Soil Not Oil

Climate change will dramatically alter how we live. It is already affecting the lives of the world’s most vulnerable people. In Soil Not Oil, Vandana Shiva connects the food crisis, peak oil, and climate change to show that a world beyond a dependence on fossil fuel and globalisation is both possible and necessary. Bold and visionary, Shiva reveals how the three crises are inherently linked and that any attempt to solve one without addressing the others will get us nowhere. Condemning industrial agriculture and industrial biofuels as recipes for ecological and economic disaster, Shiva’s champion is the small, independent farm. What we need most in a time of changing climates and hungry millions, she argues, are sustainable, biologically diverse farms that are more resistant to disease, drought, and flood. Calling for a return to local economies and small-scale food production, Shiva outlines our remaining options: a market-centred short-term escape for the privileged, which will deepen the crisis for the poor and marginalised, or a people-centred fossil-fuel-free future, which will offer a decent living for all.