Can we feed ten billion people? Posed this way, the question presupposes that industrialized society keeps on as it does now. It keeps us searching for technological fixes to a problem caused by technology. For 150 years people have made farms more and more factory-like: improving machinery, developing high-yield hybrids, and finally GMOs. We have long assumed that by industrializing the production and processing of food we had found the secret to progress. This book examines the history of industrialized farming and fishing to raise broader questions about industrial society: What are the costs to the environment and human health of genetic engineering? Why are economists trapped in prescribing endless growth as a social goal? Can democratic politics break out of the quest for jobs and prosperity?