Breadlines knee-deep in wheat

by Janet Poppendieck

Library Journal: This book provides historical perspective on two of today's important public issues: farm income and hunger. It analyzes the origins of a national food assistance policy during the Thirties, when an attempt to solve the seeming paradox of simultaneous hunger and food surplus drove much of the public debate. Poppendieck demonstrates that food programs came to be seen by an organized farm lobby as a way of alleviating huge farm commodity surpluses. Unraveling the interrelated and complex agricultural and assistance policies, particularly for those unfamiliar with the terminology and bureaucracy, requires a good deal of skill. Poppendieck largely succeeds. The story she tells of good intentions gone bad, however, does not offer much hope for policy solutions to current farm and hunger problems.