Off the Pacific coast of South America, nutrients mingle with cool waters rising from the ocean’s depths, creating one of the world’s most productive marine ecosystems: the Humboldt Current. When the region’s teeming populations of fish were converted into a key ingredient in animal feed—fishmeal—it fueled the revolution in chicken, hog, and fish farming that swept the United States and northern Europe after World War II.

The Fishmeal Revolution explores industrialization along the Peru-Chile coast as fishmeal producers pulverized and exported unprecedented volumes of marine proteins to satisfy the growing taste for meat among affluent consumers in the Global North. A relentless drive to maximize profits from the sea occurred at the same time that Peru and Chile grappled with the challenge of environmental uncertainty and its potentially devastating impact. In this exciting new book, Kristin A. Wintersteen offers an important history and critique of the science and policy that shaped the global food industry.

About the Author

Kristin A. Wintersteen is a scholar of modern Latin America, environmental history, and global food studies. She earned her PhD in History from Duke University.

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List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations and Acronyms

Introduction
1 • A Deep History of the Humboldt Current Ecosystem
2 • The New Industrial Ecology of Animal Farming in the Atlantic and Pacific Worlds, 1840–1930
3 • Protein from the Sea: The "Nutrition Problem" and the Industrialization of Fishing in Chile and Peru
4 • The Golden Anchoveta: The Making of the World's Largest Single-Species Fishery in Chimbote, Peru
5 • States of Uncertainty: Science, Policy, and the Bio-economics of Peru's 1972 Fishmeal Collapse
6 • The Translocal History of Industrial Fisheries in Iquique and Talcahuano, Chile
Conclusion

Appendix A. Glossary of Marine Species
Appendix B. Diagram of Humboldt Current Trophic Web
Appendix C. Map of Major Current Systems of Eastern and Central Pacific Ocean
Appendix D. Map of World Fisheries Management Zones
Appendix E. Graph of World Fisheries Landings and ENSO Events, 1950–2014

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Reviews

"The Fishmeal Revolution will appeal to many scholars, particularly those interested in envirotechnical history and transnational history. Scholars interested in scientific uncertainty, particularly around the environment, will learn much from this volume. By telling a story that includes businesses, fishers, scientific researchers, and government officials across the globe, the monograph also demonstrates how to simultaneously tell history from below and from above."
— Technology and Culture

"The Fishmeal Revolution provides an excellent overview of a dizzying array of primary source material in a concise history based on a well-informed discussion of the Humboldt Current region’s natural properties. It is a welcome addition to literature on resource extraction and human-environment interactions in Latin America."
— Hispanic American Historical Review

"At once unsettling and highly informative, Kristin Wintersteen’s much-needed exploration of the history of the Peruvian and Chilean fisheries focuses on the huge volumes of fish hidden in the diets of billions of people globally. A rich, quasi-environmental history."
— Isis

"The Fishmeal Revolution is recommended reading for anyone interested in the intersection of green and blue revolutions. . . . Patient readers who work their way through these somewhat inelegant initial chapters will, however, be richly rewarded."
— H-Net Reviews

"In…lucid prose. . . .The Fishmeal Revolution makes a significant contribution to the history of global food systems and the environment precisely because the lens is transnational and centers ecology as a distinct historical force."
— American Historical Review

"The Fishmeal Revolution draws an important connection between the rising consumption of meat and increased production of fishmeal to feed animals that feed people. The production of animal feeds is a critical yet seldom considered aspect of food studies; by tracing the rise of major fisheries in a region where cuisines are not that fish-centered, Kristin Wintersteen challenges neo-Malthusian assumptions that increased resource use—and resulting environmental problems—are the result of 'more mouths to feed.'"––John Soluri, Director of Global Studies, Carnegie Mellon University

"Wintersteen’s far-ranging historical analysis vividly reconstructs the impact of oceanic patterns and maritime resource extraction on Humboldt Current ecosystems, the economic development of Peru and Chile, and the global livestock industry. In the finest tradition of environmental history, The Fishmeal Revolution offers a meticulous account of the shifting interrelationships among species and spaces that are key to understanding the dynamics and vulnerabilities of the global food system."––Seth Garfield, author of In Search of the Amazon: Brazil, the United States, and the Nature of a Region

"This book explores the single most important episode of the ‘Blue Revolution’ that transformed oceanic fishing around the globe during the mid-twentieth century, and reveals the centrality of South American events to a crucial chapter of modern environmental history. An important corrective to terracentric interpretations of the making of the industrial world."––Gregory T. Cushman, author of Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History

"You probably ate some fishmeal recently, at least indirectly, without even knowing it. In this deft and deeply informed study, Kristin Wintersteen shows how fish from the waters off Chile and Peru have come to undergird much of our modern industrial food supply, with economic and ecological consequences that deserve far more attention than they usually get."––Bruce J. Hunt, Professor of History, University of Texas

Awards

George Perkins Marsh Prize Finalist 2022 2023, American Society for Environmental History
Bryce Wood Book Award Honorable Mention 2022 2022, LASA Latin American Studies Association

About the Book