Have you ever thought about how your bacon, almond milk or fish ends up on your table? In our globalized economy, regardless of season, fresh fruit can be shipped from one hemisphere to another to be stocked on supermarket shelves, and many of us enjoy a nearly endless choice of grains, vegetables, meats and snacks. But a surprising number of young children don’t realize that processed foods like chicken nuggets and cheese don’t exist from plants. How is a hot dog made? Where do where does our food come from?
Photographer George Steinmetz offers a remarkable look at landscapes, initiatives and customs that determine how the world eats. His new book, Feed the planetdescribes a decade spent documenting food production in more than three dozen countries on six continents, including 24 U.S. states.
More than 40 percent of our planet’s surface is formed and tends to produce crops and livestock. From quirky 16th-century farm plots in rural Poland to cattle feedlots in Texas to a large-scale shrimp processing operation in India, food production is rarely seen on this scale. “He takes us to places most of us never see, even though our lives depend on it,” reads a statement for the book.
Studies have shown that large-scale agriculture and factory farming emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in an amount almost equal to CO2 emissions a third of all man-made emissions. The ongoing climate crisis can largely be traced back to fertilizers that release nitrous oxide; deforestation caused by agricultural expansion that releases more carbon dioxide into the air; and emissions from manure management, combustion, fuel use and more.
From a striking aerial vantage point, Steinmetz captures the beauty, ingenuity and stark reality of factories, aquaculture, family farms, food banks and vast agricultural operations. He explains how staples like wheat, rice, vegetables, fruit, meat and fish reach both domestic and international tables, addressing “one of humanity’s deepest needs, greatest pleasures and most pressing challenges.”
Buy a signed copy from the photographer websiteor take one Bookstore.
