How to Feed the World, Vaclav Smil
How to Feed the World, Vaclav Smil
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How to Feed the World
The History and Future of Food

Author: Vaclav Smil

Narrator: Joe Jameson

Unabridged: 7 hr 30 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 03/04/2025

Synopsis

"Vaclav Smil is my favorite author."—Bill Gates

An indispensable analysis of how the world really produces and consumes its food—and a scientist's exploration of how we can successfully feed a growing population without killing the planet

We have never had to feed as many people as we do today. And yet, we misunderstand the essentials of where our food really comes from, how our dietary requirements shape us, and why this impacts our planet in drastic ways. As a result, in our economic, political, and everyday choices, we take for granted and fail to prioritize the thing that makes all our lives possible: food.

In this ambitious, myth-busting book, Smil investigates many of the burning questions facing the world today: why are some of the world’s biggest food producers also the countries with the most undernourished populations? Why do we waste so much food and how can we solve that? Could the whole planet go vegan and be healthy? Should it? He explores the global history of food production to understand why we farm some animals and not others, why most of the world’s calories come from just a few foodstuffs, and how this might change in the future.

How to Feed the World is the data-based, rigorously researched guide that offers solutions to our broken global food system.

About The Author

Vaclav Smil is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of over forty books on topics including energy, environmental and population change, food production and nutrition, technical innovation, risk assessment, and public policy. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, in 2010 he was named by Foreign Policy as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers. He is the author of Numbers Don’t Lie, Size, and the New York Times bestselling How the World Really Works.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Bill on March 07, 2025

Vaclav Smil’s How to Feed the World is a must-read for anyone interested in the complexities of global food security. He takes a deep dive into the global food system to challenge common assumptions about hunger, food production, and waste. What makes his work so compelling (and why I always love re......more

Goodreads review by Rachel on December 27, 2024

I had high hopes for this- but the author sets up a series of increasingly twiggy straw people and then fails to address any of the political, cultural or even really economic issues. The two key take aways: reduce food waste and eat less meat are fine (though he ignores the environmental impact of......more

Goodreads review by Darius on March 10, 2025

This book covers a broad topic, making it difficult to review as a whole. However, it does a good job of framing the question practically and working through it in an evidence-based way. The author’s "energy in, energy out" approach, along with considerations of labor, land, water, and fertilizer co......more

Goodreads review by Yosra on April 03, 2025

The book is an in-depth, data-driven, historically guided analysis of food production, eating habits, and their impact on the world. It provides a good introduction to the complexities of food systems, offering a holistic perspective that helps readers enter the field of food production with a suffi......more

Goodreads review by Nital Jethalal on March 27, 2025

My excitement for this book finally soon shifted to sustained disappointment. 1. For all book heavy on statistics (and there are some good ones), it's surprising to see Smil draw big conclusions from a single stat from a single study or source with known problems, such as feeding cows seaweed as a p......more

Quotes

“Smil takes readers on a scholarly and accessible exploration of the history, key concepts, and important questions about what we eat…[How to Feed the World] is a necessary book for readers seeking authoritative information on the future of successfully nourishing the world’s growing population.” —Booklist

“Concise and erudite… How to Feed the World is weighted with statistics, but there is something light and irresistible about the way Smil structures his argument and propels his narrative… After 200 pages of cold realism, it is a relief to discover that all those numbers add up to a future in which we can be hopeful.” —The Lancet

“[Smil] delves into the details of global food production [and]… recommends focusing on reducing food waste through flexible pricing and innovations in packaging design, as well as improving sustainability by decreasing meat consumption. [He] makes a convincing case for “doing more with less.'"—Publishers Weekly

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