Review: Economic Poisoning: Industrial Waste and the Chemicalization of American Agriculture, by Adam M. Romero

Abstract

Book Review| November 01 2022 Review: Economic Poisoning: Industrial Waste and the Chemicalization of American Agriculture, by Adam M. Romero Adam M. Romero. Economic Poisoning: Industrial Waste and the Chemicalization of American Agriculture. Oakland: University of California Press, 2022. 270 pp. Paperback $29.95. Michelle Mart Michelle Mart MICHELLE MART is an associate professor of history at Penn State University, Berks, and author of Pesticides, A Love Story: America’s Enduring Embrace of Dangerous Chemicals (2015). She is currently at work on a study of the intersections of food, the environment, and culture. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2022) 99 (4): 113–115. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2022.99.4.113 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Michelle Mart; Review: Economic Poisoning: Industrial Waste and the Chemicalization of American Agriculture, by Adam M. Romero. California History 1 November 2022; 99 (4): 113–115. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2022.99.4.113 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentCalifornia History Search Without meaning to, we often accept—unquestioningly—existing frameworks that organize our knowledge of the past. Unless or until there is the type of paradigm shift famously described by Thomas Kuhn, these frameworks blind us to other interpretations. Geographer Adam Romero offers readers the opportunity for a dramatic paradigm shift in regard to the growth of industrial agriculture from the nineteenth into the twentieth century. In Economic Poisoning: Industrial Waste and the Chemicalization of American Agriculture, he argues that the most important driver of agriculture’s chemicalization was not the need to grow more affordable food for a growing population, but the desire to find a use for otherwise unprofitable industrial wastes. Romero’s thesis is dramatic, but it is not simplistic. He does not argue that the only reason for the use of toxic inputs in agriculture was to dispose of waste from various industries. Instead, he describes increasing synergies between industrial... You do not currently have access to this content.