keep starving populations fed during times of adversity. And there is likely

to be more adversity in a world experiencing increased climate change-related
pressures (ITUC, 2009). Nevertheless, it is important to shift our sights beyond
‘disasters’ if we are to understand the structural conditions underpinning
contemporary food insecurity.
Worldwide, agricultural development has been premised on de-
peasantization in the global South and the continued corporatization of
agriculture in both the global North and the global South – with the two out-
comes underpinned by the dynamic of the concentration and centralization
of capital (McMichael, 2006; Otero, 2008a). De-peasantization (or de-
agrarianization – see Bryceson et al, 2000) occurs when small, previously self-
sufﬁcient, farmers who have been encouraged to go into debt to purchase the
latest ‘green revolution’ technologies fail to achieve the necessary gains from
the new agriculture and are displaced by a combination of crop failure and
bank foreclosure (Weis, 2007). Many are literally forced from their farms as
an inevitable consequence of having attempted to move to a more ‘advanced’
form of agriculture. The failures of this model of agricultural development are
most powerfully manifested in the growing number of rural suicides, with an
estimated 100,000 Indian farmers committing suicide between 1993 and 2003,
and an average of 16,000 farmer suicides each year since this time, often via
the ingestion of agricultural chemicals (Sharma, 2006). Despite such failures,
the extension of ‘green revolution’ technologies is now under way through
the Alliance for the Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). AGRA puppets the
policies being developed from the alliance forged between the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation in the US. This alliance, by
all accounts, is set to extend the inequities and injustices that characterized the
‘green revolution’ in the 1960s and beyond (Holt-Giménez et al, 2009).
Rural out-migration is encouraged by global bodies such as the World
Bank, which consider that the removal of peasants will lead to an increase in
food production (as larger, more labour-efﬁcient farms prevail), while at the
same time releasing peasant labour for the supposedly more ‘worthy’ task of
employment in city-based manufacturing industries (McMichael, 2006, 2009c).
The reality, though, is that the World Bank model of agricultural development
has accelerated rural out-migration. It has, in fact, created a ‘planet of slums’
– those inhabited by many of the estimated 1 billion people who now live in
urban hovels in the cities of the South (Davis, 2007). Meanwhile, other farmers
are ‘structurally adjusted’ out of agriculture to enable the consolidation of
larger units of production (Heynen et al, 2007). The consequence is that people
who once had direct access to food are no longer connected to the land and
the food that it produced, a situation that is destroying food sovereignty (or,
according to Tim Lang, food democracy),3 and overall food security (Otero,
2008a).4
Such dispossession does not happen in a regulatory or policy vacuum.
According to Heynen et al (2007, p7), the World Bank and International
Monetary Fund (IMF) both insist that the borrowing of funds for agricultural
and other ‘development’ must be accompanied by neoliberal policies, which
include trade liberalization, reduced regulatory impositions on private investors

INTRODUCTION 5
and structural adjustment policies. These policies combine to foster the growth
of a dynamic, market-based economy in which small-scale (subsistence) farming
is replaced by larger and more globally focused farms – an economy with a
very different agenda from that of providing food security to local people
(Patel, 2007; Weis, 2007; McMichael, 2008).
How might food provision under neoliberalism work? As Otero (2008b,
pp137–138) has noted, prior to the signing of the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, various Mexican governments had insisted that
Mexico be self-sufficient in corn – albeit with some importation at times of
unmet internal demand. With NAFTA’s neoliberal reforms, a cheap-food-
for-the-cities agenda replaced older policies which had subsidized peasant
agriculture. Corn from the US flooded in, while the small-scale farming areas
once responsible for domestic supply were labelled as zones of ‘low productive
potential’ and became recipients of structural adjustment funding and welfare.
Unfortunately, this neither led to lower prices of corn-based foods in the cities,
nor to the creation of alternative work in the regions, with many displaced
labourers having to migrate to large cities in the US and Mexico so as to earn
wages to send back to relatives now impoverished in the once successful food-
producing regions (Otero, 2008b, p139). With the demise of significant parts of
local food production in Mexico, combined with increasing dependence upon
US-subsidized corn,5 it can be argued that food security, and certainly food
sovereignty, has been considerably diminished in Mexico (Patel, 2007; Otero,
2008b) as a direct result of the application of neoliberal policies (Heynen et
al, 2007).
There are other examples. The Philippines was once self-sufficient in rice but
– with the removal of government incentives – is now a net importer. Cameroon
was told by the IMF and the World Bank to cease supporting its rice farmers
in 1994, and the country is now importing increasing volumes of rice. Haiti
was largely self-sufficient in rice three decades ago, but was then persuaded to
import cheap foods and to sell its forests to gain much needed foreign income
(ITUC, 2009, pp20–29). The result has been the virtual collapse of domestic
agriculture, the denudation of its forests, and the movement of rural workers
into the slums of the capital, Port-au-Prince. Here, the people eat so-called
‘mud cakes’ – literally, patties made of clay and water – as a means of filling
empty bellies (ITUC, 2009, p20). As De Neve et al (2008, p14) have argued,
rather than delivering prosperity, global markets are – in concert with neoliberal
policies of ‘comparative advantage’ – causing insecurity and ‘immiseration’;
they are destroying the livelihoods of many small producers, while delivering
considerable economic benefits to large-scale corporate capital.
The price of agricultural commodities increased significantly during 2007
and 2008 as large cashed-up investors such as the hedge funds began speculating
in foodstuffs as a basis for high-level gains (ITUC, 2009). According to ITUC
(2009, p10):

investments in food commodities and futures have grown twenty-
fold because deregulation has allowed non-commercial traders
to seek profit gains in relatively small markets, causing sudden
volatility and turmoil … driving up the prices of basic food
staples.
It should be remembered that, for at least three-quarters of a century up until
the 1990s, speculation in basic agricultural commodities such as wheat, corn
and soybean was banned in the US. Then, deregulation of US and global
agricultural markets followed in the wake of deregulation of financial markets.
Between 2000 and 2007, world wheat prices increased by some 147 per cent,
corn prices by 79 per cent and soybeans by 72 per cent (ITUC, 2009, p37).
While the corporations made increasing profits, more people became hungry.
Indeed, it has been concluded that every time global food prices increase
by a percentage point, another 16 million people are condemned to hunger
(ITUC, 2009, p37).6 The financialization of agri-food industries (see Burch and
Lawrence, forthcoming 2009) means that speculation is rife and food crops
can be moved to more profitable areas (for example, to agrofuels), resulting
in food price ‘spikes’ that affect the most vulnerable consumers (ITUC, 2009,
p38). In other words, the expansion of financial derivatives (‘shadow’ financial
instruments including forwards, futures, ‘swaps’ and other hedging options)
in the agri-food industries have, by increasing the level of speculation, created
inflationary pressures on food. As Pace et al (2008, p2) have written in The
Lancet:
[I]t seems to us an infringement of human rights and an offence
against humanity that large investors should speculate on food
price rises knowing that families in the poorest countries will suffer
hunger, malnutrition and death… The G8 should act quickly to
regulate global trading in food commodities.
Diversion of crops into agrofuels is about corporate profit-making. According
to the ITUC, about 30 per cent of food price increases has been attributed to
food crops being diverted into fuel production (see ITUC, 2009, p11) – a sure
reminder that food crops are just another input into a global production cycle
and go to the highest bidder, rather than being an intrinsic source of human
sustenance. They have market (exchange) value, well ahead of any use value
(McMichael, 2009a, p155). As McMichael (2009a, p155, p162) perceptively
argues:
the agrofuels project represents the ultimate fetishisation of
agriculture, converting a source of human life into an energy input
at a time of rising prices … the ‘agrofuels rush’ renders agriculture
indistinguishable from energy production in a context where peak
oil is making its presence felt in world prices.

INTRODUCTION 7
A second factor, here, is the declining purchasing power of those who are
most vulnerable: a shortage of food, with resultant hunger, is a result of the
incapacity of people on meager wages to pay for food. Agricultural produce
might be available, but the ability to purchase diminishes as prices increase,
leaving people bereft of the means to obtain enough food even for basic
subsistence (ITUC, 2009, p18).
The issue of food security might seem less of a concern in the global North,
given the large volumes of food produced and exported by nations like Canada,
Australia, New Zealand and the US. But that is not the case, with ‘security’
taking on a very different meaning from that of food availability. It is one
thing to produce large quantities of food, and yet another to do so in a manner
that encourages agricultural diversity, nurtures regional prosperity, enhances
environmental integrity, sustains biodiversity and rests upon a predictable and
fair platform of production, sale and delivery. In these latter qualities, food
security in the global North has been notably lacking. Instead, what has been
witnessed in the last 30 or so years of capitalist farming and food distribution
has been a significant increase in the amount of food available at the same
time as the system for that delivery has been found to be environmentally
damaging, and socially and economically polarizing. In short, food in the
North is produced at significant environmental and social cost (Magdoff et al,
1998; Buckland, 2004; Mazoyer and Roudart, 2006).
Environmental costs associated with contemporary food systems include
stream and river pollution caused by toxic agri-chemicals, the genetic pollution
and biodiversity losses associated with the expansion of genetically modified
(GM) crops, and the atmospheric impact of greenhouse gases (largely methane)
produced by livestock. With the numbers of cattle predicted to rise along with
the growing ‘meatification’ of global diets, there is concern that the adverse
environmental consequences of farming will get worse rather than better (Weis,
2007).
Supermarkets, too, are implicated in increasing the level of pressure on the
environment. It is the supermarkets that purchase foods from distant locations,
thus adding to the ‘foodmiles’ associated with certain foodstuffs and depleting
energy reserves in the process. And it is the supermarkets that are re-shaping
the nature of the food system in a manner which, while purporting to provide
environmental benefits, fosters wasteful practices and generates significant
environmental impacts (see Burch and Lawrence, 2007; Lang and Barling,
2007).
Agricultural surpluses – but poor nutrition
The actual availability of food provides no guarantee of its nutritional quality.
There is emerging evidence, for example, that as food prices have increased in
the developed world, consumers have reacted by turning to cheaper foods with
dubious health credentials (those which, in many cases, are sugar, fat and salt
laden – see ITUC, 2009). At a time of global economic concerns, consumers
have also begun to eschew potentially more nutritious organic foods – along

