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Challenges, threats, and opportunities for sustainable agriculture
Miguel A Altieri, Speaking Truth To Power
Long essay difficult to summarise but includes serious treatment of agribusiness, biotechnology, biofuels, and climate change.
..As agricultural modernization progressed, political and economic forces allowed the agricultural structure to become dominated by large corporations who took advantage of existing policies that favored large farm size, specialized production, crop monocultures, mechanization and agrochemical dependency. The result has been the setting in motion of a process of economic devastation with grave consequences for the nation’s family farmers and rural communities.
The current dominant system does not provide farmers with an adequate income, does not ensure regional self-reliance, promotes production methods that do not meet key environmental and animal welfare standards, does not produce healthy food, and does not lead towards the renewal of rural communities. ..
The reality is that hunger is compounded by globalization, especially when developing countries embrace the free trade policies advocated by international lending agencies, lower tariffs and allow goods from industrialized countries to flow in. ..
Ecological studies suggest that more diverse agroecosystems are more resistant to disturbance and more resilient to environmental perturbations like drought. Polycultures exhibit greater yield stability and less productivity declines during a drought than in the case of monocultures. ..
Miguel Altieri teaches agroecology at University of California at Berkeley, is a technical advisor to the Latin American Consortium on Agroecology and Development and General Coordinator for the United Nations Development Programme’s Sustainable Agriculture Networking and Extension Programme.
(4 Mar 2007)
And on This Farm She Found a Future
Nancy Brill, Newsweek
Agriculture is a backbreaking, low-paying, male-dominated field. I wouldn’t want any other job.
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The farmer had a tanned face, weathered from working in the hot sun and dry air. He took in my clean appearance and small, unmuscular body. “So,” he said, “you like to get dirty?”
It was 1998. After working as a cashier for three summers at a local farm during high school, I was moving from behind the register to the seat of a tractor, which I would be maneuvering through the farm’s 100-acre vegetable fields. I would be working long hours in the heat of New Jersey’s humid summers. I knew I would get dirty-and I couldn’t wait.
I wasn’t disappointed. When the ground was dry, the field dust caked my skin with a brown film, streaked by the sweat that trickled down my neck. The stickiest job on the farm was grading tomatoes, but I couldn’t care less if juice from rotten tomatoes was running down my legs and into my shoes as long as I was in the shade of the barn. During my lunch breaks I lined up at the local deli, where crews of workers seemed to gather like fruit flies on Jersey tomatoes, wearing my baseball hat and clothes so filthy I looked like Pigpen from “Peanuts.” The work was tiring, but not exhausting, and I ended each day eager to do it all over again for 10 hours a day, six days a week.
…Someone once asked me, “Why would you want to go into agriculture? It’s a dying field that’s not going anywhere.” I told that person that despite cultural, religious, political and economic differences worldwide, people in every country have one thing in common: we eat. It is a dirty job, but somebody has got to help feed them.
(5 March 2007)
Has Real Estate Lost Its Sizzle? Not on the Farm
Norm Alster, NY Times
SOARING crop prices, strong export markets and growing demand for biofuels are adding up to good times for many American farmers. So it’s not surprising that farmland, particularly in the upper Midwest, has begun to reflect that good fortune with rapidly rising prices.
The Fed can always print more money but it can’t create new farmland, which has generally been rising in value since the late 1980s. From 2002 through 2005, American farmland appreciated by roughly 50 percent, according to Agriculture Department data. Farmland’s traditional investment appeal includes steady income from rents, along with appreciation that has tended to run ahead of inflation.
But since September, Midwestern banks and real estate brokers report, land has become a torrid commodity, with prices in Illinois, Iowa and other nearby states climbing by as much as 20 percent.
(4 March 2007)
NYC Fast-Food Chains Pull Calorie Info
David B. Caruso, APvia Caper Star Tribune
NEW YORK – At least three national fast-food chains have made it harder for New Yorkers to learn the calorie content of their hamburgers, fries and subs.
Wendy’s, White Castle and Quiznos sandwich shops were among a handful of eateries that yanked nutritional information from some restaurants or their Web sites this week in an attempt to avoid having to post the same info on menus in New York.
The move was a reaction to a new regulation that will make the city the first in the country to require eateries to list calorie counts in the most prominent place possible: on their brightly-lit menu boards, right next to the price. ..
(5 Mar 2007)
Malaysia Proposes New Fast Food Rules
Sean Yoong, Associated Press
Malaysian authorities may ban fast food advertisements on children’s television shows to help curb obesity and diet-linked diseases, the health minister said Monday.
“The move can be regarded as an educational effort to raise the public’s awareness about the importance of eating nutritious food instead of relying on fast food,” Health Minister Chua Soi Lek told a news conference after holding talks with representatives of the fast food and advertising industries.
The proposed ban would likely exclude newspapers, magazines and theaters in this Southeast Asian country, as well as television shows whose viewers are mostly over 12 years old, Chua said, clarifying recent reports that the ministry wanted a total ban on fast food advertisements. ..
(5 Mar 2007)
