As with Monbiot's book, others have covered these subjects before, but with less chance of being noticed - they were neither famous enough, nor able to get a sufficiently high profile publisher onboard. They are, if you like, the unsung heroes of the piece. Some of them are acknowledged in these books, notably [in Humphrys] Dr Vyvyan Howard of Liverpool University. Others remain unmentioned - our bibliography will, over the next few months, expand to cover some of them. When books on the subjects covered by Monbiot and Humphrys do get a good publisher behind them, along with a certain amount of coverage in the science press, the lack of celebrity status undermines their impact (as with, for example, Deborah Cadbury's The Feminization of Nature from Hamish Hamilton / Penguin in 1997, and Colborn, Myers & Dumanoski's Our Stolen Future from Dutton [US] & Little, Brown [UK] in 1996). It is to be hoped that the involvement of celebrities will help, especially when the celebrity involved is obviously not merely a figurehead, but has strong belief in what he or she says. Both Monbiot, and, here, Humphrys, have much to say that is not merely a retread of old ground. They have both researched their books in a direct and personal way, and lace the text with anecdote. This makes them appear relatively shallow, but makes them a good deal more readable - if they are to have an impact at all then this is paramount importance.

Humphrys concerns are with the food industry, as a starting point. Inevitably, a tangled web of deception pulls in wider questions about government accountability and multi-corporate ethics. His concerns regarding British [and global] farming practise is best encapsulated in a passage halfway through the book: .

"Until the war we had a system of agriculture that was, by today's standards, inefficient. That's to say, it produced less food. On the other hand, it was kinder to the environment and to farm animals. We had no fears about pesticide residues or their effects on antibiotics or on the very earth beneath our feet or, indeed, on the fish in our seas and rivers. Years later we can see that we were taking a great gamble. Even those who defend intensive agriculture most fiercely acknowledge that it has produced problems. Where they differ from their opponents is that they say it was a price worth paying."

The chapters cover a brief history of food adulteration, from roman times to the twentieth century; then contemporay portraits of our problems with pesticides, soil, fish farming, and antibiotics; then a look at the new bogey man, genetic modification; and, finally, a brief look at future possibilities, primarily regarding organic farming. The subjects of this book, then, are synthetic chemicals, genetic adaptation, genetic modification, and last but not least, greed and collusion amongst government and corporate industry.

Humphrys takes great pains to contextualise the latter elements, explaining the fears of food shortage created by the Second World War, and the sinking of merchant vessels by U-boats. The country had few reserves on outbreak of war, so this threat was keenly felt. We were importing 22,000,000 tons of food and animal feed at this time! To replace this food we resorted to restricted intake, controlled by rationing. This rationing continued well beyond the war. The use of technology to boost production, therefore, transcended mere greed - in the first instance at any rate. The 1950's saw a rise in production and a fall in price. An agricultural revolution was underway.

The usual suspects rear their heads over the following decades, moving the new techno-farming into greedhead territory. "The only god to be worshipped was the god of maximum production and non-believers brave enough to question it were met with ridicule and derision. The vested interests that lay behind intensive agriculture were all-powerful: the mighty agro-industrial companies, the National Farmers' Union, the so-called barley barons, governments packed with landowners whose bank accounts grew fatter as their grain silos bulged with grotesquely subsidizes corn." And not forgetting the international finaciers and chemical companies.

A cost was being paid, however, and as usual those to blame did not - and do not - wish to take responsibility. These costs are difficult to over-estimate, including, as they do, massive environmental destruction, human health problems, and possibly, soon enough, pandemics and famine. With the established powers to blame, and unwilling to admit a problem, far less address a problem, Humphrys believes that the ball is in our court - democratic deficit or not, it is the people who must "put the demo back into democracy" [as Monbiot put it]. Indeed, where GM crops are concerned, NVDA has already begun to increase.

