Amid these mounting questions, Food First has released the second edition of Miguel Altieri's book Genetic Engineering in Agriculture which analyzes the claims and risks of genetically modified crops while proposing affordable and attainable alternatives that are in use throughout the world today.

Genetic Engineering in Agriculture reports that agricultural biotechnology has so far failed to live up to its claims and has never been thoroughly tested. Instead, it has veered toward production qualities more suited to industrial agriculture and export crops while remaining prohibitively expensive to small farmers throughout the world.

With new sections on genetic contamination in native crop varieties, erosion of the gene pool through single crop planting or monocultures, and genetic engineering's effects on soil ecosystems, Genetic Engineering in Agriculture explores the problems of crop genetic engineering that are rarely discussed elsewhere.

Author Miguel Altieri, a professor of entomology at the University of California, Berkeley, has written ten books and over 200 scientific articles. He has traveled extensively throughout Latin America visiting small farms and researching how the enhancement of biodiversity in ecosystems can increase biological pest control and the general ecological performance of farms

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