Description

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Off the Pacific coast of South America, nutrients mingle with cool waters rising from the ocean’s depths, creating one of the world’s most productive marine ecosystems: the Humboldt Current. When the region’s teeming populations of fish were converted into a key ingredient in animal feed—fishmeal—it fueled the revolution in chicken, hog, and fish farming that swept the United States and northern Europe after World War II.

The Fishmeal Revolution explores industrialization along the Peru-Chile coast as fishmeal producers pulverized and exported unprecedented volumes of marine proteins to satisfy the growing taste for meat among affluent consumers in the Global North. A relentless drive to maximize profits from the sea occurred at the same time that Peru and Chile grappled with the challenge of environmental uncertainty and its potentially devastating impact. In this exciting new book, Kristin A. Wintersteen offers an important history and critique of the science and policy that shaped the global food industry.

About the Author

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Kristin A. Wintersteen is a scholar of modern Latin America, environmental history, and global food studies. She earned her PhD in History from Duke University.

Praise For…

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"The Fishmeal Revolution will appeal to many scholars, particularly those interested in envirotechnical history and transnational history. Scholars interested in scientific uncertainty, particularly around the environment, will learn much from this volume. By telling a story that includes businesses, fishers, scientific researchers, and government officials across the globe, the monograph also demonstrates how to simultaneously tell history from below and from above."

— Technology and Culture

"The Fishmeal Revolution provides an excellent overview of a dizzying array of primary source material in a concise history based on a well-informed discussion of the Humboldt Current region’s natural properties. It is a welcome addition to literature on resource extraction and human-environment interactions in Latin America."
— Hispanic American Historical Review

"At once unsettling and highly informative, Kristin Wintersteen’s much-needed exploration of the history of the Peruvian and Chilean fisheries focuses on the huge volumes of fish hidden in the diets of billions of people globally. A rich, quasi-environmental history."
— Isis

"The Fishmeal Revolution is recommended reading for anyone interested in the intersection of green and blue revolutions. . . . Patient readers who work their way through these somewhat inelegant initial chapters will, however, be richly rewarded."
— H-Net Reviews

"In…lucid prose. . . .The Fishmeal Revolution makes a significant contribution to the history of global food systems and the environment precisely because the lens is transnational and centers ecology as a distinct historical force."
— American Historical Review