with other ethically produced and health-enhancing foods – as a means of
reducing their budget expenditures (Teather, 2008, p5).
As part of the so-called ‘nutrition transition’, consumers in the global
North and South have been moving, seemingly inexorably, away from largely
grain-based diets, towards predominantly meat-oil-fat-sugar-based diets
(Dixon and Broom, 2007; Ambler-Edwards et al, 2009). This is the general
trend. More specifically – and notwithstanding the pressures to reduce food
budgets in a time of economic uncertainty – more affluent consumers have
moved to healthier (green-leafy) diets, while the less affluent have embraced a
supermarket-based convenience-food path – looking toward fast and prepared
foods for energy intake. In the latter case, we have seen the emergence and
impact of the so-called ‘obesogenic diets’ that are a feature of modern living in
the North (Critser, 2003; Dixon and Broom, 2007).
The influence of the corporations should be highlighted here. The large
corporations that currently dominate food provision – Heinz, Kellogg, Kraft,
Nestlé, Cadbury and so forth – have been prominent players since the early
1900s, engaging in the production of convenience foods from at least the
1920s (Murton, 2000). The corporations became firmly entrenched after the
Second World War when the automobile became increasingly affordable and
people could drive to the supermarkets. From about the same time, the use
of refrigerators in western households became widespread (Murton, 2000).
With advanced food technologies allowing for the manipulation of foods to
improve their look, taste, shelf-life and general appeal, along with the macro-
changes in the ways people lived their lives (more urbanization, greater private
travel, a growing interest in the purchase of convenience foods, and so on)
the supermarkets and the fast-food firms were the ones most able to capitalize
(Burch and Lawrence, 2007; Hendrickson et al, 2008).
The industrialization both of agriculture and of the processed foods sector
also had important impacts, allowing the cost of foods – relative to other
family purchases – to fall. This, in turn, fuelled the growth in demand for all
varieties of novel foodstuffs. Packaging and advertising were geared to various
new market segments, thereby better targeting and stimulating demand, and
literally ‘creating’ markets for manufactured foods (Critser, 2003).
As Symons (2007), and later Dixon and Broom (2007), have argued, the
supermarkets promote their ‘labour saving’ foods as those that are scientifically
proven to be healthy and nutritious. They employ home economists, nutrition
‘experts’ and other scientists to endorse industrial products as wholesome and
nourishing – as the very foods needed for the pursuit of a modern lifestyle
(Symons, 2007). But processed foods are replete with the sugars, salts and fats
that contribute to excessive weight gain and obesity (Dixon and Broom, 2007)
and – along with a variety of food chemicals – combine to induce allergic
reactions, poisonings and deaths (Nestle, 2003, 2006; Lawrence, 2004).
Science has been steadily applied to the areas of food preservation,
packaging, storage and delivery. Chemical preservatives have allowed foods to
last longer on the shelves of supermarkets and in family pantries. Demand for
such foods has increased markedly in the decades since the Second World War

INTRODUCTION 9
as women – whose homemaking role had included food preparation – began
to enter the workforce in ever larger numbers (see Dixon, 2002). Fast-food
restaurants have taken advantage of increasingly more mobile populations in
places like the US and their ready-to-eat takeaway products have been heavily
advertised as a tasty, nutritious and relatively cheap means of feeding the
family (see Critser, 2003). It was in this environment that the so-called ‘junk
food’ revolution took hold (Dixon and Broom, 2007).
Nearly a decade ago, Lang and Rayner (2001) argued that public health
should be central to the agricultural and food industries. They called for the
emergence of an ‘ecological public health’ paradigm – one which ensured
that the so-called ‘three pillars’ of nutrition, food safety and sustainable food
production would be considered together in the evolution of public health
policy. The aim was to ‘deliver affordable, health-enhancing and accessible
diets for all, not just those who can afford it’ (Lang and Rayner, 2001, p4).
Lang and Rayner’s vision has, unfortunately, not been realized: the twin aim
of providing a balanced diet to a growing population, and in a sustainable
manner, has fallen well short of its target. Part of the reason lies in the failure
to institute the conditions for such an ecological public health paradigm:
In order to advance both environmental and health goals there
needs to be a switch from the production of animal-based foods
to plant-based foods – particularly vegetables and fruit. There
also needs to be an emphasis upon increasing bio-diversity in the
agriculture system both to protect ecosystems and to ensure a
varied diet (Lang and Rayner, 2001, p10).
The achievement of these conditions remains the challenge to this day (see
Lang, 2009a). Instead of people in the North having richer diets, there are
now ‘food deserts’ in the middle of cities where local people have no access
to fresh foods: where the small grocers have been forced out of business, and
consumers must drive to distant hypermarkets to purchase their foods (see
Lang and Rayner, 2001, p20). And, in the South, the nutrients which once
provided local sustenance are destined for other lands. According to ITUC
(2009, pp36–37):
The problem inherently wrong with the world food system is
that local crops such as cassava and sorghum, for example, are
not wanted by international agribusiness and therefore local
farmers grow crops like coffee, cocoa, tea, cotton and ﬂowers
and afterwards use the export earnings to purchase food…
[Farmers] are ‘producing what they do not eat, and eating what
they do not produce’. The fallacy of this policy is shown by the
fact many developing countries are at this time paying high prices
for imported food at the same time as the food multinationals
[involved in both export and import] are reaping record proﬁts.

Knowledge of science – but little progress on sustainability
The highly productive seed/fertilizer/pesticide/farm equipment package
provided to the poorer nations of the world by the ‘green revolution’ has been
one based upon the petrochemical industry. The green revolution was initiated
by the US government and its corporate allies as a means of achieving high-level
production gains in countries facing both starvation and the threat of internal
‘red’ revolutions (Middendorf et al, 1998, p93). It led to gains in output – albeit
dependent on the complete use of technological packages, including hybrid
seeds and chemicals – some of which was destined for export; yet it also caused
considerable ecosystem degradation (Middendorf et al, 1998, p94). When oil
prices rose in the 1970s – and fertilizer costs increased as a consequence – many
poor farmers with small holdings were driven from the land. In subsequent
decades, many more have been forced to leave farming because of the rising
costs associated with this so-called productivist model of agriculture, with
the irony being that ‘by the 1980s, every country revolutionized by the Green
Revolution was once again an importer of those staple foods they had expected
to produce in abundance’ (Kiple and Ornelas, 2000, p15). As Magdoff et al
(1998, p11) wrote over a decade ago:
It is clear that the current food system in all its ramifications is
not beneficial for the mass of farmers or the environment, nor
does it ensure a plentiful supply of food for all people. However,
it does meet the needs of a limited group of large farmers and, of
course, the sellers of agricultural inputs as well as the processors,
distributors, and sellers of food.
Along with many critical observers of the time, these authors questioned what
might be done, and concluded that only ‘substantial’ changes to the system
of food production and distribution would address the pressing issue of food
security and sustainability. In short, if the commoditization of food and farming
– whereby the generation of profit was the singular end of activity – was the
cause of the problem, a more socially just and environmentally sound approach
would need to come into being to replace it (Magdoff et al, 1998, p13; see also
Allen, 2004; Lang, 2009a). The limits of profit-driven, market-based solutions
are perhaps most clearly articulated in the activities of the global La Via
Campesina movement – an international peasant movement that, in contrast
to the export-led model of agricultural development, works to build local food
sovereignty by feeding families and local communities via sustainable farming
methods (Holt-Giménez et al, 2009). In addition to shifting the focus away
from export-led crop production, one of the main elements of the food system
targeted for replacement by this movement was so-called ‘productivism’ – an
approach that placed human labour and crop/animal efficiency at the pinnacle
of farming success (see Magdoff et al, 1998; Gray and Lawrence, 2001; Lang
and Heasman, 2004).
Transnational farm supply firms have been particularly successful in
encouraging farmers to use the latest technologies as a means of ensuring the
continued application of such technologies in farming. The direct consequence

INTRODUCTION 11
of such strategies – at least in relation to agri-chemicals – has been an increasing
dependence upon potent and toxic insecticides, weedicides, and fungicides in
plant production, and upon various vaccines and hormones in animal farming,
which have combined to foster the monocultural approaches that now dominate
farming across the globe (Magdoff et al, 1998). The major technologies that
have underpinned productivism are those associated with farm mechanization,
genetic improvements in plants and animals, applications of agri-chemicals, as
well as growth stimulants and antibiotics to assist animal growth and prevent
disease (Altieri, 1998). The ‘factory farms’ that are dependent upon this potent
mix cannot be considered sustainable production systems, however. They are
structured in a manner that has both direct and indirect consequences for the
social and ecological bases of sustainable farming:
• They generate wastes that are not re-used. This is particularly the case for
intensive livestock production units where wastes are usually not recycled
and are often discarded, causing environmental pollution. A topical example
is the 2009 outbreak of Swine flu – renamed Influenza A (H1N1) – that has
been linked to human exposure to pollution generated from pig-raising
operations in Vera Cruz, Mexico (Patel, 2009).
• They reduce food crop diversification by relying on the planting of mono-
cultures over large areas. These attract pests in large numbers and require
toxic doses of poisons to keep the pests under control.
• They foster pest resistance, which means that ever-more powerful chemical
concoctions need to be applied in future cycles.
• They reduce biodiversity and the functional redundancy associated with
it. The aim is to plant crops and raise animals that have the highest energy
conversion rates, thereby eschewing those species that have lower poten-
tial but which might, nevertheless, have other desirable characteristics
(hardiness, for example).
• They lead to the adoption of propriety seed/pesticide ‘packages’ as a means
of seeking continual productivity gains. This has the effect of making
farmers – and therefore wider society – dependent on corporate agribusiness,
while conferring increasing power on those companies to shape the future
contours of (industrial) agriculture (see Altieri, 1998; Gray and Lawrence,
2001; Jansen and Vellema, 2004; Lang and Heasman, 2004; Patel, 2007).
There are voices, even in conservative global governance bodies, calling for
things to change. As the director of the FAO’s plant production and protection
division, Shivaji Pandey, has stated current production systems will need to be
altered for the world’s agricultural ecosystem to be restored:
In the name of intensification in many places around the world,
farmers have over-ploughed, over-fertilized and over-irrigated, and
over-applied pesticides. But in doing so we [have] also affected
all aspects of the soil, water, land, biodiversity and the services
provided by an intact ecosystem (quoted in Cresswell, 2009, p1).

