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"Forget farm to table; this history shows that the food on your plate has a history stretching back to the dawn of the species."
--Emma Marris, author of "Rambunctious Garden"



"An admirable history of human ingenuity that does not claim it will overcome such looming crises as overpopulation and global warming."
--"Kirkus Reviews"

"DeFries places her faith in human creativity as a primary means to our survival, an appealing point of view for the hopeful but concerned reader."
--"PublishersWeekly"

"Timely... Clearly demonstrates the role of science in converting calamities into opportunities. "The Big Ratchet" provides a message of hope in the midst of the sea of despair we see in the areas of sustainable development and environmental protection. Ruth DeFries has rendered an invaluable service."
--M. S. Swaminathan, Founder and Chairman, M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation

"A page turner and an eye opener, clearly written and well told. If you are alive today, especially if you live in a city, this is the story of how you got here and why you eat what you eat. Defries deftly guides us through our species' unending quest to squeeze more food out of the earth, introducing us along the way to buffalo bone pickers, ancient plant breeders, guano wars, the extinction of the Rocky Mountain Locust, medieval human poop tradesmen, Arctic "doomsday" seed vaults and the Nobel Prizes awarded to the inventors of DDT and trans fats. A fascinating history of human innovation."
--Emma Marris, author of "Rambunctious Garden"

"Is there a tale more astonishing and improbable than the human story? Lurching between triumph and catastrophe, humankind has transformed itself from a run-of-the-mill forager on the African savanna into a species that dominates every corner of the planet. Now, as our numbers surpass 7 billion, Ruth DeFries shows how our remarkable past can serve as a guide to thinking about our uncertain future. Neither a hymn to optimism nor an invocation of catastrophe, "The Big Ratchet" is an essential account of how we got to be where we are."
--Charles C. Mann, author of "1491"

1. A Bird s-Eye View
2. Planetary Beginnings
3. Enter Human Ingenuity
4. Conundrums of Settled Life
5. Ratchets from Afar
6. Smash Open the Bottlenecks
7. Monocultures March Across the Midwest
8. Competition for the Bounty
9. The Revolution Goes Global
10. Farmer to Urbanite

Our species long lived on the edge of starvation. Now we produce enough food for all 7 billion of us to eat nearly 3,000 calories every day. This is such an astonishing thing in the history of life as to verge on the miraculous.The Big Ratchet is the story of how it happened, of the ratchetsthe technologies and innovations, big and smallthat propelled our species from hunters and gatherers on the savannahs of Africa to shoppers in the aisles of the supermarket.

The Big Ratchet itself came in the twentieth century, when a range of technologiesfrom fossil fuels to scientific plant breeding to nitrogen fertilizerscombined to nearly quadruple our population in a century, and to grow our food supply even faster. To some, these technologies are a sign of our greatness; to others, of our hubris. MacArthur fellow and Columbia University professor Ruth DeFries argues that the debate is the wrong one to have. Limits do exist, but every limit that has confronted us, we have surpassed. That cycle of crisis and growth is the story of our history; indeed, it is the essence ofThe Big Ratchet. Understanding it will reveal not just how we reached this point in our history, but how we might survive it.