The story of American agriculture and the global food system that it created is a stark warning to the rest of the world. Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal by Mark Bittman is a history of processed food and industrialised farming over the last century and a bit, and their reckless remaking of nature and society.

It’s a pacy and absorbing story of how the industrial imperative swallowed farming, with mechanisation, growth and monoculture. Early adopters of tractors or any other technology gain an advantage and sell huge quantities, but as everyone adopted the methods, prices would fall and lead to margins so thin that only the biggest producers stayed profitable.

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