roots and genes Volume 2

From the first Natufian villages near the Jordan to Monsanto's transgenic plant laboratories in Saint-Louis in the United States, from the destruction of forests in the Neolithic period to soil erosion today, from plows to satellite-guided robots, From the Spanish merinos to Dolly, the first cloned sheep, agriculture has had a significant impact on the history of humanity and contributed to the emergence, then to the blossoming of most civilizations, and sometimes to their decline. he history of this sector is a whole essential part of the evolution of our societies which opens up to us, with its eminent or lesser-known characters who will build this epic that is both technological and social, cultural and ecological, religious and botanical, animal and economic, local and global. Without forgetting all these generations of peasants, struggling laboriously, at all times and in all latitudes, against misery and hunger. What is more, this sector is essential as central in the questions that our society poses today, about its relationship to plants and animals, food and health, territories and landscapes, and about its concerns about major global environmental issues. In this second volume, Denis Lefèvre makes us relive the profound changes that are transforming agriculture, between 1945 and today, and well beyond the European continent: massive mechanization, land consolidation, the revolution of artificial insemination and genetics, the creation of the European Common Market, the Green Revolution in certain developing countries, etc. He also describes the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy (the famous CAP) and its dysfunctions, ecological awareness – with in particular the DDT scandal –, the emergence of crops and land speculation. After this tour horizon of an agricultural world in permanent transition, the author reminds us of the crucial challenge that is looming: to feed 9 billion human beings by 2050. A wealth of knowledge, written in a lively and dynamic style