Reader recommendation: Food Politics

Monitor readers share their favorite book picks.

Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know by Robert Paarlberg is a thorough look at food policy issues and important reading as Congress now crafts a new multiyear farm program. From crop subsidies to uncontrolled feeding of antibiotics to livestock to alternative food production (the local food movement) to the escalating controversy over genetically modified foods, Paarlberg, without cumbersome graphs and tables, presents balanced and thoughtful policy analysis. While the author says genetically modified crops can aid developing nations, he concedes food activists have persuaded these governments "the technology is dangerous" and, as a result, even sight-saving Golden Rice "is not yet available ... anywhere in the developing world."