Food & Water

The Arab crisis: food, energy, water, justice

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In Tunisia, Mohamad Bouazizi did not rebel because he did not find a job reflecting his ambitions and education. He did not burn himself when a police officer confiscated the fruits and vegetables he was selling at a street-corner on the pretext he had no permit. But when he went to file a complaint to seek justice, his demand was rejected. It was this feeling of injustice that led Mohamed Bouazizi to his desperate act. 
 
 
 


The gutsy food sovereignty movement

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Participants in the food movement have actively taken on these “food security” or “food sovereignty” issues by creating substitutes to the industrialized food system including community-supported agriculture (CSA), farmers markets, local food, family and neighborhood gardens, farm-to-school initiatives, food as economic development, food policy councils, food assessment programs, and youth programming and training. And, they are beginning to make a difference in the way America eats.

Fertile inquiries: A very basic primer on creating and maintaining soil fertility

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Gardeners like to compete with each other over who has the worst soil. You wouldn’t think we’d be proud of this, but what can I say, we’re a strange bunch. One will argue for his hard clay, baked in the sun, another for her sand, without a trace of organic matter. I’ve got my own candidate for the worst soil ever – the stuff in the beds around my house.

Public health in the era of peak oil (Canada)

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For public health professionals, peak oil is significant because it will affect what are commonly called the social, environmental and economic determinants of health. For example, it will significantly affect, and require some reorganization of, our economic, transportation, and food systems. It is also important to public health professionals because it will very likely affect how health services are organized (the use of products and services dependent on petroleum permeates our health care system).

Food Connect – Robert Pekin

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As Brisbane cleans up after the floods, we’re also now hearing about the difficult times ahead. One of the major shortages ahead will be food. Not only have the farms been wiped out, but it’s going to take them years to re-establish crops and plantations. We’ve all heard about the problems at the Rocklea markets, but we haven’t heard about how food supplier, FoodConnect has been faring. Robert Pekin is the Executive Director of the Foodconnect Foundation.

Resource revolts: the year of living dangerously

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Rising food prices leading to riots, protests, and revolts, mounting oil prices, mammoth worldwide unemployment, and a collapsed recovery — it looks like the perfect set of preconditions for a global tsunami of instability and turmoil. Events in Algeria and Tunisia give us just an inkling of what this maelstrom might look like, but where and how it will next erupt, and in what form, is anyone’s guess.

 

Rising commodity prices and extreme weather events threaten global stability

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It’s not surprising then that food and energy experts are beginning to warn that 2011 could be the year of living dangerously — and so could 2012, 2013, and on into the future. Add to the soaring cost of the grains that keep so many impoverished people alive a comparable rise in oil prices — again nearing levels not seen since the peak months of 2008 — and you can already hear the first rumblings about the tenuous economic recovery being in danger of imminent collapse. Think of those rising energy prices as adding further fuel to global discontent.

Is the global economy approaching an inflection point?

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During a presentation last week a questioner asked me what I thought about predictions that gasoline prices would reach $5 a gallon this summer. I offered this critique. I said that the oil prices implied by $5-a-gallon gas could probably not be attained in such a weak global economy. And, something short of that price would probably send the economy into a tailspin.