Similarly, a report published by the International Assessment of Agricultural
Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) – an
intergovernmental group of over 400 scientists and UN agencies – has linked
high-tech and reductionist farming with environmental and natural resource
degradation that includes deforestation, the introduction of invasive species,
and increased pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. The report also
associated capital-intensive and high-tech farming with rising food prices and
increasing rates of poverty. The group concluded that the way the world grows
its food would have to change radically if the poor and hungry are to be better
served (IAASTD, 2008).
This would seem to be a damning condemnation of productivism.
Nonetheless, the arguments for such a system continue to resound when the
alternatives are as yet unproven. Productivism has been highly successful
in producing ever-increasing volumes of food, with some arguing that any
attempt to abandon this approach will increase global food insecurity and
condemn millions of human beings to death from starvation (Avery, 1995).
How will the world increase its food output by a minimum of 50 per cent over
the next three decades to feed the expected population (see Cresswell, 2009)?
Increased food provision will also have to take place in the face of climate
change, fights over water for irrigation, competition for access to cultivable
lands, and limited access to the nutrients and energy currently derived from
fossil fuels. Not only this, but the increases in global agricultural production
are arguably beginning to plateau (Cresswell, 2009). Although Lang and
Heasman (2004) have reported strong challenges to productivism from both
the life sciences industry7 and from an ecologically integrated paradigm that
includes organics, and while writers have identified the emergence of a ‘post-
productivist’ countryside in the UK and Europe (Wilson, 2001), it remains true
that agribusiness-based and petrochemical-dependent industrial agriculture
is not only entrenched in food-exporting nations such as Canada, the US and
Australia (see Gray and Lawrence, 2001), but is being delivered worldwide to
nations like Thailand, the Philippines and China (Pritchard and Burch, 2003).
It has been proposed that one way forward will be to apply GM
technology to boost productivity. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the World Bank has
endorsed the biotech push, claiming that ‘GM crops could offer a range of
benefits over the longer term’ (quoted in Cresswell, 2009, p2). Meanwhile,
the AGRA is working to spread GM seeds across the African landscape, while
simultaneously working to shape African policies and media opinion in favour
of GM technologies (Holt-Giménez et al, 2009).
But GM appears little more than an add-on to productivism. While some
fertilizers and pesticides might be abandoned in the GM ‘revolution’ (the irony
of such a move being that the majority of GM crops currently being cultivated
are modified to resist increased exposure to pesticides and herbicides), the
system of intensive agriculture remains intact – with all its vulnerability to more
devastating infestations of bugs able to kill, or to render sick, the industrially
produced plants and animals that are feeding the developed world (see
Hindmarsh and Lawrence, 2004). The supposed benefits of GM technologies

INTRODUCTION 13
are, nonetheless, based upon their purported environmental credentials. For
example, McMichael (2009a, p252) has reported that large agro-biotechnology
firms such as Monsanto, Bayer and Dupont are already filing patents on
‘climate ready’ genes, hoping that the global food crisis will induce farmers and
governments to resort to genetically modified seeds as part of any ‘adaptation’
to drought, pest attacks and other manifestations of changing climatic
conditions. Meanwhile, a number of universities and industries, both singly and
in collaboration, are applying for patents on products and processes involving
‘synthetic biology’ – a result of the convergence of a number of technologies,
including biotechnology, nanotechnology and information technology – many
of which are being marketed as ‘environmentally friendly’. Yet, their impacts
are likely to introduce new environmental and social risks. As a case in point,
synthetic biology is currently being applied to create new forms of agrofuels
with increased efficiency both in terms of crop production and in terms of crop
conversion into ethanol. Such developments are likely further to intensify the
production of monoculture crops, as well as the transformation of increasing
areas of agricultural land from food to fuel production and thus, notably,
provide an opening for the energy sector to increasingly influence agricultural
policies (ETC Group, 2007a).
High-tech and converging technologies such as GM, synthetic biology
and nanotechnology are not the only future on offer, however. An alternative
is so-called ‘small-footprint’ technology (Ambler-Edwards et al, 2009, p28).
These new technologies aim to reduce the amount of material required for the
manufacturing of products by using more energy-efficient technologies and
by re-using waste through recycling. In agriculture, such technologies could
include: methane ‘digesters’ that can generate energy; controlled fertilizer
release that reduces run-off; use of on-farm waste as green fertilizer; and the
application of drip irrigation (Ambler-Edwards et al, 2009, p28). This model
of agri-food production holds the promise of providing viable livelihoods for
people in a manner that ensures that nature is not compromised (Scherr and
Sthapit, 2009, p33). In relation to the current challenges of climate change,
this approach would include the absorption and storage of carbon in plants,
the reduction of emissions from rice and livestock production systems, a
major decrease in the burning of timber, and the cutting back of nitrous oxide
emissions from inorganic fertilizers (Schahczenski and Hill, 2009).8
Systems capable of delivering enhanced sustainability would be those that
can enrich soil carbon, employ high carbon-cropping approaches, reduce the
impact of livestock-intensive production systems, conserve the current carbon
that is stored in forests and grasslands, and encourage the planting of trees
and other vegetation in areas of degradation (Scherr and Sthapit, 2009, p33).
Organic production methods, conservation tillage and crop rotation, along
with the grazing of livestock on grasslands and the replanting of once-cleared
lands to forests, are five main ways of reducing the current impact of agri-food
production systems on the environment (Lockie et al, 2006; Schahczenski and
Hill, 2009; Scherr and Sthapit, 2009). Organic and agro-ecological methods are
especially recommended as they have out-performed productivist approaches

by providing environmental benefits such as soil water retention (and hence
increased drought tolerance) and improvement in soil fertility (Altieri, 1998;
Environmental News Service, 2009).
Moreover, according to Scherr and Sthapit (2009), the global consensus on
the need to reduce the greenhouse gas ‘footprint’ implicates the entire agri-food
system, in as much as up to one-third of greenhouse gas emissions (McMichael,
2009a, p139) must be reduced along all sections of the chain that deliver foods
and fibres to consumers – production, transportation, refrigeration, packing,
storing and point of sale. Waste, too, must also be addressed. Achim Steiner,
the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP), has reported that over half the food produced in the world today
is ‘either lost, wasted or discarded as a result of inefficiencies in the human-
managed food chain’ (reported in Hill, 2009). Food loss in the US currently
sits at around 50 per cent, with at least one-quarter of all fruits and vegetables
being wasted between the farm gate and the fork (Environmental News Service,
2009). It has been suggested that recovering only 5 per cent of this wastage per
day could feed 4 million people (Ambler-Edwards et al, 2009, p12). Altering the
proportion of cereal crops dedicated to the production of animal feed would,
finally, enhance the system capacity to feed the world’s poorest people. UNEP
(2009) has reported that up to 30 per cent of all cereals that are produced in
the world are currently used for animal feeds, and that this is expected to rise
to 50 per cent by 2050, limiting the ability of any expansion in crop production
to directly feed the hungry through increased grain supply.
As Lang (2009a, p30) has cogently argued, food security ‘can only mean
sustainability’. Thus, food security will only be achieved when:
• the core goal is to feed everyone sustainably, equitably and healthily;
• culturally appropriate goals of suitability, availability and accessibility are
pursued;
• thefoodsystemisecologicallysoundandresilientinthefaceofenvironmental
volatility;
• agriculture enhances the productive capacity of the land;
• the food system builds capacities and skills to ensure that future generations
can continue to produce food in a sustainable manner (Lang, 2009a, p30).
In addition to this, Pinstrup-Andersen (2009) has suggested that it is not enough
to focus on food security, or sustainability, if people continue to be exposed to
poor sanitation and polluted water. Nutritional levels might be acceptable, but
people will continue to suffer and die from exposure to water-borne diseases
in rivers and streams polluted with sewage. The nutritional deficiencies of
the world’s poor and hungry should be viewed as just one element of a wider
suite of needs that must be addressed in toto if progress is to be made in the
creation of a world where healthy people live in healthy landscapes. In this
regard, a ‘health enhancing’ food system will also need to be one that provides
for carbon reduction while generalizing nutritional benefits across nations, and
that ultimately seeks to abandon productivism (Lang, 2009b). Revisiting the

INTRODUCTION 15
economic thrust of the depression times characteristic of the Roosevelt years,
this could be part of a so-called ‘Green’ New Deal in the current period of
volatile global economic conditions (Lang, 2009b, p583).
The themes of the book
The book is divided into three parts: Part One ‘Global Food Security’; Part Two
‘Food Systems, Diet and Nutrition’; and Part Three ‘Towards a Sustainable
Agri-Food Future’. While each chapter takes one of these themes as its primary
focus, we believe the content of each chapter will demonstrate that these
themes are highly interrelated. Indeed, we hope this book will demonstrate
the extent to which theoretical and practical approaches for addressing the
global agri-food crisis will benefit from the consideration of issues as diverse as
food security, nutrition and health, and social and environmental sustainability
collectively, rather than as separate entities.
In Part One, the contributing authors deal with various aspects of global
food security. In this first section of the book, authors explain some of the
structural and regulatory circumstances that have shaped international
agriculture and food trade, and then explore some of the implications of these
circumstances for food security, food policy and fossil-fuel energy use. This
section identifies some of the challenges for countries in both the North and
South in achieving food security – including those challenges emerging in the
broad context of climate change, peak oil and the ‘meatification’ of global
diets.
InChapter2,TonyWeisexplainsthenatureofthegrain-livestockproduction
complex in the US and Canada – which is at the heart of both contemporary
energy-dense diets and global food trade for these nations. He examines the
environmental, energy and other so-called ‘quickening’ contradictions that
are emerging from this form of production. Weis considers that, despite the
current dependence on this form of agriculture, there are clear signs that the
US and Canada will need to move towards a ‘post carbon’ farming future.
Opportunities will arise, he argues, for the rebuilding of localism in food
economies, for the fostering of more effective forms of rural development, as
well as for the creation of more sustainable and equitable farming alternatives.
He argues that progressive forces in the US and Canada have the potential
not only to transform farming in both nations, but also to assist in the re-
localization of food provision in the South.
In Chapter 3, Gianluca Brunori and Angela Guarino examine how
discourses about food and agriculture are changing in the EU in the context of
the global food crisis. They compare the two prominent discourses in Europe
– the discourses of ‘mass agriculture’ (industrial farming) and ‘agriculture
for rural development’ (diversified, multifunctional farming systems) – and
conclude that the various crises being experienced globally have begun to
favour the second approach. There is now talk of the need for ‘resilience’ in
farming communities, along with the application of local knowledge and the
encouragement of more biodiverse, regional food systems. They call on those

in the fields of education and communication to assist in changing the attitudes
and behavior of consumers so that they may move away from the purchase of
industrially produced foods and towards foods produced in a more sustainable
manner.
Chapter 4 deals with the re-emergence, in the UK, of a national food
security agenda. According to David Barling, Tim Lang and Rosalind Sharpe,
the recent policy of UK governments has been to secure foods globally, under
conditions of increasing trade liberalization, in the belief that imported foods
help to reduce the risk of food shortages in the UK that might arise from
domestic crop failures or from profound livestock disorders like ‘mad cow’
disease. Yet, questions are being raised about the resilience of global food
supply and the extent to which international food sourcing is, in some way,
connected to domestic attempts to move towards more sustainable systems of
rural production. They argue that a mismatch is occurring. The government’s
commitment to a liberalized trade regime has driven farmers to adopt a
more productivist-based efficiency regime while, at the same time, there is a
distinctive push by both the UK public and by government to make agriculture
more environmentally sustainable. There is no obvious resolution to this
conundrum, at this time.
Gabriela Pechlaner and Gerardo Otero link growing food vulnerability
to neoliberal economic policy. In Chapter 5, they highlight the hypocritical
position of the North in advocating for free trade, while generously funding
home-grown economic protectionism. To counter this, they consider that
countries of the South should return to policies of self-sufficiency so that
there is national control over food provision, as well as a fetter on corporate
domination of the global food industry.
In the final chapter in this section, Jago Dodson, Neil Sipe, Roy Rickson
and Sean Sloan focus upon global oil price vulnerability. They argue that,
because the conventional agri-food industries are heavily dependent upon
petroleum products for tractor fuel, chemical inputs and for the transport of
products, fuel price hikes have a significant effect on the overall price of foods.
Not only that, but any future oil shortages – requiring farm businesses to pay
more for fuel and chemical inputs to farming – are likely to simultaneously
intensify the concentration of land ownership and food processing. This, they
argue, will result in the continued dominance of large-scale capital in farming
and in the food industry.
Part Two of the book turns to an examination of food systems, diet
and nutrition. Here, contributing authors explore the extent to which those
structural aspects of global food systems – some of which are outlined in Part
One – shape broader experiences of nutrition, diet and health. Authors explore
various links between the structural inequities that characterize contemporary
agri-food systems – including the increasing supermarket retailer concentration,
the paradox of food regulations and the merger of the food and pharmaceutical
industries – and the inequities in food access, as well as in the distribution of
diet-related illness.

