Soil Not Oil : Climate Change, Peak Oil and Food Insecurity

Soil not Oil has rapidly become a classic of the environmental movement. In it, Vandana Shiva envisions a world beyond our current dependence on fossil fuels and globalisation, and makes the compelling case that food crises, oil dependency, and climate change are all inherently interlinked. Any attempt to solve one without addressing the others is therefore doomed to failure.

Condemning industrial agriculture and biofuels as recipes for ecological and economic disaster, Shiva instead champions small independent farmers. What is needed most, in a time of hunger and changing climates, are sustainable, biologically diverse farms that are better able to resist disease, drought, and flooding. Calling for a return to local economies and small-scale agriculture, Shiva argues that humanity's choice is a stark one: we can either continue to pursue a market-centered approach which will ultimately make our planet unliveable; or we can instead strive for a people-centred, oil-free future, one which offers a decent living for all.

This edition features a new introduction by the author, in which she outlines recent developments in ecology and environmentalism, and offers new prescriptions for the environmental movement.