Humphrys takes every opportunity to put the environmental questions into a human context. He uses anecdotes he has heard, or from his own experience, and he describes the changing of the seasons in farm life then and now with a Lawrencian touch. Cycles of nature were once thought eternal, but they are now being broken. Can the great chain of being survive the breaking of its most fundamental links? Diverse flora and fauna fed our soil nutrients in an endless cycle, season to season. Farming has more or less consistently tried to live off the back of this natural cycle, with an awareness of man's parasitic position, for centuries. The impulse to simplify the natural diversity, while maintaining the cycle has only recently given way to an impulse to oversimplify it with no concern at all for 'natural' cycles. After all, technology has allowed us to provide our own, artificial, nutrients, that create bumper crops never seen in nature - so who needs nature? "If that cycle ever stops... there will be no more years full stop... Ultimately life on earth depends on vegetable productivity. Without it life will become impossible. And it sometimes seems that we're doing our damndest to stop it. If we compressed our time on earth into one 24-hour period the past fifty years would register in a micro-second. We have done more to disrupt the cycle in that micro-second, that blink of an eye, than in our entire history."

Farms have grown in size hugely ove the last 50 years. Tractors and combine harvesters track back and forth across wide tracts of bare soil, with little or no hedgerow row to be seen. The tractor is as often to be seen spraying toxic pesticides as ploughing. And when it does plough, the traditional cloud of scavenging seagulls if often absent, having long since learnt that their pickings in this dead soil will be sparse. Bacteria, worms, the diverse collection of flora growing amongst the crop - and keeping the soil healthy - are gone. Without them there are still crops, though. For now. Because we pile on artificially produced nutrients, which obviate the need for a natural cycle. This solution, in concert with good soil, produced bumper crops in the '50s and '60s. As the soil's natural strength has eroded, though, the artificial boosters have had a diminishing return. At some point they shall cease to give more yeild than before they were in use, and as the damage to the soil, and to biodiversity in general, continues sooner or later they will yeild less. Then we will starve. But other negative effects, some of which account for the wider damage to the biosphere, are here already.

Some of these effects are economic. As farms grew because of mechanisation, labour needs dropped. Supermarkets insisted upon cheaper food. Farms produced more and more for less and less. Surplus was subsidised by CAP, and at the same time pushed prices down further. More pesticides and artificial nutrients were used to further boost yeild on the farms that survived. A new 'unnatural' cycle had begun. The other effects of modern farming practise that we can already discern are a function of this mad growth. Fields never got to replenish their natural richness and fertility. Animals and plants became rare and in some cases extinct. Rivers were poisoned, as was the food that reached our table. The poisons were two-fold. On the one hand, synthetic chemicals got into the diets of fauna including humans, and on the other, synthetic chemicals, which harmed bacteria and weeds effectively at first, had to be used more and more to get the same effect. The target entities, which evolve fast due to their very short life-spans, developed immunities and became stronger and more virilent. So the sythetic chemicals harmed us directly and indirectly. The direct effects were caused by our food and air being polluted. The indirect effects were caused by anti-biotic resistance.

"Chemical pollution of food is a serious concern. For decades people have been worrying about the 'cocktail effect' of different chemicals in the body and hormone-disrupting chemicals. It is still difficult to prove any positive cause and effect, but a growing number of children suffer from disorders of the nervous system and there has been a sharp increase in cancers linked to pesticides. Some studies show a fall in IQ levels. For years there has been a suspected link between high dosages of nitrates, transferred from the soil into vegetables and animal feeds and resulting in reduced oxygen supply to the body tissues when we eat the food. Now there are no doubts."

As happens all too often, the government ministry with the most power to regulate these chemicals and their use, is the government ministry most responsible for promoting the interests of the lobby that distributs and uses them - in this case, MAFF. Humphrys has a good deal to say about this relationship. The need for proper regulation of our food and soil standards is great. We really have a serious deficit in this country. However, since most of the chemicals refered to spread through the whole Earth's ecosystem, it is international regulation that is required. The World Health Organisation mediates change between the established powers and the 'public'. Such mediation, in the face of extreme public outcry, can leada to glacial change for the better. But it is rarely enough change, and rarely when it is needed. Rachel Carson's fight to ban DDT was the last high profile success, and that was in the sixties. There has been some change since then, like the banning of PCB's and moves to phase out POP's. But, although some of these bans are taking effect, they are doing so over a phase-out window so long that the health and environmental problems will still be getting worse in 20 years time. Things are bad enough already for that to be disastrous.

