Word for Word: "The End of Food" (Paul Roberts): from American Public Media

The skyrocketing costs of food and fuel are forcing Americans to make tough choices, and around the world, developing countries are facing starvation. Bestselling author Paul Roberts argues in his new book "The End of Food," that our global food economy is careening toward disaster. In a June 18th speech at the Commonwealth Club of California, Roberts discussed his book and how problems like food scarcity, food borne illness, obesity and malnutrition are all rooted in the industrial mass-production of food.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

To an extent, he's correct. The modern world relies heavily on industrial agriculture, including petroleum-based fertilizers and chemical compounds for pesticides and herbicides. We use a lot of fuel in the processing and packaging of foods. Once Peak Oil hits, if we have nothing to underscore the system, it's going to take a huge hit. The reason why we have such vast populations is due to the boom from the Green Revolution.

We're fairly poorly prepared for the coming crash. Companies never saw it as "profitable" to change the their behaviour (and neither did most people) long before it became popular to do so. Such is the problem with corporate capitalism: people are not rational actors for long term investment. They are myopic.

It was actually a pretty good speech. But, of course, the kinds of changes needed will be too little, too late.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."