Raj Patel is an award-winning writer, activist and academic. He is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin and a Senior Research Associate at the Unit for the Humanities at the university currently known as Rhodes University (UHURU), South Africa. He has degrees from the University of Oxford, the London School of Economics and Cornell University, has worked for the World Bank and WTO, and protested against them around the world. Raj co-taught the 2014 Edible Education class at UC Berkeley with Michael Pollan. In 2016 he was recognized with a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award. He has testified about the causes of the global food crisis to the US House Financial Services Committee and was an Advisor to Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.
Unearthing the Capitalocene: Towards a Reparations Ecology
By Jason W. Moore, Raj Patel, ROAR Magazine
Today’s human activity isn’t exterminating mammoths through centuries of overhunting. Some humans are currently killing everything, from megafauna to microbiota, at speeds one hundred times higher than the background rate. We argue that what changed is capitalism, that modern history has, since the 1400s, unfolded in what is better termed the Capitalocene.
How to Feed Ourselves in a Time of Climate Crisis
By Raj Patel, Tracy Matsue Loeffelholz, YES! magazine
Changing the food system is the most important thing humans can do to fix our broken carbon cycles. Meanwhile, food security is all about adaptation when you’re dealing with crazy weather and shifting growing zones. How can a world of 7 billion—and growing—feed itself? Here are 13 of the best ideas for a just and sustainable food system.
Against Cheap Food: An Aide Memoir
By Raj Patel, Global Alliance for the Future of Food
Either we accept cheap food at the grocery store, and have people – invariably poor people – pay for environmental damage in health, social and economic costs incurred elsewhere. Or we have more expensive food that reflects the full costs of its production.
How to Be Curious About the Green Revolution
By Raj Patel, RajPatel.org
In order to be able to think that the Green Revolution worked, much has been forgotten.
Thoughts on Land Reform Summits in San Francisco
By Raj Patel, Raj Patel blog
It’s hard to conceive a more un-American activity than thinking about an alternative to private property.
Glencore’s economics lessons
By Raj Patel, RajPatel.org
Despite what the theorists say, speculators have profited from hunger. And there’s now mounting evidence from some economists that the rush of money into commodity funds is indeed driving prices higher.
Can the world feed 10 Billion people?
By Raj Patel, RajPatel.org
The world’s demographers this week increased their estimates of the world’s population through the coming century. We are now on track to hit 10 billion people by 2100. Today, humanity produces enough food to feed everyone but, because of the way we distribute it, there are still a billion hungry. One doesn’t need to be a frothing Malthusian to worry about how we’ll all get to eat tomorrow. Current predictions place most of the world’s people in Asia, the highest levels of consumption in Europe and North America, and the highest population growth rates in Africa — where the population could triple over the next 90 years.
World Bank on land grabs: It’s all good unless you’re African, a woman, disempowered, or poor
By Raj Patel, RajPatel.org
The World Banks long-awaited report on land grabs is out. I've not had time to study it -- I only found out an hour ago -- but here are some first impressions.