I tried a few times to get into this book, but could not get into beyond 50 pages. This is a new subject matter for me so it could just be me, but I found the writing a bit dry.

***I received an eARC from NETGALLEY***

Never Out of Season by Rob Dunn is a fascinating look at modern agriculture and its problems. The lack of diversity may soon lead to a collapse of the foods we depend on. The book was well researched and covered a variety of topics all related to agriculture. I learned about everything from mealybugs to the vast consequences of drought in Syria. Although a serious subject, I found the book well worth my time.

NEVER OUT OF SEASON by Rob Dunn was actually a bit scary to read since it talks about sustainable agriculture and various issues impacting crops and successful future harvests. There is a terrific excerpt about bananas available online through Wired magazine; other sections of the book examine the potato blight and cacao and chocolate, for example. Dunn, a professor in the Department of Applied Ecology at North Carolina State University, also extols the value of diversity and seed banks which have been established. Library Journal calls NEVER OUT OF SEASON "accessible," "comprehensible," and "recommended for anyone interested in agriculture, agricultural history, food science, or general biology." I concur – look for it on our shelves soon.

https://www.wired.com/2017/03/humans-made-banana-perfect-soon-itll-gone/

Never Out of Season: How Having the Food We Want When We Want It Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future by Rob Dunn is a highly recommended discourse on the importance of diversity in our increasingly genetically standardized crops grown worldwide.

We used to know what season it was and where a person lived based on what food was available. Now agriculture has been globalized and homogenized. Food crops are breed for taste, productiveness and hardiness - and then that selected variety is the one relied upon almost exclusively. We are standardizing crops. Now the taste is always the same, rather than greatly differing between different types of, for example, bananas.

Dunn points out that the Irish potato famine "was not the last ancient plague but rather the first truly modern one. And whereas the threat from the potato famine was regional, the threat we now face, in our far more connected economy, is global." In 1845 the Irish were more dependent on the potato than anyone else, and when disease we call late blight hit the potato crop, it caused the famine. With the standardization of crops we are setting ourselves up for the same kind of event. A single blight, disease, pathogen could at any moment attack a specific crop and destroy it. "We need ever more food from each acre and so are bound to those crops that produce the most. Just as it was for the Irish, each time a child is born our reliance on our most productive crops increases. Corn in North America. Wheat in Europe. Cassava in Africa. Rice in Asia."

The problem is that with reduced diversity of crops, we are setting ourselves up for failure because now when a pathogen attacks a crop it has the potential to wipe it out completely. We no longer have the many different varieties grown in different places so if one variety is wiped out, the entire crop could no longer exist. The key is to keep the wild relatives of our crops available. We need all the species alive and their seeds available as a key to combat any future plagues. We are reducing the number of varieties of crops we depend upon for food when we need to be protecting the varieties in order to protect our future food supplies.

Dunn covers a variety of crops including bananas, coffee, cacao, wheat, corn, cassava, and potatoes. He also tells about the forward thinking of Soviet botanist Nikolai Vavilov who began collecting a wide variety of seeds in the 1940s and those who understood the need to protect the seed bank during WWII. Dunn extensively discusses the "doomsday vault" in Norway where seeds are preserved against a future apocalypse.

Never Out of Season is well-researched and contains extensive notes for each chapter and the sources cited. There is also an index. Even though it is a scholarly work, it is very accessible for anyone who is interested in agriculture, history, and food science.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Little, Brown and Company.
on 3/16/17: http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1942727996

A Fast Food Nation for the foods we grow and depend on

The bananas we eat today aren’t your parents’ bananas: We eat a recognizable, consistent breakfast fruit that was standardized in the 1960s from dozens into one basic banana. But because of that, the banana we love is dangerously susceptible to a pathogen that might wipe them out.

That’s the story of our food today: Modern science has brought us produce in perpetual abundance-once-rare fruits are seemingly never out of season, and we breed and clone the hardiest, best-tasting varieties of the crops we rely on most. As a result, a smaller proportion of people on earth go hungry today than at any other moment in the last thousand years, and the streamlining of our food supply guarantees that the food we buy, from bananas to coffee to wheat, tastes the same every single time.

Our corporate food system has nearly perfected the process of turning sunlight, water and nutrients into food. But our crops themselves remain susceptible to the nature’s fury. And nature always wins.

Authoritative, urgent, and filled with fascinating heroes and villains from around the world, Never Out of Season is the story of the crops we depend on most and the scientists racing to preserve the diversity of life, in order to save our food supply, and us.

I am OBSESSED with books and documentaries on the way our food is made and how food has changed over the years. Honestly, it is both fascinating and disgusting to know what goes into the food we eat today and how it has affected health worldwide.

Never Out of Season reminded me of the documentary Fed Up, but instead of being about sugar it is about how fruits and vegetables are, you guessed it, NEVER OUT OF SEASON. Think about it. Strawberries are “in season” in the summer, typically June and July, but you can find them in any grocery store at any time of the year. Most of the time there isn’t even a drastic cost difference between “in season” and “out of season” foods anymore! Sure, 20 years ago you could get strawberries in February, but you would pay $5 for them, instead of the $2 they would cost when they were “in season.”

While it is very nice to be able to find avocados year-round, it is quite disturbing to realize that this shouldn’t be the case. Never Out of Season is the fascinating glimpse into how science has made these foods constantly available and the dangers and benefits of doing so.

**Disclaimer** I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.