INTRODUCTION 17
In Chapter 7, Sharon Friel and Wieslaw Lichacz link unhealthy diets to
what they term ‘unequal’ food systems. These authors argue that the global
system – in which major transnational firms determine the availability, quality
and affordability of food – establish the conditions for the uneven distribution
of food between, and within, nations. They comment upon the nutrition
transition that occurred in India, indicating that globalization has altered
middle-class diets so that they resemble those of the west – high in saturated
fats and sugars. The reason for this is that the removal of domestic subsidies
has undermined conventional food production, allowing cheaper western-style
processed foods to become more readily available. As a result, there has been
an increase in diet-related diseases, as well as the displacement of peasants
from agriculture as the food giants and supermarkets increase their influence.
Convenience food consumption is the issue of concern for Lisa Schubert,
Megan Jennaway and Helen Johnson. In Chapter 8, these authors present four
‘frames’ for understanding the consumption of convenience food. Each frame
has a basic mantra (‘there’s not enough time in the day to cook’, ‘McDonald’s
made me fat’, and so on), and each frame has particular weaknesses (in
assuming, for example, that consumers are rational in their purchasing, or that
consumers might be receptive to diet-related health messages). The authors
critically assess approaches to the question of why consumers have embraced
convenience foods and conclude that no single approach can provide an
adequate explanation. They urge food researchers to be aware of both structure
and agency in accounting for food demand, to improve the understanding of
both consumption and production in household economies, and to provide
historically rich descriptions of how fast foods and convenience foods have
become so prominent in the marketplace.
In Chapter 9, Stewart Lockie and Susan Williams introduce various
sociological perspectives to explain the emergence of the so-called ‘obesity
epidemic’. They argue that excessive weight and obesity became framed as an
epidemic by the 1990s while, at the same time, equal numbers of media headlines
also began to question the veracity of such claims. In this context, their chapter
aims to establish the extent to which being overweight or being obese is really
an issue. With an empirical focus on Australia, and with additional empirical
and theoretical insights drawn from an international perspective, this chapter
points to the need for new sociological approaches that will help us to better
understand weight gain and obesity.
In Chapter 10, Mark Lawrence analyses the food and nutrition regulatory
system in Australia and New Zealand. Through an examination of three
aspects of food regulation, he demonstrates the tensions that persist in defining
the boundaries of food regulation and food regulators. While, on the one hand,
this chapter demonstrates the role of regulation in supporting the expansion
of the food industries it argues, on the other hand, that regulators also have
a mandate to ensure the protection of public health. As an outcome of this
tension, Lawrence argues that modern food regulatory systems are limited in
their capacity to protect public health, and remain largely disengaged from
contemporary health, social and environmental considerations.

Shifting the focus of this part of the book from an analysis of food
regulations to the activities of the food industries, David Burch and Geoffrey
Lawrence trace the extent to which the agri-food industries are forming new
alliances with the pharmaceutical industries. They explore, in Chapter 11,
the way such industries are transforming their product ranges – including
embracing so-called functional foods – as part of the ‘wellness revolution’.
This revolution is reflected in a growing consumer interest in, and demand for,
healthy foods, as well as in the more general pursuit of healthy lifestyles. These
authors trace the emerging alliances and strategic partnerships between the
food and pharmaceutical industries, and evaluate some of the implications for
agri-food companies and for the future of food and agriculture.
In the final chapter in this section, Libby Hattersley and Jane Dixon begin
to explore a research agenda that would assist in understanding and analysing
the impacts of supermarkets in the arena of public health. They begin by
highlighting the concentration of retailer power across the agri-food system,
describing supermarkets as the ‘gatekeepers’ in agri-food supply chains. Given
the on-going support for self-regulation, supermarkets are effectively able
to dictate what, where and how our food is produced. Nonetheless, there is
currently a limited understanding of the impacts of the influence of supermarket
corporate power on public health. The authors suggest a research agenda that
might allow an interrogation of such public health impacts, and conclude the
chapter by questioning where responsibility lies for public health.
Contributing authors to Part Three of the book map out some of the
challenges and opportunities in moving towards a sustainable agri-food future.
Chapters offer approaches for re-thinking the contributions of community
gardens and urban agriculture in building sustainable cities, analyse the impacts
of emerging agri-food industries – including agrofuels and nanotechnologies
– and the extent to which they enable the further extension of industrial
and unsustainable agri-food systems, and evaluate, in a critical fashion, the
contributions organic agri-food systems might make to a sustainable future.
In Chapter 13, Kelly Donati, Susan Cleary and Lucy Pike focus upon the
social, economic and ecological contributions of community gardens. While
acknowledging the importance of previous analyses of community gardens,
these authors draw on the concept of ‘liveliness’ to expand understandings and
ways of thinking about community gardens and their impacts on urban life. In
so doing, their research with participants at the ‘Garden of Eden’ demonstrates
outcomes that far exceed policy objectives, including the opportunity to create
new ethical and political associations between humanity and nature.
The recent rapid expansion in the global biofuels (agrofuels) industry
reflects the coalescence of the food and energy crises. In Chapter 14, Sophia
Murphy describes such expansion, which has been driven by both government
and industry investment. Given the energy dependence of contemporary food
systems – a theme explored in Part One of this book – biofuels have emerged as
a potential energy solution. Despite the hopes of biofuels advocates, however,
Murphy’s critical evaluation demonstrates the entrenched nature of fossil-fuel
based systems of agriculture, of food insecurity and of unsustainable farming
methods.

INTRODUCTION 19
In Chapter 15, a multidisciplinary team of researchers – Hugh Campbell,
Chris Rosin, Solis Norton, Peter Carey, Jayson Benge and Henrik Moller –
consider the contributions of organic farming towards achieving agricultural
sustainability. They begin by outlining public debates and media representations
associated with organics, including the range of mythologies frequently
associated with organic food and farming. Such representations are often
polarized, ignoring the nuances of scientific and other academic debates. This
chapter builds upon those discourses that seek to move beyond these polarized
debates. Drawing from a decade of research by the Agriculture Research Group
on Sustainability (ARGOS) in New Zealand, the authors offer a preliminary
assessment of the extent to which organic farming may be compatible with the
broader goals of agricultural sustainability.
At the same time as the global organic agriculture sector continues to
grow, so do a range of high-tech and capital-intensive agri-food options,
many of which are also promoted on the basis of their capacity to contribute
towards agricultural sustainability. The development and application of
nanotechnologies across the agriculture and food sectors – from nano-seeds and
nano-chemicals to nano-food packaging and nano-food itself – demonstrates the
compatibility of yet another technological innovation with past ‘technological
treadmill’ approaches to food production. In Chapter 16, Gyorgy Scrinis and
Kristen Lyons discuss the ways in which agri-food nanotechnologies provide
a techno-scientific platform to extend the industrial and corporate model of
agriculture. They contend that agri-food nanotechnologies stand counter to
moves towards agricultural sustainability and are set to introduce a new order
of environmental, social and health risks. In light of these risks, the authors
expect that resistance to nano-food and nano-farming will continue to grow,
as communities seek alternative solutions to the challenges facing agriculture
and food systems.
In the final chapter of this book, Tim Lang evaluates the prospects
and challenges of weaving together agriculture and food policy in a way
that addresses the many challenges relating to food security, nutrition and
sustainability. He describes the looming environmental, health, social, cultural
and economic problems that are faced by the world and talks of the need
to ‘recast’ everyday food activities in a manner that provides sustenance
while respecting nature. He outlines the policy settings that might assist in
creating more environmentally sustainable food systems, and reflects upon
the possibilities for banishing hunger. Lang is insistent that a new global agri-
food trajectory needs to be one that utilizes the best of science, but does so in
a manner that empowers people to identify healthy eating as a primary goal.
It is a trajectory that will question the mass-marketing techniques of the fast-
food industry, that will confront supermarket power and that will help to re-
localize food provision. Are these changes possible? Lang argues that positive
change will only occur when the state plays a more important role in ensuring
that beneficial public health outcomes become better matched to sustainability
goals in agri-food industries, worldwide.

