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Globalization 
Wed Nov 25, 2009 at 21:05:15 PM PST
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I recently met up with one of the masterminds of the Green Revolution - a man who was mentored by Norman Borlaug himself for decades. He told me that when the Green Revolutionaries first got to India, they found that the Indians were growing all of the wrong crops and crop varieties in all of the wrong places. Oh, those stupid Indians! You have to wonder how an ancient civilization managed to make it to present day without starving into oblivion if it can't feed itself.
As it turns out, once upon a time, India could feed itself. The book Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis tells the story of how the British robbed the Indians of their wealth, wrecked their agricultural system (in order to serve the needs of industrial Britain), and then watched as millions of Indian people starved. The book also covers other countries - mainly China and Brazil, but also African nations, and the Philippines. Each nation has a similar story to tell, but for this diary I am going to focus on India.
In the last quarter of the 19th century, there was a series of abnormally strong El Nino cycles. Famine erupted around the world, in each of the places I named above. Some of the disaster is due to El Nino, but the magnitude of the disaster - the difference between a drought and a famine - is manmade.
This story is very relevant now, sadly. Except now it's the U.S. (on behalf of multinational corporations) who is plundering the developing world.
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Thu Dec 04, 2008 at 13:43:33 PM PST
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[cross-posted from unbossed]
From the "What Are They Smoking?" department, this just in: The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, said yesterday that he is "very confident that the food available to customers here in China is high quality and safe." (Also reported here.) The comments by Ed Schafer included no mention of the melamine contamination crisis in China that sickened thousands of infants there.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong reports finding illegal levels of melamine in eggs imported from China. The levels, as high as 4.7 parts per million, are nearly twice the US limit for melamine in food for human consumption (except for a 1 ppm limit for infants). Notably, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, along with the Food and Drug Administration, has regulatory authority over eggs sold in the U.S.
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Sun Nov 23, 2008 at 18:40:24 PM PST
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After reading A Hungry Thanksgiving for Many Americans by OrangeClouds115, I started thinking that in spite of the fact that many will be going hungry on Thanksgiving (like every other day) how may of us who will be eating, will be getting exposed to unsafe food (like every other day) ? We are told we have the safest food supply in the world. Do we really?
I suppose it depends on the comparison. Somalia? Kenya ? In developing countries close to 2 million children die every year from contaminated food and water. So I guess we can say we have a safer food system than theirs, wow! How do we fare compared to other industrialized countries?
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Fri Aug 22, 2008 at 08:50:49 AM PDT
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By WeBuyItGreen: promoting green living and fair trade
This is the first in a five-part series of articles that compare three alternatives to the traditional coffee trade industry: fair trade, direct trade, and Starbucks' C.A.F.E. program. However, before we compare these three alternatives to one another, let's take a look at why fair trade coffee was created in the first place. What conditions in the traditional coffee industry have created the need for fair trade, or some alternative that resembles it?
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Tue Jul 22, 2008 at 09:11:02 AM PDT
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Haven't we eaten crap long enough?
Food is a wonderful thing, especially when it's local, fresh and nutritious. Despite the trials and tribulations of farming that I seem to dwell upon in my Northern Agrarian Monthly column, farming is a great way of life and it is also, (or at least it should be) about growing fresh local and nutritious food. Too often farming is not about food or ending hunger it is, more often than not, about corporate profit.
We often think that farmers markets are a product of our times as they spring up in cities and small towns across the country. Truth is, farmers markets are the traditional way of selling agricultural produce around the world.
The really nice aspect of this transaction is that the farmer receives just compensation for his product and the eater can be assured the product is fresh, local and grown in a manner that is acceptable to all. If these criteria are not met, the consumer can look for another farmer whose products better suit his or her needs.
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Sat Jul 05, 2008 at 08:03:17 AM PDT
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Here's a sober statistic: today we produce more food than ever, yet more than two in ten people are hungry. And while more than 800 million people are undernourished, they are outnumbered by 1.4 billion who are overweight. Feeling queasy? We should. How about this: According to the "The Prudential Soggy Lettuce Report, 2004", the average consumer throws away £424 worth of food every year. That's 4 years ago. You can rest assured that in the US that figure can be multiplied by 2 even 3. Globalization, via the food and chemical companies, supermarkets and transporters as well as government subsidies have to carry some of the blame.
Cross-posted at DKos. Follow me over the jump.
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