The fishing industry is also hauled over the coals by Humphrys. The issue that he takes up for most analysis is fish farming. This practise keeps salmon in far worse conditions than the factory farms for fowl that have been forced into stricter regulation by public pressure. The food that we take from these farms is diseased, lice-ridden, has been swimming in faeces, highly fatty and full of POP's to boot. They spread infection and lice to wild fish populations, interbreed with them when they are not too feminised for this to work, and, because of the amounts of toxic chemicals and antibiotics used on them to try to deal with the industry-inflicted conditions, basically killing our rivers, lakes, oceans, and... us. The effects of chemicals like dichlorvos, ivermectin and cypermethrin is the same as the effects of the POP's listed above [indeed, dichlorvis is another name for chlordane]. There is no little irony that we are still told that cod liver oil is good for us. It contains many very useful ingredients that the body requires to have in some form. Vitamins and minerals that can protect a persons immune system and general health. But, the liver is the bodies toxin scrubber. It is very fatty. The liver is, therefore, full of POP's - especially fish livers. The POP's, of course, cause damage in exactly the areas that cod liver oil once helped. We should be taught to not take cod liver oil! Not that it will be an issue for long, since pollution and over-fishing has put cod onto the endangered species list (Humphrys mentions this, but also check out The Oceans are Emptying by R A Rogers).

To add a case study of my own, when dichlorvos use in Scottish fisheries was called into question in the New Scientist about five years ago, in an article that really pulled it's punches, I know of two letters that were written to the editor. One was published, from MAFF, claiming that the article was, basically, lying and libellous [though not in those words]. The other was not published or alluded to in any way. This was from myself. It went further than the article had done, but clearly and with reference to sources. Similar letters were submitted at the time by Communities Against Toxics and the Women's Environmental Network. They were greeted with the same silence as my own. MAFF made strong claims about the safety of dichlorvos, and were treated with fearful respect. They knew they were wrong, and their position has now changed a little, because the facts are basically out.

So, far from evolving towards greater regulation, the UK establishment at least is as in hoc to the industry as ever. The responsibilities to the public that they have is still in contradiction to thier job for industry. The Labour government has promised, in the aftermath of the 2001 general election, to address this by setting up a seperate ministry to pursue the public good aspects of food issues. Let's wait and see. It could, though, be the usual too little too late scenario.

There is a tool of thought that environmentalists and others believe that we should all use more often. It is called the 'precautionary principle'. It's importance - and obviousness, God help us - is very great. Humphrys quotes a 1998 formulation of the principle:

" 'When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. Recognition of the precautionary principle includes taking action in the face of uncertainty; shifting burdens of proof to those who create risks; analysis of alternatives to potentially harmful activities; and participatory decision making.'

"Politicians pay lip service to that wise principle, but if the prospect of enough profit comes in through the door, precaution often flies out of the window." Common sense if ever I heard it.

There is also a chapter on soil - it's erosion; it's reduced biodiversity; and it's pollution in general. This is an area for worry. Soil has to develop over generations to be fully fertile. Once over-farmed it must recover. We no longer rotate crops. We use artificial fertilizers [which require about 4 tonnes of crude oil energy to produce 1 tonne of nitrogen fertilizer], which further deplete the natural reserves. And when the chips are down, Britain, with it's need for twice as many 'ghost acres' [acres outside it's borders; ie, imports] as actual acres, is going to be in real trouble.

