Vaclav Smil: Harvesting the biosphere: What we have taken from nature The MIT Press, London and Cambridge MA, 2013, 307 pp, ISBN 978-0-262-01856-2 Anna Krzywoszynska 1 Published online: 18 March 2015 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015 This is a book which became famous for being reviewed by Bill Gates. Yes, I am trying to fill some rather large shoes here, but I am heartened to read that Gates too found the book ‘a bit dry’ (gatesnotes.com). Lest the readers think both Gates and I are feeble hearted, allow me to provide a random excerpt: Harvested residues have low density, with cereal straws rating just 50–100 kg/m 3 (compared to more than 500 kg/m 3 for wood); uncompressed corn stover weighs just between 21 and 111 kg/m 3 , and sugar- cane bagasse leaving the final mill averages about 120 kg/m 3 p. 44. I promise, this sample is representative. What Smil attempts in the book is no mean task: his aim is to ‘review the entire spectrum of harvests and present the best possible quantification of past and current global re- movals and losses as a way to assess the evolution and extent of human claims on the biosphere’ (p. viii). In other words, he attempts to quantify—in percentages and kilo- grams—the effect the human population has on the living elements of the planet, that is, on the biosphere. Much of the book is devoted to the clarifying of terms (What is the biosphere? What counts as living and what as dead organic matter? How many fish are there in the sea?), and meticulous calculations, which, to the author’s great credit, are much guarded with warnings of lack of data and thus possible inaccuracies (if only we had accounted for every twig in every forest the task would be much easier). The book is dense in information the scale of which ranges from the most local to the truly epochal; for instance on p. 64 we learn that ‘the vine is now an uncontrollable invader (…) throughout the US Southeast’, while pages 71–101 give a sweeping overview of the change in human foraging habits in the last five hundred thousand years or so. As the aims and objectives of chapters and sections are not signposted, the reader can quickly become lost and confused by the endless recitations of data. The pursuit of calculation requires Smil to do some astonishing things to all things living, which is to take all the life out of them. Humans are reduced to their con- sumption capacity and mass; plants and animals are separated from one another and placed in orderly mental rows. Time stands still and the planet holds its breath so that the measuring and approximation may take place. The atmosphere rather recalls the last judgement, if God were a meticulous accountant, that is. Those who persevere and apply a powerful mental sieve will learn, amongst other things, that the dry mass of all living things on Earth is roughly 1.6 trillion metric tons (to be fair to the jellyfish and the wheat alike Smil removes all water in the course of his calculative process). Of this, 125 million metric tons are humans, 425 million metric tons their domestic animals, while only 10 million metric tons all wild vertebrates. Most importantly, Smil calculates that each year humans now consume roughly 17 % of what the biosphere grows. If the growth in population and con- sumption continues, Smil concludes on the basis of his data, we will quickly run out of things to eat. It is unfortunate that these important quantifications are hidden in surrounding calculations and narratives—simple ‘fact boxes’, or bullet points at the start of each chapter, would have done much to make these important findings more accessible. I truly appreciate the work that has gone into this vol- ume, and I am impressed by the diligence and attentiveness & Anna Krzywoszynska Anna.krzywoszynska@durham.ac.uk 1 5 Bramwith Rd., Sheffield S11 7EZ, UK 123 Agric Hum Values (2015) 32:363–364 DOI 10.1007/s10460-015-9601-3