French Beans and Food Scares: Culture and Commerce in an Anxious Age

This book was a pleasure to read. Part of the enjoyment derived from the delightful writing style which is rare in academic books explaining complex topics like this. However, a great deal of the pleasure came from the author's comprehensive research, including extensive interviews, and her extremely sophisticated analysis. Among other things, she explores the historical bases of two contemporary global networks trading in highly perishable vegetables and clearly demonstrates the continued influence of colonial ties in the contemporary links between African vegetable growers and European retailers. This is something often mentioned but rarely demonstrated in such convincing detail as it is here. I was also particular impressed with the author's detailed exploration of the contemporary social and cultural factors (including media influence) that have produced quite different fresh vegetable retailing behavior in France and U.K. She shows how this, in turn, contributes to different sets of relationships between growers, middlemen and retailers and among African growers themselves. It is one of the most interesting books I have read to date in the area of global horticultural chains and networks and establishes a very high standard against which to measure similar publications. Anyone interested in globalization, food studies, horticultural production in Africa, contemporary European food retailing and supermarket chains, would learn a great deal from this book.