Antibiotics and GM foodstuffs are also covered. The overuse of antibiotics has had a lot of press lately. Much of this has been on local news programmes, and has given perhaps too much time to the question of the public's perception of antibiotics as a cure for colds [though this is a very real worry], and not enough to the gross overuse in chicken farms, fish farms, dairy farms... The useage here is not only problematic for the livestock, but for all of us. Pandemics are, frankly, frighteningly likely to occur as a result of this overuse. Only toxic quantities of antibiotic will hurt some of the new resistant strains of superbug - the cure is as bad, or worse, than the disease! Antibiotics can kill us as readily as the bug that we want to target if we have to use ones that are too strong. And we are increasingly having to. When even those run out... Humphrys warns of: "the dire consequences of revisiting the pre-antibiotic era" If stories of the Black Death bothered you when you were little, then you really don't want to think too deeply about the inevitable future pandemics.

Genetic modification is, in Humphrys view, "our greatest gamble of all" . Again, the scenario presented owes all too much to the cosy relationship between government and finance. It has become impossible to have a serious debate on the issue, since the authorities do not seem to want to hear a bad word, and the opposition are fixated on the evils of human cloning. The problems are at once more prosaic and more worrying than the usual boring SF scenario. Here is a list of GM food issues - inserted genes may have a direct adverse affect; they may have an indirect adverse affect [eg, allergic reaction, production of toxic protein...]; they may interact with existing genes [eg, exacerbating existing toxic affect, 'switching on' previously unexpressed genes...]; they may negatively alter the behaviour of a micro-organism that is normally harmless; they may, in that micro-organism, alter the overall gut ecology; they might 'go walkabout' [horizontal gene transfer - transmission to another entity than the target - is one of the most frequently voiced worries]. The latter has definately occured already, and once such a cascade has begun the genie cannot be put back into the bottle. Each of these scenarios has in common one major factor - the outcome is unknown. All the problems stem from a huge lack of the knowledge needed to reasonably predict that the experiment is safe. Such experiments as have occured tend not to happen in sterile labs in outer space, but, rather, in that field over there. The Earth is the lab, and you and I are the guinea pigs. Again, regulation problems are exacerbated by finance. The archived Monbiot review includes information on the free trade aspects of this, using the example of Canada's resistance to rBGH, made by Monsanto. The last angle presented has again been widely covered already in the press - the issue of gene patenting and the expected third world famine that may well result.

As for positive suggestions, Humphrys offers a number of common sense instrumentalist steps that could be taken, including, an environmental tax on pesticides; greater regulation of all aspects of food production internationally; reducing subsidies create disincentives to clean farming; the re-introduction of crop rotation; the encouragement of the movement towards organic foodstuffs...

The problems with organics, as reported in the press recently, are more a product of agri-business media propaganda than anything real. But there are problems. One is simply that the time required to turn our farming over to enough crops that are oragnic and can feed us is simply not there The soil must lie fallow for a number of years - though how many is contentious. Lord Sainsbury, a supposed advocate of organic farming, has aided the reduction of the number of years, for reasons of financial gain, to the point where the term 'organic' is seriously questionable. But even Humphrys seems to regard as little as two-three years as sufficient, which is not quite enough [by a factor of three times!]. Also, the past use of POP's, which are ubiquitous in the environment, and persistent to boot, means that there is no longer any such thing as a 'clean' environment for the organic farmers to use, and too little knowledge and regulation to correctly identify areas that are relatively cleaner than others, despite common sense views such as 'this bit of ground has had no direct application, by a farmer, of pesticides for three years'. We can expect real food supply problems long before we can address our food needs with good food. in times of trouble it is harder, not easier, to introduce important radical, but also time- consuming and multi-national peeving, changes to practise. The other problems are largely caused by the financial interest groups, like Sainsbury's supermarkets, that have got themselves 'behind' organics. Humphrys addresses this issue a little, Monbiot more so. Basically, if the definition of 'organic' is lowered any more then it will be completely meaningless.

The bottom line, however, is that John Humphrys has produced an accessible, timely, and indispensible book, which deserves to have a real impact. This is obviously his hope. He comes across as an informed and decent man. As ever, those who wish to be politicians are the worst people for the job. John Humphrys displays no ambitions there, and, as such, joins Martin Bell in the small pantheon of people that a large number of people in this country might actively encourage to become a trustworthy politician. Humphrys is also cynical enough to, one, almost certainly refuse, and, two, be of some real use if he did not.

- Tim Barton