Food & Water

New briefing: Food safety for whom? Corporate wealth versus people’s health

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The steady stream of scandals, outbreaks of disease and regulatory crack-downs that is part and parcel of the industrial food system has made food safety a major global issue. Our growing reliance on corporate food and farming concentrates and amplifies risk in new and unprecedented ways, at scales never seen before, making intervention more necessary than ever to ensure that food does not make people sick. But behind all of the talk and action lies another agenda.

Climate, food and and the connectivity paradox

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At the most basic level, climate changes that cause world surface temperatures to rise are rooted in increased fossil emissions in the atmosphere. Total fossil fuel emissions are a function of key variables, most notably population, per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) and the carbon intensity of an individual unit of GDP. Understanding these forces and their relationships with each other is critical to measuring the extent of climate change and how we may seek to deal with it.

Managing manure to save mankind

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Long-time Ohio farmer Gene Logsdon says human and animal waste, including that from pets, is our greatest and most misunderstood natural resource. He points out that we spend billions to throw it away, and billions more to manufacture synthetic fertilizers.
(Radio interview and book excerpt)

Keepers of the seeds

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In Canada, three-quarters of all the crop varieties that existed before the 20th century are extinct. And, of the remaining quarter, only 10 percent are available commercially from Canadian seed companies (the remainder are held by gardeners and families). Over 64 percent of the commercially held seeds are offered by only one company; if those varieties are dropped, the seeds may be lost. That’s the reason Caroline and about 100 other indigenous farmers and gardeners—along with students and community members—gathered in March on the White Earth reservation in Northern Minnesota to share knowledge, stories, and, of course, seeds.

Are food prices too high or not high enough?

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Not one mention was made of the best way to be farming this year: letting the animals graze for their food as they turn untilled pasture into meat, milk and eggs. It has been so wet that you did dare put cows on some pastures some days but, on the whole, pasture farmers are happy with all this rain: we could graze twice as many animals as normal.

Conference asks what the future of food should look like

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“What has brought us here today is the belief that our current food system is broken… and we believe this system must be changed,” said Eric Schlosser, author of “Fast Food Nation” and co-producer of “Food, Inc,” at the Future of Food Conference this Wednesday at Georgetown University.

On the khaki market: What do you do when the food system you need is illegal?

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What do you get when you cross Green, as in Green Markets – those emergent farmer’s and craftspeople’s markets that have given life to local food – with Black or Grey Markets – ie, illegal sales? Khaki is the color you get, and you get what I call “Khaki Markets” – the growing trend towards producing food, toiletries and other regulated substances outside of regulation.

Good news on the right to food

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Those of us advocating for changes in global and national policies on food and agriculture just got some good news. The UN Human Rights Council just renewed for another three years the mandate of Olivier De Schutter as the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. If you haven’t followed De Schutter’s work since the 2007-8 food price spikes brought renewed attention to the issues of hunger and agricultural development, he has been a clear and uncompromising voice for change. His rights-based approach has taken him well beyond the withering rise of hunger to the roots of the global crisis, linking climate change, agribusiness concentration, commodity speculation, and the ongoing debates of industrial versus agro-ecological development.