Back Cover: This story begins in the mists of time. A man passing remark a shrub whose branches end in white flakes. One can imagine that the hand approach. The human species has become acquainted with the softness of cotton. For years, something told me that by following the paths of cotton, agriculture, the textile industry through biochemistry, [...] I understand better my world. The results of the lengthy investigation has exceeded my expectations. To understand the globalisations of yesterday and today, nothing is worth examining a piece of cloth. Probably because it is fact that son and links, and travel of the shuttle.
Notice JB:
Erik Orsenna young academician (63 years), has many hats, the main one being that of renowned author especially for the Colonial Exhibition, which earned him the Goncourt in 1988. In addition to numerous past political responsibilities under Mitterrand, has more recently been part of the Attali commission.
I like to read essays. Maybe too much so, in view of the stack piled menacing on my bedside table. The annotations are making more frequent than in novels, the reader's eyebrows frown, the pace of play breaks and lengthens the time ... Fortunately for us, some authors are kind enough to write essays descriptive enough, or disseminated uninteresting to soften the course of their reading.
Take a product known and used by all (indirectly): cotton. Reassemble the whole chain "your t-shirt -> peasant -> collect it" will allow us to highlight the interrelated political and economic mechanisms that govern our planet. The concept is not new (see eg Gammon on this blog), purpose, either ("We walk on the head, the bad aspects of globalization will pose to our loss).
The story is meant that a traveler who travels the globe, fueled by his curiosity. The author crosses continents, asking questions, gathering information, meeting the different actors in the cotton sector, and the book ends with twenty pages where he gives his opinion. Each new destination (China, USA, Egypt, etc..) Is accompanied by some historical and economic benchmarks succinct rather interesting.
We discover, through the pages, the facts certainly interesting but a lot of déjà vu. The U.S. over-subsidize their agriculture, creating unfair competition. Their response to this problem is "Stop our grants will not raise the price of cotton, and we will only do so if all other producers are doing it," something obviously false, since doubling the price go up gradually and it is impossible in emerging countries, devoid of American economic power, plunging thousands of people into starvation. Brazil meanwhile, chose to play the card of fair competition by building giant plantations at the expense of the Amazon rainforest. With regard to a country like Mali, whose only asset is her funeral manpower at low cost, production is almost 100% managed by the state. The situation is deteriorating, the world price fell, the government continues to buy fixed-rate production and loss of his peasants, avoiding social revolt, but got bogged down even further into debt. Other examples are presented to us (and Uzbekistan in particular its faux-Mafia).
As for the beef industry is the endless circle of economic interdependence that makes the game of the rich against the poor. China and India are buying more than they poor (that is to say to Africa) to produce low cost to the U.S., the West and support the growth of domestic demand. When the rural exodus will slow, and especially when the middle class will be the majority, rising wages and living standards that China will (it is already beginning to do) will "make happen" in turn. Brazil, among countries with the strongest growth world, made the economic choice of the short term. Its huge land used to grow cotton, oil palm or soybeans for export, disfigure its primary forest. For several decades now, France is disqualified. It is impossible to manufacture manufactures simple, competitive, despite government subsidies and high productivity of French workers.
few spikes on Monsanto, cakes to feed the cattle, "China requires that social peace in order to better support its growth" and is obtained from an interesting product Base (e cotton) and a few local examples (countries) a nice little treatise against evil counterparts of globalization.
can agree or not. But, since this is the book and not the ideas that I think here we would have liked to read more engagement, provoke debate, and not fall into the eternal cotton / cattle / seed / pesticides, although this probably also works with diamonds / shoes / salmon.
To read or not
No. The ideas are interesting but too general to fuel a debate that is not new. We would like to stop read the findings for reading suggestions, solutions (if there is a problem) or at least approach the subject differently. Journey to the Land of Cotton is certainly not a bad book. But it is wrong to describe what has already been written a thousand times and sometimes better.
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