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From Dearth to Plenty (Cambridge University Press, £40/$59.95,
ISBN 0 521 403227) is the story of a scientific and technological revolution
in British food production since 1936 by two leading players, Kenneth Blaxter,
knighted animal nutritionist, and plant pathologist Noel Robertson. Lucid and
sometimes triumphalist, it maps the road from horse-drawn plough to genetic
engineering, but is thin on environmental and economic context – just two
references to the EC’s Common Agricultural Policy, for instance