Food, Farming, and Freedom: Sowing the Arab Spring

Food, Farming, and Freedom traces the effects of Western-imposed aid and trade policies on the development of the economies-- and especially the rural economies-- of countries throughout the Arab world, from the 1980s on. The author shows how the influx of food imports from the heavily subsidized farm sectors in Western countries destroyed rural livelihoods in many Arab countries, sending waves of impoverished youth to the outskirts of cities large and small.