Notes
1 ‘Agrofuels’ is the term used by writers such as McMichael (2009a) to draw attention
to the fact that the fuels are agriculturally based and hence have implications for the
amount of food that is removed from markets due to their production. Biofuels and
agrofuels are used interchangeably throughout the book.
2 Patel notes that it is not as simple as characterizing the ‘starved’ as all belonging to
the South, pointing to entrenched food insecurity among the poor in the US (Patel,
2007, p3).
3 Tim Lang prefers the phrase ‘food democracy’ to sovereignty, pointing out that
‘sovereign’ refers to top-down approaches that can lead to the exclusion of grassroots
democratic processes and accountability (see Lang, 2009a). McMichael (2009b)
argues that the food sovereignty movement helps to politicize the commoditization
of food and expose environmentally destructive practices in farming, helping to
foster an ‘ethic’ that could result in the emergence, globally, of a more democratic
food regime.
4 For a discussion of the various meanings and interpretations of the term ‘food
security’ see Pinstrup-Andersen (2009).
5 Subsidies to US corn producers include those for farm machinery, fertilizers,
transportation and credit (see Patel, 2007, p49).
6 In poor countries 60–80 per cent of income is spent on food, so any increase in food
prices has a direct and often devastating effect upon purchasing power (Loewenberg,
2008, p1209).
7 It could also be argued that the ‘life sciences’ approach is nothing more than an
extension of productivism.
8 Approaches to shift agriculture in ways that manage and/or reverse climate change
stand in stark contrast to a range of radical techniques currently being experimented
with to alter climatic systems and biological processes. Arguably one of the most
radical among these new approaches includes geo-engineering, or the intentional
manipulation of the earth’s land, sea and atmosphere – using controversial techniques
such as ‘ocean fertilization’ (dumping iron into the world’s oceans) – in an attempt
to combat climate change (ETC Group, 2007b).
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INTRODUCTION 21
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120

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with his goad to the parliament house; but he was in no
state until he was seated there, robed and crowned, and
sceptred. And, in-deed, in that place only, where the great
affairs of the Com-monwealth are transacted, can it be said,
that Real Majesty does truly and properly reside; and not
where the king plays, or dances, or prattles with his women,
when the vulgar are always styling him, your Majesty.
Hotomun's Franco-gallia, p. 73.
David, the patient tribes too much opprest,
Vex'd them with tribute, and deny'd them rest;
Harass'd the land with imposts and alarms,
Taxing and fighting—money! and to arms!
His son, however wise, disturbed their peace,
With taxes for his sumptuous palaces;
His love of women and his garish state,
His love of pomp and show, and looking great;
His building projects, and his vast designs,
Too vast for all the gold of Ophir's mines,
The people's hearts dismay'd, their feelings pain'd,
Their love unsettled, and their treasures drain'd. *
* Solomon could have but two occasions for money; one for
his costly buildings, the other for his numerous women, for
he never had any wars. To the expense of his buildings the
kings of other countries contributed largely; so that it
must have beeu his excesses in women, and other luxurious
indulgences, that caused him to oppress the people with
heavy burdens of taxes.
By two such' vigorous monarchs long opprest,
The next that came they loyally addrest;
Implored his gracious majesty would please
To tax them less, and let them live in peace.

The son of Solomon with anger hears
The people dare to offer him their pray'rs,
Spurns their Address, his rage no bounds restrain,
And thus he gives his answer with disdain:—
"I bear from Heaven the ensigns of my sway,
My business is to rule, and your's obey:
Therefore your scandalous Address withdraw,
'Tis my command, and my command's your law:
Sedition grows from seeds of discontent,
And faction always snarls at government:
But since my throne from God alone I hold,
To Him alone my councils I unfold;
My resolutions he has made your laws,
You are to know my actions, He the cause!
Wherefore I stoop, to let you understand,
I double all the taxes of the land.
And if your discontents and feuds remain,
Petition—and I'll double them again!
The mild correction which my Father gave,
Has spoil'd the people he design'd to save;
You murmur'd then, but had you thus been used,
You'd ne'er his easy clemency abused!"
The injured people, treated with disdain,
Found their Petitions and Addresses vain!
Long had they made submissions to the crown,
And long the love of Liberty had known;
The kings they ask'd of God had let them see,
What God himself foretold of tyranny.

The father had exhausted all their stores,
With costlyhouses, and more costly whores;
But doubly robb'd by his encroaching son,
They rather chose to die, than be undone;
And, thus resolving, by a single stroke,
Ten tribes revolted, and their bondage broke!
The tyrant, in his sceptred bloated pride,
Believing God and blood upon his side;
To the high altar in a rage repairs,
And rather tells his tale, than makes his prayers: *
* The author has taken a poetical licence here. For
scripture does not say that Rehoboam prayed to the Lord.
"Behold!" says he, "the slaves, o'er whom I reign,
Have made the pow'r I had from Thee in vain;
From thy diviner rule they separate,
And make large schisms both in Church and State;
My just intentions are, with all my force,
To check rebellion in its earliest course;
Revenge th' affronts of my insulted throne,
And save thy injured honour, and my own;
And as thy counsels did my fathers bless,
He claims thy help, who does their crown possess!"
Listen ye kings, ye people all rejoice,
And hear the answer of th' Almighty voice:
Tremble, ye tyrants, read the high commands,
In sacred writ the sacred sentence stands!
"Stir not afoot! thy new-rais'd troops disband!"
Says the Eternal;—"it is my command!
I raised thy fathers to the Hebrew throne,
I set it up, but you yourselves pull down!

For when to them I Israel's sceptre gave,
'Twas not my chosen people to enslave.
My first command no such commission brings,
I made no tyrants, though I made you kings;
But you my people vilely have opprest,
And misapplied the powers which you possest.
'Tis Nature's laws the people now direct,
When Nature speaks, I never contradict.
Draw not the sword, thy brethren to destroy,
The liberty they have, they may enjoy;
I ever purposed, and I yet intend,
That what they may enjoy, they may defend;
They have deserted from a misused throne,
"The thing's from Me"—the crime is all thy own!"*
* When the ten tribes revolted from Rehoboam, and chose Je-
roboam king, there is no doubt they limited him by law; for
many years afterwards king Aliab, one of his succcssors,
admring a herb-garden near to his own palace, applied to the
owner, Naboth, and offered him either a vineyard for it, or
the worth of it in money; but Naboth would neither exchange
nor sell it, and Ahab returned home so vexed, that he went
to bed and would not eat any thing. Naboth having thus
displeased the king, the courtiers got up a charge of
Blasphemy and Sedition against him by means of false
wituesses hired on purpose; he was found guilty and
executed, and Ahab got possession of the garden, probably as
a forfeiture to the crown. It is clear, therefore, that
Ahab's power was restrained by law, for it was not until
Nabot was murdered under the forms of law, that the king
could get the poor man's property. Another thing is very
remarkable: as soon as the murder was completed, and the
king had got the garden, there was an honest Father in God,
who, instead of saying 'the king could do no wrong,' went to
his majesty, charged him with the crime, and denounced his

downfall, which happened accordingly, through his listening
to flattering ecclesiastics, and his fondness for military
affairs. If the Bishop of London should desire to preach on
this story, he is informed that he may find it in the Bible,
1 Kings, xxi.
If kings no more be flatter'd and deceived,
Nor shun too late, the knaves they have believed;
If as 'trustees for uses' they agree
To act by limited authority;
Subordination will its order keep,
Ambition die, and all rebellion sleep.
The weeping nations shall begin to laugh,
The subjects easy, and the rulers safe.
Plenty and peace embrace just government,
The king be pleased, the people be content.
If any king is hoodwink'd to believe,
People will blind obedience to him give;
Let him pause long, before he dares to try,
They all by practice give their words the lie! *
* Flattery is a fine picklock of tender ears; especially of
those whom fortune hath borne high upon their wings, that
submit their dignity and authority to it, by a soothing of
themselves. For, indeed, men could never he taken in that
abundance with the springes of others' flattery, if they
began not there; if they did but remember how much more
profitable the bitterness of truth were than all the honey
distilling from a whorish voice, which is not praise but
poison. But now it is come to that extreme of folly, or
rather madness, with some, that he that flatters them mo-
destly, or sparingly, is thought to malign them.

Ben Jonson.
The ears of kings are so tiugled with a continual uniform
ap-probation, that they have scarce any knowledge of true
praise. Have they to do with the greatest fool of all their
subjects—they have no way to take advantage of him: by the
flatterer saying, "It is because he is my king," he thinks
he has said enough to imply that he therefore suffered
himself to be over-come. This quality stifles and confuses
the other true and es-sential qualities which are sunk deep
in the kingship.
Montaigne.
Art may by mighty dams keep out the tide,
Check the strong current, and its streams divide;
Pen up the rising waters, and deny
The easy waves to glide in silence by:
But if the river is restrain'd too long,
It swells in silence to resent the wrong;
With fearful force breaks opposition down,
And claims its native freedom for its own.
So Tyranny may govern for a time,
Till Nature drowns the tyrants with their crime!
End of Book II.
THE RIGHT DIVINE OF KINGS TO GOVERN
WRONG.
BOOK III.
——Nations would do well

T' extort their truncheons from the puny hands
Of Heroes, whose infirm and baby minds
Are gratified with mischief; and who spoil,
Because men suffer it, their Toy—The World.
Tyrants deposed to preserve the Throne—In Europe—In England
before the Conquest—By each other since.—No right line any where
—Difference between Tyrants and Kings—Government instituted by
the People for their oivn good—Tyrants treat men as cattle to be
slaughtered—God decrees their fall—Ordains Revolutions by the
People.
Search we the long records of ages past,
Look back as far as antient rolls will last;
Beyond what oldest history relates,
While kings had people, people magistrates;
Nations, e'er since there has been king or crown,
Have pull'd down tyrants to preserve the throne.
The laws of nature then, as still they do,
Taught them, their rights and safety to pursue;
That if a king, who should protect, destroys,
He forfeits all the sanction he enjoys.
There's not a nation ever own'd a crown,
But if their kings opprest them, pull'd them down;
Concurring Providence has been content,
And always blest the action in th' event.
He that, invested with the robes of power,
Thinks'tis his right the people to devour,
Will always find some stubborn men remain,
That have so little wit, they won't be slain;
Who always turn again when they're opprest,
And basely spoil the gay tyrannic jest;

Tell kings—of Nature, Laws of God, and Right,
Take up their arms, and with their tyrants fight.
When passive thousands fall beneath the sword,
And freely die at the imperial word,
A stern, unyielding, self-defending few,
While they resist, will ravel all the clew;
Will all the engines of oppression awe,
And trample pow'r beneath the feet of law.
'Tis always natural for men opprest,
Whene'er occasion offers to resist;
They're traitors else to truth and common sense,
And rebels to the laws of Providence;
'Tis not enough to say, they may—they must;
The strong necessity declares it just; *
'Tis Heav'n's supreme command to man, and they
Are always blest who that command obey.
* If it be asked, Who shall be judge? it is plain that God
has made Nature judge. If a king make a law, destructive of
human society and the general good, may it not be resisted
and opposed? "No!" exclaim a junta of holy meu, "it is from
GOD!" What is Blasphemy?
So France deposed the Merovingian line,
And banish'd Childrick * lost the right divine;
So Holy League their sacred Henry ** slew,
And call'd a counsel to erect a new;
For right divine must still to justice bow,
And people first the right to rule bestow:
So Spain to arbitrary kings inured,
Yet arbitrary Favila *** abjured;
Denmark four kings deposed, and Poland seven,
Swedeland but one-and-twenty, Spain eleven:

