What can one small, powerfully sweet plant reveal about the future of our food? This book unearths the story of one of the world’s favourite ‘natural’ sugar substitutes—following Stevia’s journey from Indigenous medicine to cash crop to the frontier of lab-grown biotechnology. As corporations race to replicate its intense sweetness biosynthetically, this captivating narrative dives into the frictions between promise and disruption shaping the 21st century’s alternative to sugar.From indigenous smallholdings to biotech fermentation labs to biodiversity governance, this book exposes the tangled political ecologies of sweetness and accessibly explains the rapid technological changes in our agri-food systems.
