Book written by Tom Standage
An interesting book that tells the history of mankind through the lens of the food we grow and eat.
Corn cannot grow without man's help. It cannot self seed. We have a similar symbiotic relationship with many plants and animals. Over centuries we have slowly evolved these plants to serve our needs.
"An army travels on it's stomach" Napoleon.
"The battle is fought and decided by the quartermasters long before the shooting begins" -Rommel
Standage argues that the food, or the lack thereof, is the deciding factor in many famous battles and that many empires were built on new ways for a traveling army to collect food.
Napoleon stripped his army down to the minimum number of people then had the army travel very wide. Sometimes in a formation that was over one hundred miles wide. This gave each group a defined area over which they could forage. As a result the army didn't have to bring days of food along with it.
Napoleon's failure in Russia happened in large part because the Tzar's destroyed food, orchards, granaries, fields and storehouses ahead of the path of the French army.
The book concludes with a look at the green revolution and the future of food. Plants grow with fertilizer can have double the yield of plants grown without, yet fertilizer has a hard environmental impact. Our population is larger than that which can be supported by organic growing along. How do we balance this? There is no easy answer here.
An interesting book that tells the history of mankind through the lens of the food we grow and eat.
Corn cannot grow without man's help. It cannot self seed. We have a similar symbiotic relationship with many plants and animals. Over centuries we have slowly evolved these plants to serve our needs.
"An army travels on it's stomach" Napoleon.
"The battle is fought and decided by the quartermasters long before the shooting begins" -Rommel
Standage argues that the food, or the lack thereof, is the deciding factor in many famous battles and that many empires were built on new ways for a traveling army to collect food.
For hundreds of years, the Roman army would only fight battles along the coast where ships could bring it food.
Napoleon stripped his army down to the minimum number of people then had the army travel very wide. Sometimes in a formation that was over one hundred miles wide. This gave each group a defined area over which they could forage. As a result the army didn't have to bring days of food along with it.
Napoleon's failure in Russia happened in large part because the Tzar's destroyed food, orchards, granaries, fields and storehouses ahead of the path of the French army.
The book concludes with a look at the green revolution and the future of food. Plants grow with fertilizer can have double the yield of plants grown without, yet fertilizer has a hard environmental impact. Our population is larger than that which can be supported by organic growing along. How do we balance this? There is no easy answer here.
