Rating:

The book is straight forward, well-reasoned, and accessible. I have a background in agriculture and molecular biology, and so at times I found the science a tad too simplistic to strongly hold my interest, but I suspect that for the average reader, it strikes a nice balance between addressing the subject fully and excessive complexity and jargon. The case they build is in my view quite compelling, and I hope this book serves to open many minds.

When I was starting out in plant science, I remember a professor telling me that when the first transgenics were being developed, he really thought the organics crowd would be the biggest supporters. “We’d just come up with a solution to their biggest problems, but instead they decided we were the enemy”. Although I think that organics are, ultimately, a positive development in agriculture, they are like most “movements” a mixture of real reasons and irrational, emotional impulses. Although organic agriculture has been an important step towards a sustainable future, it has brought with it a fair amount of baggage, based on not on science or reason, but on a nostalgic idealization of traditional agriculture–even though such agriculture was often neither natural nor sustainable nor especially desirable, even then. The fear of genetic engineering seems to me to come from that deeply conservative undercurrent in an otherwise progressive movement. By making the facts behind genetic engineering and its impacts on agriculture and environment accessible to a general audience, this book can hopefully be a step towards calming that reactionary impulse.

It helps too that it is also an easy and enjoyable read. By the end I felt as though I’d kind of gotten to know the authors (in fact since we don’t live all that far apart and work in vaguely the same field, it crossed my mind that I might someday bump into them). The style is casual without being superfluous, making it easy to lose yourself in the book. I started this book as I tended the grill before dinner, and finished it as I went to bed the same night.

Putting aside the genetic engineering part, even, this book is also simply one of the best scientific presentations of organic agriculture I have read, in that it is soundly grounded in the literature and does not over-reach, while remaining staunchly and reasonably pro-organic. There are few other books on the topic I can say the same for.

All in all a good read about an important topic.

Rating:

It’s insane. So I sent it back.

Rating:

Readers of recent books on the politics of food, such as Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver or The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan will be interested in the authors’ global perspective and local expertise, and I was especially glad to read about the potential impact of GE food in developing countries.

Rating:

Tomorrow’s Table is not a technical text. It is a friendly discussion with a friend who invites you over for lunch. In their conversational tone, the authors make a strong case for integrating genetic engineering into organic farming, leaving behind many aspects of so-called conventional farming. Their points are backed up by much research, and references are provided the reader so he or she can learn more if they like.

I hope this book will help some people to take a second look at genetic engineering, but it made me take a second look at organic farming. I had become convinced that organic farming was pointless and only for rich hippies. The discussion of the benefits of organic methods was more than enough to jolt me back to reality.

In the interests of full disclosure, I’m a PhD student in genetics, and was generally in favor of genetic engineering before reading this book.