Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization

by Richard Manning

Book Overview

In this provocative, wide-ranging book, Against the Grain, Richard Manning offers a dramatically revisionist view of recent human evolution, beginning with the vast increase in brain size that set us apart from our primate relatives and brought an accompanying increase in our need for nourishment. For 290,000 years, we managed to meet that need as hunter-gatherers, a state in which Manning believes we were at our most human: at our smartest,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0865477132
• ISBN13: 9780865477131
• Release Date: February 2005
• Publisher: North Point Press
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

A book for a welcome yet unexpected change of view

A book that takes up where the classic, "The Naked Ape", left off. This goes into the very beginnings of civilization and the fall out for some of the whys and consequences of it. Its premise is that our nature as hunter-gatherers is diametrically opposed with our agricultural/civilization way of life. Indeed civilization benefits only a small percentage of society. Mankind, as a whole, was far better off in being and soul as the hunter-gatherers. Well researched with an intuitive yet novel approach reminiscent of Desmond Morris's original. The kind of book that leaves you at its end with a better perspective of the world in which we live. A great book.

Thoughtful assessment of the sorry state of agriculture

Walk into to any supermarket and you probably feel very good about all of the choices you have. After all, the average supermarket carries over 25000 items these days. But if you are like most people, the vast majority of the items you will wind up purchasing are highly processed and contain precious little in the way of nutritional value. Did you know that nearly 2/3 of the calories the average American consumes come from just three crops--corn, wheat and potatoes? Author Richard Manning sure got my attention with this fascinating book "Against The Grain". Manning argues that for the vast majority of history human beings were "hunter-gatherers". That is, people would migrate to where the food was and partake of a vast assortment of foods, everything from fruits and vegetables, to nuts and legumes and fresh meat. This all began to change about 10000 years ago with the advent of agriculture. Over the centuries people came to rely on fewer and fewer crops for survival. Manning notes that the pattern was virtually identical all over the world. Soon human beings came to rely on just a handful of crops, all high in carbohydrates, for survival. In recent decades the rise of huge conglomerates like ADM (Archer Daniels Midland) has further exacerbated the problem. Corporate entities do not view crops as food. Rather, they view crops as commodities and it is for this reason that family farms have all but disappeared, people in poor nations go unfed despite massive crop surplusses and those in rich nations wind up eating a largely bland and less than nutritious diet. For those of us like myself who are poorly informed on these issues this book is certainly an eye-opener. Manning not only exposes the serious flaws in our current system but also proposes reasonable fixes to a number of these problems. Perhaps when we become aware of all those "empty" calories we ingest each day we will begin to think more carefully about the foods we eat. This book is extremely well written and kept my attention throughout. I would recommend it to just about anyone eager to learn more about these extremely serious issues.

Agriculture Creates (Bad) Government

An important book that sheds light on human evolution, the evolution of agriculture, and therewith the evolution (and forcible extinction) of most life on the planet. The upshot of this evolutionary odyssey is clear: agriculture has never had anything to do with nutrition, culinary flavor or food security. On the contrary, it has had everything to do with the commodification of food and the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a small minority. Readable, quotable, and packed with information, this books is sure to please everyone - unless you are an unforgiving vegetarian. For Manning is clearly a hunter, or perhaps hunter-gatherer is a better term. As he says, "Food is about a great deal more than nutrition. It, along with sex, forms the pathway that connects our species to the future." Yet again: "We must hunt for food and sex. This is our obsession, our drive, the focus of our senses and our sensuality, so ingrained as to define our humanity. These drives are our essence." And yet, Manning does not suggest, or even believe it is possible, to revert to the lifestyle of our by-and-large neurosis-free hunger-gatherer forebears. We have already colonized too much of the planet to support our growing population; so how could six billion people survive as foraging hunters? The solution, as he and I both see it, is "something approaching permaculture" - that is, a perennial polyculture based on local production and consumption. Manning also praises the Slow Food Movement and farmers markets. All together a remarkable book. Some related readings include: "Coming Home to Eat" by Gary Nabham and "The Food Revolution" by John Robbins on the subject of food. For great discussions on agriculture, see "The Fatal Harvest Reader" by Andrew Kimbrell and "A Green History of the World" by Clive Ponting. (Ponting, especially, should not be overlooked by anyone wanting to understand the failure of complex civilizations in general and large-scale agriculture in specific.) For more on human evolution, I recommend Diamond's "The Third Chimpanzee." On the fascinating subject of permaculture, see "Permaculture: A Designer's Manuel" by Bill Mollison or "Permaculture: Principles and Pathways" by David Holmgren.

A polemic in the best sense

This is one of the most stimulating, interesting books I have read in years. When I came across Manning's article ("The Oil We Eat") in the February, 2004 issue of Harper's it affected me profoundly, and I immediately went out and bought this book. Taking his cue from Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and Alfred Crosby's Ecological Imperialism, Manning argues that we are effectively the tools of what a system of what he calls "catastrophic agriculture" as the other way around. From an evolutionary perspective this system has been very successful: we and the whole complex of our domesticated ecology have not only survived but have remade the world in our image. But to say the system has been successful is not at all the same as saying it is good for us as individuals or is sustainable in the long run. Whatever you think of his argument--this is much more an argumentative than an academic book--it may well radically change the way you think about the economy, the ecology, and our place in it. Manning's perspective is an important and valuable one, well worth thinking about.

Deceptively easy-to-read book on a complex topic

In many ways Manning has written a remarkable book. The basic thesis, very gently stated by the author, is that the advent of agriculture has caused the loss of what it means to be human by replacing our ancestral senses of the many flavors and varieties of nature with the dull security of industrial monoculture based overwhelmingly on just three crops. It has also heralded the breakdown of social egalitiarianism, led to vast numbers of malnourished poor worldwide, and is ultimately unsustainable on its current scale.In making his argument, Manning wanders through numerous disciplines: cultural anthropology, archaeology, evolutionary biology, climatology, cognitive science and ecology, even religion. He begins with an explanation of how agriculture developed and spread despite its apparent disadvantages to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle (worse nutrition, less leisure-time) and then develops these disadvantages more fully, surveying the prevalence of famine in agricultural societies throughout history and moving through the detrimental social and ecological effects of industrial agriculture such as how it enabled the feeding of high concentrations of cheap labor.`Against The Grain' hits a weak spot in looking at modern agricultural corporations, in particular ADM. At this point, he draws less from his apparent strengths as a writer and person - his awareness and appreciation of nature and his solid understanding of the historical breadth and scope of agriculture's effects - and loses his effectiveness as his underlying anger is displayed. Fortunately he leaves himself time to recover and does so in discussing the formation and driving force behind the modern industrial agricultural diet, arguing that its intention is more to promote efficient (and profitable) agriculture than good nutrition. He ends with a plan for reversing the worst of agriculture's effects through small steps - advocating the patronage of farm stands that are now prevalent in most urban centers (including my Chicago suburb), and giving us a glimpse of how he himself practices food sustainability.Any book treating a subject as complex as the effects of agriculture on human society, even one with such a narrow focus as this one, could fill volumes of plodding data and cite vast numbers of bibliographical sources. Instead, Manning treats the subject nimbly, almost dancing through his arguments with a sense of precision and conciseness. He uses the term `gracile' in his book to denote speed and quickness while making a point about antelope, but the term could just as well apply to the book itself. Nevertheless, while I find many of his conclusions convincing, and the ideas themselves both engaging and thought-provoking, I found myself often wishing for more substantial backup for his assertions or a better system of citation. I have read a few books tangential to this material (particularly Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond which alludes to similar conclusions) and am