Argh!

I still haven’t finished Raj Patel’s Stuffed and Starved — and he’s got a new book out already?

The Value of Nothing takes its title from the Oscar Wilde quip that “nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” But Patel’s not just being funny. The contemporary economy, he says, defines the value of everything from driving a car to eating a hamburger in narrow, market-driven terms that drastically ignore hidden social and environmental costs. And this incomplete understanding of value is what’s at the root of the financial crisis.

Needless to say, given his background, he seems to cast much of his analysis in terms of creating a better food system. I liked this quote, from a recent interview with Civil Eats editor Paula Crossfield, on the Huffington Post, a lot:

“Food brings together everything that everyone should care about. It is about giving life, it is about what we need to survive on this planet, it is about our interaction with the planet, and about the way that we replenish or don’t replenish the earth that we live on. There is something both primal and industrial and very high-capitalist about food. And it is the area where, if we are interested in life, if we’re interested in the ways that we can live on this planet sustainably, then we really do need to start with questions about food.”

Moving this to the top of the reading list ….