Russia, Demetrius banish'd from the throne,****
And Portugal pull'd young Alphonsus down;
Each nation that deserves the name of state,
Has set up laws above the magistrate;
Hence, when a self-advancing wretch acquires
A lawless rule, his government expires.
* Childeric I. the son of Merovius, for his lasciviousness,
was banished by the great men, and one Egidiu?, a Gaul, set
up in his stead. Childeiic II. was banished and deposed by
his subjects, and king Pepin reigned in his stead; and so
ended the Merovingian family.
** The League deposed Henry III. and declared him a tyrant,
a murderer, and incapable to reign, and held frequent
counsels with the pope's legate and the Spaniards about
settling the crown, and several proposals were made of
settling it, sometimes on the infanta of Spain, at other
times on the cardinal of Boubon, the duke de Main, and
others.
*** Favila, a cruel tyrant, was deposed by the Castilians,
who chose judges to administer the government, till they
appointed another.
**** Besides the banishment of Demetrius, the History of
Russia furnishes a sickening catalogue of the butchery of
her despots by each other. During the debate in the House of
Lords on the 19th of February, 1821, Lord Holland, observing
on the Crusade of the Holy Alliance of Despots against
Naples, said, "That objections to the freedom of political
constitutions came but ungracefully from the reigning
Emperor of Russia, who ascended a throne reeking with the
blood of his own father: and as this member of that holy
league, owed his crown to the murder of his father, it
brought to his recollection, that since the time of the Czar
Peter I. no sovereign had ascended the throne of Russia

with-out its being stained with the blood of his immediate
predecessor, or some other member of his own family."
Explore the past, the steps of monarchs tread,
And view the sacred titles of the dead;
Look to the early kings of Britain's isle,
For Jus Divinum in our native style.
Conquest, or compacts, form the rights of kings,
And both are human, both unsettled things;
Both subject to contingencies of fate,
And so the godship of them proves a cheat.
The crowns and thrones the greatest monarchs have,
Were either stolen, or the people gave.
What claim had colonel Cnute, * or captain Suene?
What right the roving Saxon, pirate Dane?
Hengist, or Horsa, Woden's blood defied,
And on their sword, not right divine, relied.
* The leaders of the invading Saxons and Danes were mere
thieves and robbers, pretending to no light but that of the
sword. Hengist and Horsa were Saxon leaders, who after
conquering Kent, made themselves kings. Woden is famed to be
the first great leader of the Goths into Europe, and all
their kings affected to be thought of his predatory blood.
The Norman Bastard, how divine his call!
And where's his heav'nly high original?
These naked nations, long a helpless prey,
To foreign and domestic tyranny;—
Their infant strength unfit to guard their name—
Was left exposed to ev'ry robber's claim,
An open prey to pirates, and the isle,

To wild invaders, grew an early spoil.
The Romans ravaged long our wealthy coast,
And long our plains fed Caesar's num'rous host.
What birthright raised that rav'nous leader's name?
His sword, and not his fam'ly, form'd his claim.
Where'er the Roman eagles spread their wings,
They conquer'd nations, and they pull'd down kings;
Caesar in triumph o'er the whole presided,
And right of conquest half the world divided.
For Liberty our sires in arms appear'd,
And in its sacred name with courage warr'd;
Made the invaders buy their conquest dear,
And legions of their bones lie buried here. *
* The hillocks or barrows still remaining in most parts of
Eng-land were the graves of the soldiers. There are four
very large ones near Stevenage in Hertfordshire, close to
the road. The plains in Wiltshire and Dorsetshire are full
of these monuments of the valorous achievements of the
Britons iu defence of their liberty.
When these their work of slaughter had fulfill'd,
And seas of British blood bedew'd the field;
Shoals of Barbarian Goths, worse thieves than they,
From Caledonian Friths, and frozen Tay,
O'erspread the fruitful, now abandon'd plains,
And led the captured victims in their chains:
The weaken'd natives, helpless and distrest,
Doom'd to be plunder'd, ravish'd, and oppress'd,
Employ new thieves from the rude Northern coast,
To rob them of the little not yet lost.

The work once done, the workmen, to be paid,
Only demand themselves, and all they had!
In dreadful strife their freedom to maintain,
They fought with fury, but they fought in vain;
Yet, like Antaeus, every time they fell,
Their veins with rage and indignation swell;
Not for continued losses they despair,
But for still fiercer battle they prepare;
Again their blood the Saxon chariots stains,
And heaps of heroes strew th' ensanguin'd plains;
Thus, though they leave the world, they keep the field,
And thus their lives, but not their freedom yield.
Three hundred years of bloody contest past,
Plunder'd at first, and dispossest at last,
The few remains, with freedom still inspir'd,
To Western mountains, to resist retired;
Their dear abandon'd country thence they view,
And thence their thirst of Liberty renew;
Offers of peaceful bondage they defy,
What's peace to man without his liberty? *
* The Britons fought one hundred and sixty-three pitched
bat-tles. They might well be said to be conquered, for in
these prodigious straggles for their liberty they were
nearly all slain. They fought as long as there were any men
to be raised? but the Saxons swarming continually over from
vastly populous countries, the few Britons that remained,
took sanctuary in the wes-tern mountains of Wales, and from
the crags and cliffs, poor and distrest as they were, they
made constant inroads and excursions upon the Saxons; the
Saxon Annals are filled with accounts of the renewed
warfare. Even the English histories frequently mention the
incursions of the Welsh, till, at last, united to England,
they seem to be incorporated with the natives of their
ancient soil.

The conquer'd nation—fell a dear bought prey,
And Britain's island, Saxon Lords obey:
The shouting troops their victories proclaim,
And load their chiefs with royalty and fame:
The garland of their triumphs was their crown,
Mob set them up, and rabble pull'd them down!
Fighting was all the merit they could bring,
The bloodiest wretch appear'd the bravest King!
Nor did his kingship any longer last,
Than till by some more powerful rogue displaced.
In spoil and blood was fix'd the right divine.
And thus commenced the royal Saxon line:—
That sword that vanquish'd innocence in fight,
The sword that crush'd the banish'd Britons' right,
At pleasure subdivides the British crown,
And forms eight soldier kingdoms out of one.
From these we strive to date our royal line,
And these must help us to a right divine;
From actions buried in eternal night,
Priestcraft is brought, to fix the fancied right;
Priestcraft that, always on the strongest side,
Contrives, tho' kings should walk, that priests shall ride.
One master thief his fellows dispossest,
And gave, once more, the weeping nation rest;
For Egbert, * English monarchy began,
By his Almighty-sword—the Sacred man!
* Egbert came over originally from France, and was not the
successor of any prince of the West Saxon kingdom, nor of
any kingdom.

Yet who was Egbert? Search his ancient breed;
What sacred ancestors did he succeed?
What mighty princes form'd his royal line,
And handed down to him the right divine?
A high-Dutch trooper, sent abroad to fight,
Whose trade was blood, and in his arm his right:
A supernumerary Holsteineer, *
For want of room at home, sent out to war;
A mere Swiss** mercenary, who for bread,
Was born on purpose to be knock'd in head;
A Saxon soldier was his high descent,
Murder his business, plunder his intent;
The poor unvalued, despicable thing,
A thief by nation, and by fate a king!
* The Saxons that came over were from Jutland, Holstein, &c.
The poor countries the Saxons lived in, being unable to
support the vast numbers of the people they produced, they
sought subsistence and habitations in fruitful and plentiful
lands.
** A Swiss, alludes to their being mercenaries.
To-day the monarch glories in his crown,
A soldier thief to-morrow knocks him down,
And calls the fancied right divine his own!
In the next age that 'rightful' Lord's forgot,
And rampant treason triumphs on the spot:
Success gives title, makes possession just,
For if the fates obey, the subjects must.
We should be last of all that should pretend,
The long descent of princes to defend;
Since, if hereditary right's the claim,

The English line has forty times been lame;
Of all the nations in the world, there's none
Have less of true succession in their crown.
Britannia now, with men of blood opprest,
And all her race of tyrants lately ceased;
Ill fate prevailing, seeks at foreign shores,
And for worse monsters, ignorantly implores.
The right divine was so despised a thing,
The crown went out a begging for a king
Of foreign breed, of unrelated race,
Whore in his scutcheon, tyrant in his face j
Of spurious birth, and intermingled blood,
Who nor our laws nor language understood.
William the early summons soon obeys,
Ambition fills his sails, his fleets the seas;
By cruel hopes, and fatal valour sped,
The foreign legions Britain's shores o'erspread:
The sword decides the claim, the land's the prey,
Fated the conquering tyrant to obey.
Harold by usurpation gain'd the crown, *
And ditto usurpation pull'd him down.
Nothing but patience then could Britain claim;
Oppress'd by suff'ring, suff'ring made her tame:
She saw the tyrant William quit the throne,
And hoped for better usage from his son;
But change of tyrants gave her small relief,
She lost the lion, and receiv'd the thief.
* Harold seized upon the crown by force. He had no claim to
it, by blood or inheritance, being the son of Earl Goodwin.
Rufus, his father's ill got treasure seized,

The greedy sons of mother-church appeased;
Bought up rebellion with the cash he stole,
Secured the Clergy, and seduced the whole.
So brib'ry first with robbery combined
To ride before, and treason rode behind.
Ambition, and the lust of rule prevail'd,
And Robert's right, on Rufus' head entail'd. *
Beau-Clerk next grasp'd his elder brother's crown,
And, by his sword, maintain'd it was his own:
The second ** Henry fights, and fighting treats,
To own the prince's title he defeats;
Consents to mean conclusions of the war,
And stoops to be a base usurper's heir;
Accepts the ignominious grant, and shows
His right's as bad as Stephen's that bestows:
The royal tricksters thus divide the prey,
And helpless crowds the jugglers' swords obey. ***
Then John, **** another branch of Henry's line,
Jumps on the throne, in spite of Right Divine,
Turn we to mighty Edward's deathless name;
Or to his son's, whose conquests were the same;
That mighty hero of right royal race,
His father still alive, usurp'd his place. (v)
* They were both usurpers, for the true right of descent was
in Edgar Atheling. of the race of Edmund Ironside.
** Henry II. was obliged to compromise the dispute with his
competitor Stephen; a prudent agreement, but in defiance of
hereditary right.
*** As at the death of Henry I. the main line of Normandy

ended, so the succession has ever since proved so brittle,
that it never held to the third heir in a right descent
without being put by, or receiving some alteration by
usurpation, or extinction of the male blood.—Churchill's
Divi Britannici, p. 207.
**** King John was the youngest son of Henry II., who had
his eldest line deposed. Henry was the son of a usurper, a
usurper himself, and the murderer of his own brother's son.
(v) Edward III. reigned, his father, Edward II. being a
prisoner, and was afterwards murdered.
As Edward on his parent's murder stood,
So Richard's tyrant reign was closed in blood:
Deposed and murder'd, Edward's father lies;
Deposed and murder'd—thus the grandson * dies.
Lancastrian Henry from his feeble head,
The bauble wrench'd, and wore it in his stead;
Three of his name by due succession reign,
And York demands the right of line in vain.
Thro' seas of slaughter, for this carnaged crown
Edward, not went, but waded to the throne **
Three times deposed, three times restored by force,
Priest-ridden Henry's title*** yields of course.
Short lived the right the conquering king enjoy'd,
Treason and crime his new-crown'd race destroy'd;
As if the crimson hand of Power pursued
The very crown, and fated it to blood,
Richard by lust of government allured,
By double murders, next that crown procured;
For silent records trumpet-tongued proclaim
The jails and graves of princes are the same.

