Hope's Edge-New Book
by Frances Moore Lappe

BOOK REVIEW:
"Hope's Edge" by Frances Moore Lappe and Anna Lappe

The Next Diet For a Small Planet, 448 pages, $21.80 on the web.
From Seeds of Change eNewsletter #27

For many of us who came of age in the 1970's, reading Frances Moore
Lappe's "Diet for a Small Planet" was a life transforming experience,
shattering our conceptions about the root causes of world hunger and
opening our minds to the possibilities of a plant-based, protein-rich,
whole-foods diet. Thirty years and millions of copies later, the book
still makes profound sense in a world where food resources are overly
abundant for some, while painfully scarce for others, and the average
North American diet consists of highly processed foods that are shipped
thousands of miles to market.

With her newest book, "Hope's Edge, The Next Diet for a Small Planet,"
Ms. Lappe has teamed up with her daughter Anna to revisit and expand on
the themes of the original book in the context of a world that has
changed in ways no one could have predicted. The globalization and
consolidation of our food system, the staggering loss of plant
diversity, the continuing farm crisis, dwindling water and soil
resources, and the genetic modification of our staple food crops like
soy and corn, lead us to wonder if there is indeed hope for this small
planet. "Hope's Edge" considers these issues, first by challenging the
way we've been conditioned to think about them.

Is hunger really driven by scarcity, as the agribusiness apologists
would have us believe, or is it an outgrowth of the lack of a "living
democracy" throughout the world as the authors contend? Can we solve our
ecological dilemma by dissection and applying the latest technological
"quick fix," or do we need to think broadly and look at whole systems,
including people and their cultures?

Page after page, "Hope's Edge" challenges our notions of what the real
problems are and takes us to places where ordinary people are taking
extraordinary measures to regain control over their food and their
lives. For many, the results have been improved health, stronger
communities, and conservation of the earth's resources-all astonishing
achievements in the face of our dominant "profits before people"
paradigm in which over a billion people worldwide are underfed and
malnourished.

"Hope's Edge" takes us to India where Vandana Shiva's "Navdanya" (Nine
Seeds) Movement has helped thousands of farmers to recover their
traditional agriculture by saving and sharing seeds, while others,
having destroyed their farms with an onslaught of chemicals and
increasing debt, commit suicide, often by ingesting the very chemicals
they've been sold on borrowed money. In Bangladesh, the Grameen Bank's
tiny loans have enabled thousands of women to lift themselves from
destitution while the vast majority is still mired in some of the
world's worst poverty. In Brazil, The Landless Workers Movement (MST),
comprised of over 250,000 families, has taken over idle land, vastly
improving their lives and cutting infant mortality by half, in a land
where as many as one of every fifteen children die from malnutrition and
treatable diseases. In Kenya, the greenbelt movement has planted 21
million trees and struggled to save countless others in an attempt to
reforest their denuded countryside, while logging interests fight to
squeeze more profits from the last remaining forest.

Here at home, in Berkeley, California, children are learning the joys of
organic gardening and cooking natural foods in their public middle
school while at the same time billions of dollars are spent to market
nutritionally depleted, fast-food to our children. Time and again we are
inspired to realize that we are not powerless, and that our actions are
capable of engendering positive, fundamental change in the face of
daunting odds. Time and again we are brought to "hope's edge."

In addition to these and other inspiring stories from home and abroad,
and a plethora of statistics and information, we are also continually
reminded of the joys of whole-food cuisines from around the globe. Each
chapter has wonderful recipes that reflect the traditional foods from
the culture being discussed. The final section, "Coming to our Senses"
contains more than fifty gourmet recipes from some of our leading
vegetarian chefs and cookbook authors including, Laurel Robertson, Molly
Katsen and Anna Thomas, who, along with Frances Moore Lappe and others,
started this revolution in the way we think about food. How far this
cuisine has evolved from its humble vegetable stirfries and bean
casseroles!

"Hope's Edge" is a deep, thoughtful, and provocative look at how we feed
ourselves and how our diet affects our bodies, our communities, and our
fragile and ever smaller planet. It issues an imperative to act; to
support our local farmers; to teach the value of true democracy; to
treasure our environment and to savor the gift of healthy, whole food.
Read it and pass it on to a friend. As "Diet for a Small Planet" did for
many of us thirty years ago, it could change your life. S.V.