If you think with numbers and sense how crucial our food systems are to solving the climate crisis, Vaclav Smil is the man for you. On any of the many topics he covers, especially energy, he seems to have the ultimate comprehensive data set, historical and current, and his relentless mathematical mind churns until the numbers make sense to him. He writes in remorseless informal but precise prose that probably best suits readers willing to dig in; I doubt if many of his books could serve as primers. In 2024, he returns to another favorite topic of his, food, especially food energetics, and How to Feed the World: A Factful Guide is the outcome for us to devour. The book is a remorseless catalog of different foods’ energy requirements/efficiencies, land and water imposts, delivery systems, waste dimensions, and environmental costs (including carbon footprints). He pours scorn on mass veganism and the paleo diet. Perhaps one flaw, if it can be called that, is his insistence, based on history, that all change takes place gradually and incrementally, so he debunks miracle solutions such as organics, lab meat, and perennial grains. Overall, How to Feed the World will delight analysts and analytical readers, but any reader needs to bring their own brain to bear on these important issues, for Vaclav Smil is not afraid to prognosticate boldly.
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