At Bosworth field, the crookback was dethroned;
Slain in the fight, and then the victor own'd! ****
* Richard II.
** Edward IV.
*** Henry VI.
**** Richard III. was succeeded by Henry VII. who had
clearly no claim to the crown from blood. After him it still
devolved with irregularity, although uuder the Tudors, the
doctrine of hereditary right was as vaguely maintained as
before. Thus, a Parliament granted to Henry VIII. the power
of regulating the succession by will, and it was by
pretending to exercise a similar power under an alleged will
of Edward VI. that the unprincipled Northumberland sought
the establishment of Lady Jane Grey. Elizabeth, on the same
ground, was importuned to appoint a suc-cessor, at
intervals, during the last twenty years of her reign; and
finally, named the King of Scotland in her last moments.
These are strange incidents for the advocates of Divine
Right! The fact is, this wretched theory was never formally
advocated until the days of James I.; and it may be
considered to be one of the precions fruits of that settled
connexion between Church and State, of which the Despot,
Henry VIII., laid the foun-dation. Yet no Despot ever
supported himself steadily on an English throne; and what is
there to prove, that such men ever can? Look at King
Richard II., he was a finished gentle-man, possessed some
taste for literature, and shewed himself as. fond of finery
as need be; but he waged war with the common sense of the
realm and the rights of the people,—and finally, by
entrusting his power to weak, inefficient, and corrupt
ministers, roused the anger of a distressed and overtaxed
community. Moral—They were beheaded, and he was dethroned.

So men of blood, incited by its taste,
By lust of rule urged on, laid England waste;
Oppression then upon oppression grew,
One royal wretch another overthrew;
They made a football of the People's crown,
And brother-tyrant brother-king pull'd down,
Succeeding robberies revenged the past,
And every age of crime outdid the last.
Look on once more—the tangled line survey,
By which kings claim to bind men to obey.
In the right line they say their title lies:
But if its twisted?—then the title dies.
Look at it!—knotted, spliced in every place!
Closely survey the intersected race—
So full of violations, such a brood.
Of false successions, spurious births, and blood;
Such perjuries, such frauds, to mount a throne,
That Kings might blush their ancestors to own!
Oh! but Possession supersedes the Line!
Indeed!—then king, as king, has Right Divine;
And, coy Succession fled from majesty,
Makes Usurpation as divine as he;
De Facto is de Jure, and a throne,
To every dog that steals it is his bone!
Hence tyrants—and from these infected springs,
Flows the best title of the Best of Kings! *
* The Best of Kings (Court slang) the King for the time
being.—Many a king has been the worst man of his age, but

no king was ever the best. In 1683, the very year of Charles
the Second's reign, in which Lord William Russel and
Algernon Sydney were murdered under the forms of law, by
packed juries, and the king's passive obedient judges—when
the throne floated in blood, and the king's manners were
notoriously and disgust-ingly sensual and dissolute—in that
year, J. Shnrley, M. A. in his 'Ecclesiastical History
Epitomised,' gives Charles the title of "the best of kings!"
calls his life and reign virtuous! and prays that his days
may be as the days of Heaven!—This loyal author calls
himself, The Christian reader's "beloved Brother in Christ!"
Of the same king, Charles II., Horace Walpole (Lord Orford)
gives this character in his Epistle from Florence:—
(Dodsley's Collection, vol. iii. p. 92.)
Fortune, or fair, or frowning, on his soul
Could stamp no virtue, and no vice controul!
Honour or morals, gratitude or truth,
Nor taught his ripen'd age, nor knew his youth!
The care of nations left to whores or chance,
Plund'rer of Britain, pensioner of France;
Free to buffoons, to ministers denied,
He lived an atheist, and a bigot died!
All kings have parasites and praise; the Press records their
actions; and Posterity gives their characters.
Right of Succession, or what other claim
Of right to rule, by whatsoever name
Or title call'd, by whomsoever urged,
Is in the people's right of choosing merged.
The right's the People's, and the People's choice
Binds kings in duty to obey their voice;

The Public Will, the only Right Divine,
Sanctions the office, or divides the line;
Topples the crown from off the tyrant's head,
And puts a king to govern in his stead.
Tyrant and king are vastly different things—
We're robb'd by tyrants, but obey'd by kings!
If it be ask'd, how the distinction's known,
Oppression marks him out—the nations groan,
The broken laws, the cries of injur'd blood,
Are languages by all men understood! *
* Tyrants lose all respect for humanity, in proportion as
they are sunk beneath it; taught to believe themselves of
a different species, they really become so; lose their
participation with their kind; and, in mimicking the God,
dwindle into the brute! Blind with prejudices as a mole,
stung with truth as with scorpions, sore all over with
wounded pride like a boil, their minds a heap of morbid
proud flesh and bloated humours, a disease and gan-grene in
the state, instead of its life-blood and vital principle—
foreign despots claim mankind as their property. They regard
men crawling on the face of the earth as we do insects that
cross our path, and survey the common drama of human life as
a fantoccini exhibition got up for tlieir amusement. It is
the over-weening, aggravated, intolerable sense of swelling
pride and ungovernable self-will that so often drives them
mad; as it is their blind fatuity and insensibility to all
beyond themselves, that, transmitted through successive
generations, and confirmed by regal intermarriages, in time
makes them idiots.
Hazlitt's Political Essays, p. 341.
Just laws and liberty make patriot kings;

Tyrants and tyranny are self-made things. *
* Though a Despot be transformed into a limited king, he is
in heart and purpose still a despot. He feels duress; he is
not at liberty to oppress at his pleasare; and he awaits an
opportnnity to exercise 'the Right Divine of Kings to govern
wrong;' for he holds the doctrine that "oaths are not to be
kept with subjects." In the reign of Richard II. the Duke of
Norfolk apprised the Duke of Hereford, that the King
purposed their destruction:—
Hereford.—God forbid!—He has sworn by St. Edward, to be a
good Lord to me and the others.
Norfolk.— So has he often sworn to me by God's Body: but I
do not trust him the more for that!
Every restored despot has become an unblushing and shameless
perjurer; where is there in history an instance to the con-
trary?—Once a Despot, and always a Despot.
Alfred the Great is the only King in our annals who being
guilty of misgovernment, and seeing its evils had the high
courage to acknowledge his crime by amendment. At the
commencement of his reign he seemed to consider his exalted
dignity as an emancipation from restraint, and to have found
leisure, even amidst his struggles with the Danes, to
indulge the irapetuosity of his passions. His immorality and
despotism provoked the censure of the virtuous; he was
haughty to his subjects, neglected the administration of
justice, and treated with contempt the complaints of the
indigent and oppressed. In the eighth year of his reign he
was driven from the throne by the Danes. Narrowly escaping
death and enduring many hardships, adversity brought
reflection. According to the piety of the age, instead of
tracing events to their political sources, he referred them
immediately to the providence of God; and considered his

misfortunes as the instrument with which Divine Justice
punished his past enormities. By his prudence and valour he
regaiued the throne, and drew np a code of laws by which he
ordained the governmeat should be administered. Magistrates
trembled at his stern impartiality and inflexibility. He
executed forty-four judges in one year for their informal
and iniquitous proceedings. Hence their survivors and
successors were careful to acquire a competent degree of
knowledge, and their decisions became accordant to the law.
Discovering that the only real foundation of national
happiness is in the enlightenment of the people, he
instructed them himself by his writings, endowed
establishments for the promotion of Education, and became
the guardian and benefactor of his country.*—His virtues
were the fruit of early instruction. When he was a child,
his mother, Osburga, awakened in him a passion for learning
aud knowledge. Holding in her hand a Saxon poem, elegantly
written and beautifully illnminated, she offered it as a
reward to the first of her children whose proficiency should
enable him to read it to her. The emulation of Alfred was
excited: he ran to his master, applied to the task with
diligence, performed it to the satisfaction of the queen,
and received the prize of his industry. His mind thus opened
by this excellent woman, she dropped in the seeds of
knowledge; by careful culture they grew into wisdom, and
Alfred is one of the most illustrious instances of the
endless blessings conferred upon man by Education.
From the banks of the strong hold of Corfe Castle, in
Dorsetshire, near Wareham, formerly a station of the Danish
barbariaus, one of their successors making good his lodgment
in a nameless House denies the justice of Universal
Education, forgetful, perhaps, that the benighted savages,
his predecessors, were finally expelled by Alfred; that it
was the triumph of Knowledge and Liberty over Ignorance and
Selfish power; and that Alfred, disdaining to use the
advantage whick Education gave him over the rest of the

people, othirwise than for their welfare, incessuntly
laboured to dispense its benefits to All.
* Lingard's History of England, vol. i. c. 4.
As government was ever understood
To be a measure for the people's good;
So when perverted to a wrong intent,
It's stark oppression, not a government.
Blest are the days, and wing'd with joy they fly,
When kings protect the people's liberty;
When settled peace in stated order reigns,
And, nor the nation, nor the king complains;
If kings may ravish, plunder, and destroy,
Oppress the world, and all its wealth enjoy;
May harass nations, with their breath may kill,
And limit liberty by royal will;
Then was the world for ignorance design'd,
And God gave kings to blast the human mind;
And Kings but general farmers of the land;
And men their stock for slaughter at command;
Mere beasts of draught, to crouch and be opprest,
Whom God, the mighty landlord, form'd in jest.
Yet who believes that Heaven in vain creates,
And gives up what it loves to what it hates;
That man's great Maker call'd him into birth,
To be destroy'd by tyrant-fiends on earth;
That nations are but footstools to a throne,
And millions born to be the slaves of one?
Priestcraft! search Scripture, shew me God's decree,
That crime shall rule by his authority.

Kingcraft! search Scripture too, and from it prove
Thy right to ravage from the God of Love. *
* Priestcraft and Kingcraft are partners in the same firm.
They trade together. Kings and conquerors make laws, parcel
out lands, and erect churches and palaces for the priests
and dignitaries of religion. In return, Priests anoint kings
with holy oil, hedge them round with inviolability, spread
over them the mysterious sanctity of religion, and, with
very little ceremony, make over the whole species as slaves
to these Gods upon earth by virtue of Divine Right!
Hazlitt's Political Essays, p. 303.
No! He has issued no such foul command,
But dooms down Despots by the People's hand;
Marks tyrants out for fall in every age,
Directs the justice of the people's rage;
And hurling vengeance on all royal crimes,
Ordains the Revolutions of the times!

Original Size -- Medium-Size
A thing of no bowels— '
—from the crown to the toe, topfull
Of direst cruelty.—His Realm a slaughter-house—
The swords of soldiers are his teeth—
Iron for Naples, hid with English gilt.
Shakspeare.
The End.

