How the World is Fed

Frank G. Carpenter - 1907

Tobacco gets its own chapter in this reader, part of a series on “the great industries of the world.” This copy was once in the library at the Camrose Provincial Normal School. The book’s treatment of ethnicity and cultural differences is cavalier at best: in India, “farmers are black or dark brown” and have few wants. Though food might be a window into other cultures, it is often circumscribed by the opinions and politics of the place and period. But it is this very circumscription that makes food such an excellent marker of individual and social relations: the pineapple farm in Cuba is owned by an American, and an expansive railway system facilitates harvesting. The introduction to How the World is Fed, indeed, emphasizes progressive-era lessons in economics: “it is through commerce that food is carried all over the world, from the places where each kind can be raised the cheapest, and sold for money in exchange.”