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-- Raj
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So, the FAO Summit is over. I didn't think to write in advance that it'd be a whitewash because, well, it was so very obviously going to be.
The US went in with three big ideas - food aid, vague promises of investment in agriculture, and biotechnology. ... read more »
Posted on 5 June, 2008 - 22:41
My friend Patrick Wilkinson has put together a fine video about the upcoming spraying of large parts of California in the ongoing war on the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM, pronounced el-bam).
As Patrick's film suggests, there'd better be something mighty scary about this moth to warrant monthly aerial spraying over most of Northern California over the next five years.
So what's the danger? Will the moth summon forth the apocalypse? No. Is it the harbinger of some strange Africanized disease? Not even. Will it ravage California's agriculture? Kinda. But not actually by eating anything or laying anything or causing anything to be damaged.
The reason LBAM is a menace is, er, NAFTA. ... read more »
Posted on 31 May, 2008 - 04:03
Food and Agricultural Organization: Prices High for the Foreseeable
Hot off the presses, the Food and Agricultural Organization and OECD's latest on agricultural food price rises.
In short, beef and pork could be 20 percent higher in nominal terms, wheat could be up to 60 high dearer, and the cost of vegetable oils might rise by 80 percent.
Click for large version ... read more »
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Posted on 29 May, 2008 - 17:08
This morning, I had a fantastic conversation with Brahm Ahmadi, Eric Holt-Gimenez and John Bela who’s working on designing the San Francisco Victory Garden that we’ll be digging outside City Hall later this year.
In our chat, we talked about the key constraints to successful urban agriculture, and about how the urban agriculture of the future will involve a commitment not just to production, but to a new food system. I’ll be writing up the meat of our conversation in a couple of pieces that I’ll post next week. ... read more »
Posted on 23 May, 2008 - 01:38
This is What DewMocracy Looks Like
File under: You Can't Make this Shit Up.
I'm in Seattle at the moment, for the first time since the protests against the World Trade Organization in 1999. And a friend at the Community Alliance for Global Justice passed on this little nugget.
PepsiCo's Mountain Dew brand is deciding which of three new flavours of soda to unleash on the market: Revolution, Voltage or SuperNova. You, dear consumer, can decide in a process that they've dubbed "DewMocracy". ... read more »
Posted on 10 May, 2008 - 22:54
I've been a very delinquent blogger of late, and am likely to be so for the next couple of weeks. Quite unexpectedly, I've been asked to testify in front of the House Financial Services Committee in a couple of weeks time about the food crisis, and the World Bank's role in it. Veterans of this blog will know that I've already said, in print, that the head of the World Bank makes me gag and, on Canadian telly, that the World Bank is full of shit. I'll be reining in my potty mouth and putting together some pointed testimony over the next few days, so I'll be not spending quite as much time here as I'd like. I blame the government. ... read more »
Posted on 3 May, 2008 - 19:13
Civil Penalties of Fraud Assessed by the United States Internal Revenue Service against corporations
Source:TracIRS
Those crying out for food prices to be fixed should be careful what they wish for. In many countries, dozens of corporations are under investigation for price fixing. In South Africa, the Competition Commission is going after milk producers. In Spain, the National Competition Commission has gone after retailers selling milk, eggs and bread. In the UK, the Office of Fair Trading has gone after major retailers like Tesco and Asda/Wal*Mart in a widespread investigation into price fixing in milk, food and toiletries.
The United States seems peculiarly immune to this kind of behaviour, though, and stands as a beacon for corporations in other parts of the world. The trend from 1999 to 2004 is that civil penalties both for fraud and negligence have halved. This could mean that companies are now twice as well behaved as they were under Clinton ... read more »
Posted on 29 April, 2008 - 14:21
If Josette Sheeran, head of the United Nations World Food Programme, is to be believed the current food crisis is “a silent tsunami which knows no borders sweeping the world.”
That’s just wishful thinking.
If the tsunami were really silent, then it’d be much easier for cretins to propose trade liberalisation as a remedy, or for Gordon Brown to support genetically modified crops as a way of responding to the disaster.
If the tsunami were silent, these ideas would float unopposed and uncontested. ... read more »
Posted on 24 April, 2008 - 16:06
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