Book Review

by Paul Ganderton

Food and Agriculture Organisation. 1997. The State of Food and Agriculture 1997. FAO. ISBN 92 5 104005 2. pp xx + 285.

Those familiar with this yearbook will know of its value by now. This year's issue focuses on the agroprocessing industry and its impact on economic development. Here, the focus is on the wide range of industries that have a link with primary industry (which means forestry and fisheries as well as farming). With such a wide definition it can soon be realised that the impact both economically and environmentally is tremendous. This section provides a wealth of technical and economic data which would provide a good grounding for discussion. Sadly, there is less on environmental impact than one would wish. The "special topic" forms the third part of the book (the first two deal with global and regional perspectives respectively - although the regional review is a more detailed country study it is the global section that holds more interest). In addition to the usual overview there are special sections tackling issues such as global forests, women in agriculture and global climate change. The whole text is completed with a disc containing the dataset for the FAO up to 1997. As such this is an invaluable resource containing environmental as well as agricultural data.

Overall, this text continues to be an invaluable source of world data. Although not directly linked to ecological and environmental topics the weight of reliable data makes it a most valuable reference source.