Recent USAID Speech

by: Jill Richardson

Tue Jan 25, 2011 at 21:48:03 PM PST

Feed the Future is an initiative started by the Obama administration to help poor countries produce more food. Supposedly, the focus is on small farmers and women. I have had a rather difficult time getting my hands on the specific information I am interested in, which is: what is USAID actually doing to help? Which types of agricultural practices are being promoted? Is our "help" actually helping? And that's where I've had a hard time finding answers.

From this speech and the Q&A that follows (you can read excerpts that deal with agriculture below), you can see that USAID has been pushing nitrogen fertilizer on poor African farmers, they are working hand in hand with the World Bank as well as corporations (they frequently mention public-private partnerships although this speech does not mention who the partnerships are with), and the quote I found most informative is: "what we're trying to do is create kind of commercially viable agriculture sectors in these countries." In other words, they are not merely trying to help farmers grow enough to eat, they want to help farmers grow enough to sell. Also noted in the speech is a big announcement of a new "private sector partnership" that will be revealed this week.

The Latest in the U.S. Effort to "Feed the World"

by: Jill Richardson

Fri May 28, 2010 at 14:48:01 PM PDT

This past week, USAID head Rajiv Shah gave a speech at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. This heavily corporate funded group came up with their own study to counter the IAASTD report findings and to say what the U.S. wanted to hear. In short, they recommend a continuation of industrial agriculture and an increase in biotechnology and genetic engineering and they do not address the harm free trade has on developing nations.

More on their recent event below.

USAID's Feed the Future Frankenfoods Initiative

by: Jill Richardson

Wed May 05, 2010 at 08:32:52 AM PDT

Rajiv Shah, Formerly of the Gates Foundation, Named to Head USAID

by: Jill Richardson

Tue Nov 10, 2009 at 15:29:04 PM PST

The choice of Shah is a crystal clear sign of the direction the Obama Administration plans to go on fighting hunger. The majority of the world has signed onto a UN/World Bank study (the IAASTD report)  calling for agroecological farming methods as the way to solve world hunger. The IAASTD report says that GMOs are not the way forward to help hunger among smallholders in Africa and South Asia and that our free trade agenda actually harms these farmers. The Gates Foundation (and presumably, Shah) takes the opposite view - against the conclusions of the 400 scientists from around the world who worked on the IAASTD report - that GMOs are the way to go. And, obviously, Obama is following Clinton and Bush as a die-hard free-trader.

This is not unexpected, but it's bad news. Bad, bad, bad news.

Sampler Platter 05.26.09

by: Jill Richardson

Tue May 26, 2009 at 22:27:32 PM PDT

• The EPA said no to California's aerial spraying of 2 pesticides to combat the light brown apple moth. It's good news but not good enough... CA will probably find something else nasty to spray.

• Our calls on the Obama admin to put somebody who isn't an industry shill (and not named Michael Doyle) in charge of food safety at USDA are being heard. Good.

• Check out this new food and climate report from the Post Carbon Institute (PDF).

• Talk about making a win-win! A program by the Wholesome Wave Foundation allows food stamp recipients to get $2 of food for every $1 in food stamps they spend at farmers markets. Farmers win & so do eaters. Yay!

• You know, being out of work as I am, I'm not one to suggest that the recession is good for us. But check out this headline that the recession means more money spent on gardens and less on cigarettes and alcohol. So I guess the next time I look at my bank balance and cry, I should tell myself that it's not all bad.

• Dave Murphy gives us his $.02 on the new movie Food Inc. We're still in countdown mode until this film is in theatres. The date to mark on your calendar is June 12.

• Normally I'm no biofuels fan, but Tom Laskawy gives us an interesting idea: what if narcotics producers switched over to making biofuels instead? It's hard to argue against that.

• Here's another good one from Laskawy - his comments on Obama USDA nominee Rajiv Shah. Laskawy's a lot nicer about this than I am. He doesn't use any four-letter words.

• Oops. Los Angeles schools were found violating anti-junk food rules.

• Fooducate tells us about recession shopping trends. Like reducing impulse buys, cooking at home instead of eating out, and switching from sit-down restaurants to fast food ones or from grocery stores to superstores.

• However bad your food is, just be glad you're not Russian. I'm not dissing vodka and borscht - according to this article, Russians too poor to buy regular food are instead opting for spoiled food.

Fuuuuu....dge... (Rajiv Shah Nominated to USDA)

by: Jill Richardson

Fri Apr 17, 2009 at 15:30:26 PM PDT

The nominee is Rajiv Shah as Under Secretary of Research, Education and Economics and Chief Scientist at USDA. And who's Rajiv Shah? He's the Director of the Agricultural Development Program at the Gates Foundation. In other words, he's the guy heading up all of the bad shit going on around the world.

And... here's what Vilsack thinks about him:

Dr. Rajiv Shah is a globally recognized leader in science, health and economics ... disciplines that are critical to the missions of this department," said Vilsack. As Director of the Agricultural Development Program at The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Rajiv has a profound influence on helping the world's poor lead healthy and productive lives. With his extensive background, Rajiv will help guide advances in food safety, nutrition, energy and climate, agricultural productivity, and global food security-to name a few of USDA's challenges.

I don't know much about Shah as a person, but I am incredibly frustrated by the destructive and paternalistic approach the Gates Foundation has taken to "help" the developing world feed itself. They are pushing to continue and expand all of the worst of Western agriculture into the developing world, to essentially privatize the means of food production. And they are doing this despite the harmful results the same approach has already had in other parts of the world. So now they'll have their man on the inside. Terrific.

UPDATE: Here is what the NY Times had to say about Shah.