The ever-excellent InterPress Service reports on a new UN report on whether it's a good idea to privatise seeds. The answer: not if you want poor farmers to benefit. The report, written by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Food, is available here. Full disclosure: I advise the Rapporteur, but didn't advise on this report. More below the fold. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 3 comments

Posted on 28 October, 2009 - 14:57

Meanwhile, in Argentina, Marie Trigona writes about Kraft's union busting tactics. The moment you make use of your right to organise is the moment it's taken away. Marie writes:

Mass firings at Kraft Foods' plant in Argentina sparked protests throughout the nation, and ignited a new wave of worker organizing. In August, Kraft fired 160 workers after they went on strike to demand proper health measures at the company's factory in suburban Buenos Aires during the swine flu epidemic in Argentina. Most of the fired workers were active union members; almost all of the factory's union delegates were fired. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 1 comment

Posted on 9 October, 2009 - 15:31

The French philosopher Michel Foucault is often quoted as saying "My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad." His critics accused him of ethical paralysis, where nothing could be done, for fear of danger. Foucault's response was this: "everything is not equally dangerous."

Of course, the trick is to know which things are more dangerous than others. And, in the food world, new information on the dangers of food comes thick and fast. Not all of it is reliable, of course. But a good source is the University of California, San Francisco, where Robert Lustig recently announced that fructose was a poison. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 4 comments

Posted on 27 June, 2009 - 06:16

Previously at Stuffed and Starved, we've had posts with names like Let them Eat Rats and Let them Eat Mud. Today, it's Let them Eat Cash - the title of Fred Kaufman's fine new Harpers article on the Gates Foundation's answer to the problems of hunger in Africa.

The article is only available to subscribers, but highly recommended, not least for this splendid exchange where Fred - in a first I think for any journalist - actually manages to call Bill Gates on his shit. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 28 comments

Posted on 22 May, 2009 - 18:14

Once again, apologies for the lengthy intermission between posts here at Stuffed and Starved. I’ve been working my next book, which has taken a little more time and travel than I’d have liked. But the results will, I think, be worth it. My most recent research trip involved going to visit the Zapatistas in Chiapas, which means that your intrepid writer has recently returned from Mexico. There are many stories to share, and if you’re in New York, you can hear me talking about it on WBAI tomorrow morning, or at the Brooklyn Food Conference on Saturday.

If you’re not, here’s the roundup of articles that nicely pull the different strands of what’s happening together. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 37 comments

Posted on 1 May, 2009 - 04:46

Here's a film that's well worth watching. It's long, and the framing device of a woman Googling away her ignorance about one of the world's most powerful corporations is, I think, a little crass. But perhaps because the film maker seems so naive, she has been able to get some of the most important men behind the scenes of the pesticide and genetically modified seed business to explain how they came to wield such power. I doubt that a more polished film crew would have been able to draw out some of the confessions that appear in this nearly-two-hour documentary. Highly recommended.

Raj's blog | 19 comments

Posted on 7 April, 2009 - 22:36

Here's another excellent report from Grain, about the agricultural 'aid' to Afghanistan. In Stuffed and Starved I wrote about how, after the Korean War, the US sent large quantities of wheat to Korea. Since wheat had never been part of the Korean diet, the US had to invest in 'education', so that a taste for everything from pasta to bread might be planted in the barren Korean palate. And successfully too. Consumption today is four times higher, per person, than it was in 1961. And much of that wheat is now purchased from the US.

Can we expect something to happen in Afghanistan? To borrow a campaign slogan: Yes we can. [via DM].

Here's why:

Soya has never been grown in Afghanistan and it doesn’t form part of the country’s culinary tradition, but a new programme, supposedly devised to combat malnutrition, plans to change all that. USAID has funded Nutrition and Education International (NEI), set up by Nestlé, to teach Afghans to sow and eat soya beans. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 20 comments

Posted on 10 March, 2009 - 14:53

JJ Tiziou Photography - please donate!

I’m back from a trip to visit the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida, as part of a delegation of food justice activists. For a full report, do read the thoughts of the excellent Tom Philpott. To supplement his report, though, I thought I'd jot down a couple of impressions.

Although I’d never been there before, our guided tour around the town of Immokalee felt familiar. Immokalee means ‘my home’ in Seminole. And it was peoples’ homes that I’d seen before, in another country. The trailers where tomato-pickers sleep reminded me of South African townships, filled with densely packed low-income houses, built by the government to keep the supply of black labour close, but not too close, to the cities where their work was required.

Except that the conditions in Apartheid era township houses were better than in Immokalee. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 184 comments

Posted on 7 March, 2009 - 17:15

From the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida comes this appeal. Click here to do the needful, and see the full appeal below.

If you could help end modern-day slavery in Florida's fields with an email, would you?

Please take a moment to send an email to Florida Governor Charlie Crist, asking him to take a stand against modern-day slavery in our food system.

Just this past December, farm labor supervisors were sentenced in federal court for enslaving tomato pickers, including beating, chaining, and locking them inside a truck at night. Unfortunately, this case is not the only one; since 1997, the U.S. Department of Justice has successfully prosecuted seven cases of slavery involving well over 1,000 farmworkers in Florida. Additional cases are currently under investigation. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 38 comments

Posted on 6 February, 2009 - 13:07

Rob Weissman at Multinational Monitor has the lowdown on the 10 worst corporations, and I'm pleased that he included an agribusiness giant among them - Cargill. Read more (including quotes from your blogger) here.

Raj's blog | 1 comment

Posted on 5 January, 2009 - 00:52