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Organic sites on food-safety bills (HR 875, etc.)
Bart Anderson, Energy Bulletin
The blogosphere has been hopping with concern about several food policy bills wending their way through Congress. It’s been hard for me to separate the truth from (well-justified) paranoia. Here are some articles from organic food groups that seem to have a balanced view:
Food safety policy update (Community Alliance with Family Farmers – CAFF))
CCOF on food safeby
Grays River Grange #124 on HR 875
Capitol Advantage on Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009
NOFA Policy Report
Food Safety Hysteria Obscures Genuine Concerns About Draft Legislation (Organic Farming Research Foundation – OFAN)
(13 April 2009)
G8 warns of hunger threat to global stability
Javier Blas, Financial Times
The world faces the prospect of a permanent food crisis endangering international stability if countries do not take “immediate interventions in agriculture”, according to the policy document for the first Group of Eight ministerial meeting on agriculture.
The report, entitled “The global challenge: to reduce food emergency”, warns that global food production needs to double by 2050 to feed a surging population while at the same time dealing with “pronounced climate changes” and higher input costs.
“Without immediate interventions in agriculture and agri-marketing systems, the 2007 crisis will become structural in only a few decades,” the document, drafted by the G8’s Italian presidency and seen by the Financial Times, warns.
It adds that a further food crisis will have “serious consequences not merely on business relations but equally on social and international relations, which in turn will impact directly on the security and stability of world politics”.
The warning comes ahead of the very first meeting of the G8 leading economies’ agriculture ministers later this month in northern Italy. The gathering was prompted by last year’s spike in prices for agricultural commodities such as wheat and rice, which triggered riots in more than 30 countries from Haiti to Bangladesh.
(7 April 2009)
Related www.countercurrents.org/lee100409.htm. It doesn’t look like the report itself is available online. KS
Walker’s World: New food crisis looms
Martin Walker, UPI
We tend to forget that the worldwide plunge into recession last year was the result of three separate phenomena that combined to breed disaster. The financial crisis was joined by a food crisis and a fuel crisis as the prices of food and energy soared, triggering food riots across the world.
And now there are ominous signs of another food crisis in the making this year, spurred in part by the ongoing credit crunch that has made it difficult for farmers to get loans.
“I think the world would like to focus on one crisis at a time, but we really can’t afford to,” warned Josette Sheeran, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program. Food supplies are tight and prices still high, she said, and more people in poor countries are unable to afford what they need because of the recession.
“These are not separate crises. The food crisis and the financial one are linking and compounding,” she noted, adding that food shortages often trigger political instability. “I’m really putting out the warning that we’re in an era now where supplies are still very tight, very low and very expensive.”
Alarm bells are starting to ring about another food crisis this summer. Last week’s acreage report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that 7 million fewer acres were being planted for all crops. This came after the USDA’s January report that noted that winter wheat acreage was down 7 percent.
(6 April 2009)
