• Unearthing Stevia’s Promise
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Unearthing Stevia’s Promise

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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 f...
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  • 22 December 2026
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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.

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Price: $44.95
Pages: 272
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Imprint: Bristol University Press
Publication Date: 22 December 2026
ISBN: 9781529261059
Format: Paperback
BISACs: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Agriculture & Food (see also POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Agriculture & Food Policy), Social geography, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Human Geography, TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / Agriculture / Agronomy / Crop Science, TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / Food Science / Chemistry & Biotechnology, Agriculture and farming, Impact of science and technology on society, Biodiversity / Ecosystems, Food and beverage technology
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“Sidney Mintz showed how sugar built the modern world on the bodies of slaves. Molly Bond writes the next chapter: a plantation that no longer needs the plant. She traces the Guaraní herb called Aunt Ka'a he'ê from Paraguayan campesino fields to the Nebraska fermentation tanks where Cargill's engineered yeasts now ferment sweetness by the tank. Bond shows how synthetic biology presents itself as disruptively new, while relying on an old grammar of appropriation, extraction, and monopoly. The wealthiest corporations on earth are betting we will not notice. This book makes sure we do.” Raj Patel, The University of Texas at Austin
Molly Rose Bond is Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh.

Introduction: A Plant to Think With

Interlude: Stevia Speaks! Plant Beings, Fact, Fiction, Fame and Fabulation.

1. Promissory Bioeconomy and Synthetic Stevia

2. Promissory Justice for Aunt Ka’a he’ê and Kin

Interlude: Borderlands

3. Campesino Cash Crop Ka’a he’ê

4. Corporate Cash Molecule: Breaking and Re-Making the Promise

Interlude: Medicine Woman

5. Indigenous Herb to Cash DNA: Promises Collide at the UN Biodiversity Conference

Conclusion: Sweetness and Power

After Word from Stevia+