A SLAP AT SLOP AND THE BRIDGE-
STREET GANG
With Twenty-seven Cuts.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY AND FOR WILLIAM HONE,

46, LUDGATE HILL.
Half a-Crown.
TO THE READER.
The Slap, at first arranged in the manner, and in every respect in
imitation, assumed the appearance of a newspaper, except that the
columns were broken by cuts. It was a crown broadside, and the
agreeable appearance of the stamp was preserved by the subjoined
diagram being placed at the corner.

Doubtless every one who entered into the design, was satisfied
with the original form of the publication; yet the author has been
perplexed by numerous applications for an edition in this size. He
finds it as difficult to account for want of taste as for it; but it being
the fashion for the minority to be polite to the majority, he bends at
last to the too general request, and submits The Slap, with a broken
spirit, to go down, bound, with his other little pieces.
45, Ludgate Hill,
1822
Original Address
A Bag of political nuts ready cracked, is not only rather dangerous
fare to serve up, but a man who takes the trouble to crack them, will
find the kernels cleaner and sweeter for his pains. Though they who
run may read the greater portion of the present sheet, yet there are
a few articles that require attention, and two or three arc designed
for those only who alone can understand them.
My first intention was to parody Slop's paper, 'The Slop-tail,' or
'Much Times,' throughout. But he is as vapid as the Marquess of
Lunnunderry. * What could I do with thoughts as unquotable, as
confused, as ill conceived, as ill expressed, as that puissante **
Lord's —without depth or originality—as plentiful and superficial as
duck-weed.
I found not a sparkle of talent in any of Slop's lean 'leaders' to re-
pay me the trouble of wearisome reading. Under the 'stringent
necessity' of varying my original plan, yet loth to abandon it
altogether, I have parodied some of the features common to the
Slop-pail, and supplied the department I had allotted to an imitation
of his mindless verbiage with a sketch of his Life—filling the
remainder of the sheet in my own way. There are discrepancies
inseparable from this course, but I write to good-humoured readers,
who have no objection to see the mind as well as the person of a
friend in undress, and who take as little interest in the decision of

the High Court of Criticism on things of this sort, as they took in the
decision of the 'Court of Claims' concerning the 'imposing' ceremony
of the coronation, and things of that sort.,
The drawings are, as usual, by Mr. George Cruikshank, whose able
pencil has had greater scope here than in a pamphlet; that size
would have entirely excluded Dr. Southey's Vision, the
Jack-in-the-Green, and the masterly representation of the Bridge-
street gang destroying a Free Press, and suspending Liberty, while
Slop is working his Press to distort and torture Truth.
* The Marquess calls London, 'Lunnun.'
** A Marquess is styled 'a most puissant Prince!'
*** For this constipating phrase, see Slop Pail, July 26, 1821

THE LIFE OF DOCTOR SLOP,
AND THE ORIGIN OF THE BRIDGE-STREET
GANG.
The origin and the end of this man are alike uncertain. He was
sent to Oxford when young, as a student destined for holy orders,
under the patronage of the Bishop of Durham.
'Go thou and seek the house of prayer:
I to the woodlands bend my way,
And meet Religion there;
She needs not haunt the high-arch'd dome to pray,
Where storied windows dim the doubtful day;
With Liberty she loves to rove'——
These lines, in Mr. Southey's lyric poem, 'written on Sunday
Morning,' * express the thoughts of Slop when a college youth.
* Southey's Minor Poems, vol. i. p. 1S7.
At that time he had a sort of conscience; for, in consequence of an
honest course of reading, he refused to subscribe to the Thirty-nine
Articles. Thus disqualifying himself from being a candidate for the
'imposition of hands' by the Bishop, he for ever relinquished the
prospect of entrance into the church, and cultivated his mind by
reading Paine's Rights of Man.

Fascinated by the writings of Mrs. Mary Wollstoncrofft, more
especially by her celebrated 'Vindication of the Rights of Woman,' he
assiduously sought that lady's acquaintance, and having obtained
the desired honour, cultivated her intimacy with passionate
admiration. On the appearance of Mr. Godwin's 'Inquiry concerning
Moral and Political Justice,' he read and studied it with doting
enthusiasm; the chapters on Property, and on the Sexual
Intercourse, were particularly to his taste—the chapter on Sincerity,
not so much. Hungering for a personal friendship with the author of
the Political Justice, who became the husband of Mrs. Wollstoncrofft,
he humbled himself before him, beseeching permission to consider
that philosopher as his Gamaliel, and to sit at his feet as the least of
his disciples. This was granted, and in that school he commenced an
intimacy with Mr. Thomas Holcroft and his friends. That gentleman
had just been released from imprisonment, under indictments for
high treason, with Messrs. Hardy, Horne Tooke, and Thelwall, who
were tried and acquitted of the charge; and at this time Slop's
political fervor rose above the temperament of the most hot-blooded
among the patriots he associated with. It had been fashionable to
wear the hair long and. tied; he thought this aristocratic, cut his hair
off to look like a democrat, became a round-head, and was called
Citizen S. At length he was marked out from his fellows by the
distinguishing appellation of 'the Jacobin,' and he became a Leveller.
Affixing to the words 'Liberty and Equality,' an interpretation of his
own, he contended with the Spenceans, that there could be no real
Liberty without Equality so he preached the doctrine of all things in
common; and prevailed on a young man who had imbibed some of
his notions, to aid him in proving its advantages. In an attic chamber
in the Temple they founded a community of goods—lived on short
commons —and waited on each other. Here Slop lighted the fire, and
fetched water from the Temple pump for their joint use, till, tired of
the pitcher-duty, he proposed transferring the undignified office to
his companion, who declined to accept it; and a fierce quarrel arising
in this 'perfect state of society,' concerning rights and duties, the
Commonwealth of two ceased to exist.

In this exigency, moderation, which at one time he seems to have
thought criminal, became expedient on many accounts. About 1796
he visited Scotland, with letters of recommendation to respectable
society; yet his wild opinions on religion and politics caused him to
be disliked by some of the most respectable students who held Whig
principles, and who, still holding them, dislike and shun him now for
his extreme violence in another direction. When at Edinburgh, he
affected singularity of habit as well as thought, and paraded the
streets, especially the Leith-Walk, in a drab dress of romantic
simplicity. On his return from Scotland, he employed himself in
writing for the booksellers. In 1798 he translated the play of Don
Carlos, from the German of Schiller, and presented his friend, Mr.
Holcroft, with a copy, who says, that 'he executed his task
respectably.' * On the 5th of August, in that year, he dined with Mr.
Godwin and Mr. Parry (the Republican Editor of the Courier
Newspaper when it was conducted on democratic principles), at the
house of Mr. Holcroft, where, according to that gentleman's diary, **
he was, 'as usual, acute; but pertinacious and verbose. On the 25th
of November, he wrote to Mr. Holcroft, complaining of neglect, ***
who answered by denying such intention; and indeed his intimacy
with the coterie at Mr. Holcroft's, was of the closest nature, and his
attachment to that philosopher's principles and person so strong,
that he proposed intermarriage with his family, which was declined.
He remained ardently devoted to the new philosophy, long after Mr.
Holcroft's death, and until Mr. Godwin found it convenient to decline
his wearisome acquaintance. Fickleness and obstinacy, and the
exercise of a faculty for incessant disputation, rendered his society
very tedious to the philosophers. Fruitless attempts to repress or
soften his pugnacious turn, exhausted their patience. In defence of
themselves, they disregarded and finally cut him;—so that it became
the New Times with him in philosophy.
* Holcroft's Life, vol. ii. p. 269.
** Ibid. vol. iii. p. 32.

*** Ibid. p. 76.
He rambled to conceal his discontent, and to get fresh notions and
fresh friends. A pedestrian tour through Scotland, with letters of
recommendation, and a pliability of manner accommodated to his
new views, effected both. He published his Tour in 1801. It is written
with extreme caution. His real opinions are kept out of the book as
much as possible; yet they occasionally peep forth; for instance, he
says, 'We seem inspired with enthusiasm to fall down and worship
the golden image of commerce; let us not wholly submit our feelings
to our purses, and counters, and ledgers—we may be very rich in
products, and manufactures, and population, and very poor in the
spirits and minds of men!' *—he dare not put that in his Slop-pail. In
the Tour, he speaks in praise of the Rev. Sir Henry Moscreiff
Wellwood, a Scottish Baronet of Whig principles, whose daughter
he afterwards married, whether from innate love of legitimacy, or
what, is unknown. Before he wrote the Tour, he procured the degree
of LL.D. (as the Laureate has done since), and the philosopher, who
had refused subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles to the Church of
England, and had been in turn a Republican, a Jacobin, a Leveller,
and a Spencean, became a Doctor of Laws, and sunk into the wig
and gown of an advocate in the Ecclesiastical Court! Resuming an
intimacy with some young men of his own stamp, who knew him at
college, they obtained a place for him—he was made king's advocate
at Malta. So fell Slop. Here ended his career of what he called
Patriotism. He mistook passionate heat for the enthusiasm of genius,
a habit of loud talking for talent, a ranting way of writing for
reasoning, and pertinacity of manner for firmness of character. His
vain disputations occasioned him to be noticed, and this he thought
equal to being admired. Conceit of ability rendered him covetous of
distinction; he acquired it—
'The Court's a golden, but a. fatal circle,
Upon whose magic skirts a thousand devils,

In crystal forms sit tempting innocence,
And beckon early virtue from its centre.'—
Stoddart's Tour, vol. i. p. 12.
The smirks and smiles of courtiers, the tinsel and glitter of
embroidered coats and waistcoats, the hum and sops- of office,
hurried him into the train of ministerial menials, as easily as a
beggar's hungry brat is seduced by the finery of gilt paper, and the
sound of the shovel and brush, to follow the chimney-sweepers on
May-day, through the dirty alleys of St. Giles's. His artificial wants
were too many to be gratified by an even walk in the path of
rectitude. When he saw that 'public principle' was an obstacle to the
gratification of his vulgar vanity, he suppressed it—
'He was no Patriot then, nor gave his breath
Bravely to speak his mind, and venture death:—
For'twas his judgment then—though not in youth—
One grain of ease was worth a world of Truth'
Watts.
Notwithstanding this, he remained, secretly, a correspondent to
the Monthly Magazine, and wrote for Sir Richard Phillips.
Vacating his place at Malta in favour of his brother-in-law, and
coming back to seek his fortune, he scrambled about during a year
and a half, in Doctors' Commons and among the booksellers, in
search of employment, till he procured an engagement from the
proprietors of The Times as a writer in that journal. His labours in
this way were ardent, but profitable to nobody but himself. On the
return of Napoleon from Elba, the ex-republican became an admirer
of privileged orders, and 'the right divine of kings to govern wrong'—
glorified the thrones of the allied despots—fell flat on his face in
worship of legitimacy—and affected a beatific vision of the political
millenium in the restoration of the Bourbons. He soon honoured

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