Little did I know, as a kid, what the Green Revolution was really doing to its selected target: Punjab and subsequently other parts of India or what it had done to Mexico or other faraway lands.

It was only when I grew up and understood the meaning of all the stories told to me by my grandparents, about their life as farmers, that I began to sense a malicious pattern in our food system. Why didn't I know anything about the source of the food I pick up from the supermarket? What does it mean when the ingredients of all my food tell me that they contain "permitted additives". Who permitted them? What are those funny sounding chemical names in my food? When they say processed food, what is that process and what does it do to the food? And if food is the most basic human need, why is it that the producer of food, the farmer, who I was told to Hail as a kid, so fucking poor? Why are farmers committing suicide all over the world if the laws of supply and demand can never really go against them because demand for food can never possibly cease? And of course, if they claim that there is enough food to feed the planet why are so many people going hungry?

It remains a tough journey to even grasp all the complexities and politics behind these issues, let alone understand them completely. Going to villages and talking to farmers seemed like a good starting point so I did that. While that helped humanize the issues for me and that is a must if you want to understand anything in life, it also led to more macro questions.

Turning to experts seemed like the next logical step. So I picked up Amartya Sen who helped in understanding the problems on a policy level. Meeting Sunderlal Bahuguna impressed upon me the immense wisdom and solutions that exist in rural societies and how unwise and short-sighted modern agribusinesses are in ignoring them. Vandana Shiva helped understand how age-old wisdom is stolen and copyrighted by corporations and what role do we play in aggravating the situation. She also introduced me to Carlo Petrini's Slow Food movement and its practitioners in India.

Now a days, I'm reading Stuffed and Starved by Raj Patel and a lot of these questions are addressed using contemporary data. It is an intelligent, eye-opening insight into the sheer violence of our food culture unleashed upon farmers and food consumers (i.e YOU) across the world, by the forces of Globalization.

The book begins with the premise of explaining why a billion people on the planet are overweight and close to 850 million are going hungry. But it does much more than that. It takes you through this journey of how the food we eat gets to our plate and the catastrophes it has released upon the farmers who have produced it. And what is going to happen to you as you eat it.

It is a tale of our gluttonous society and our ignorant support of business practices that destroy the planet and our health. How neo-liberal economic practices have managed to bring about the Global Food Crisis. And along the way, it uncovers the myths those lying school books taught you about those happy farmers in paddy fields.

Raj also has an active blog that is a great resource to keep yourself updated and informed about issues around the politics of food so you can make informed choices.

Here's a video of Raj Patel talking about his book and the Global Food Crisis. In this American Krishi Darshan, the anchor is dull as ever but the speaker is not.