Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Clinton links food, energy and financial woes
Press release, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), UN
Former US President Bill Clinton urged the international community to stop using the global financial crisis “as an excuse” to avoid dealing with escalating hunger, adding that over the long term, only agricultural self-sufficiency could take a significant bite out of world hunger and stave off future financial woes.
President Clinton made the remarks during his keynote speech at a World Food Day commemoration at UN Headquarters, marking the 63rd anniversary of the foundation of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
“Food is not a commodity like others,” said Clinton, who heads an international non-governmental organization bearing his name.
“We should go back to a policy of maximum agricultural self-sufficiency,” Clinton said. While there would always be a global market for crops like rice, wheat and corn, he added, “it is crazy for us to think we can develop a lot of these countries where I work without increasing their capacity to feed themselves and treating food like it was a color television set.”
Clinton called for an increase in fair-trade provisions, direct marketing schemes and other policies designed to level the playing field between agricultural producers in developed countries and the mostly small farmers who are responsible for the lion’s share of worldwide food production.
(24 October 2008)
I don’t think I’ve seen a centrist like President Clinton speak in favor of agricultural self-sufficiency. This talk seems to be a departure his usual pro-globalization stance. -BA
What does oil have to do with the price of bread? A lot
Doug Saunders, Globe and Mail
Our eyes have been fixed in horror on the price of oil, the price of gold, the price of the Canadian dollar, the price of bank shares, the price of our house, the price of credit. Fair enough: These are the yardsticks of the economic crisis, the gauges of the world’s health.
But we ought to keep our eyes on the price of a loaf of bread. This, too, has been fluctuating wildly: The global price soared this spring to almost double what it was a year before, and then plunged over the summer and autumn by 40 per cent, along with most other food prices – proving, in a way we have never seen before, that food is a global commodity, completely linked to petroleum, metal and other tradable goods.
We’re aware of this, usually in a marginal way, when we go to the supermarket or look at our weekly spending, but its connection to the larger crisis is elusive.
We might know, on some level, that the world’s billion very poor people, who often spend up to 90 per cent of their household budget on food when it’s expensive, are dramatically affected by these undulating prices.
(25 October 2008)
Food for the Soul
Thomas Moore, Resurgence
Food has a profound capacity for meaning and fostering community.
FROM A CERTAIN point of view, there is no such thing as food. Not objectively. Not for human beings who cook and eat. The food we grow, prepare and consume is full of fantasy, teeming with imagination and meaning. Our imagination of food is inseparable from the food itself.
At the personal level, food is closely connected to that central power of the human soul, memory. In my practice of psychotherapy I have witnessed several people recover their vitality and connect to their families by returning to foods and recipes they enjoyed as children. One man told me that he was deeply depressed after moving from the area where he grew up. His new home was known for its dairy. “All they eat is cheese here,” he told me with distaste. Eventually, he sent back home for familiar food and recipes, and soon his depression lifted.
The mere smell of food can send you back in time to an earlier part of your life and give you a bittersweet feeling for the past and wishes for the present. Specific recipes and their aromas connect with specific places and times. Food serves memory, which deepens experience…
(November/December issue 2008)
Mediterranean paradox: poverty creates a healthy and delicious cuisine
Tom Philpott, Gristmill
Original: More notes from Terra Madre
… While the main part of the Salone del Gusto focused on prestigious Italian producers of well-established stuff — think Parmigiano-Reggiano and Prosciutto di Parma — the Presidia part focused on quirky products. And the producers hailed from all over the world, including, but not limited to, Italy.
And it’s here where I think Slow Food has done essential work — not just in terms of gastronomy, but also in terms of future sustainability.
Here’s a paradox of the modern food world: Italy, now universally hailed as a culinary nation par excellence, was until very recently largely a poor country. Indeed, the entire Mediterranean region — celebrated for its healthy and delicious cuisine — was riddled for centuries with a stunning lack of food.
Clifford A. Wright’s ironically titled A Mediterranean Feast documents the crushing poverty under which the great majority of Mediterraneans labored under for centuries. Under heavy population pressure and with few resources, Mediterranean peasants worked miracles in the field and in the kitchen to survive.
And in doing so, they created the diet now so widely admired. As we enter an era marked by population pressure and increasingly scarce resources, we may well have vital lessons to learn from these artisan peasants. Slow Food deserves great credit for fighting to preserve remaining traditions from this era.
(24 October 2008)
Gristmill columnist Tom Philpott is starting to get into the Terra Madre food blowout in Turin, Italy. -BA
