Italy

An Introduction to Summitry

Raj — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:57:14 -0600

The excellent ETC Group has just come up with a fine bit of social science that cuts through the guff of the recent FAO Food Summit in Rome.

As part of their 'translator' series, in which they parse the meaning of UN documents for the general public, they've come out with their latest report, Another "Failure-as-usual" Food Summit.

Alongside the fine analysis of the substance of the summit document, they've compared and contrasted the final declarations of the Food Summits in 1996, 2002, and 2008. The findings are striking:

FAO: More Free Trade, More Hunger

Raj — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:47:59 -0600

Esther Vivas sent in this fine analysis of the FAO's summit in Rome. More below the fold. ... read more »

Only Intellectuals Love Poverty

Raj — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:16:51 -0700

I've been having a fine exchange with Eric Holt-Gimenez at Food First about Slow Food. Slow Food is an idea about which I'm a little ambivalent. It was founded on some fairly important political principles, particularly around the politics of taste. Slow Food's founding question: 'why can't the masses have pleasure when they eat, why is it only the rich who can afford to eat well'?

The response was to observe that workers need two things to bring this kind of pleasure within reach - time and money. So they organised, working with unions to increase agricultural labourers' wages, and fighting for a two-hour lunch break in which to enjoy food.

Now, as Eric notes, Slow Food has increasingly become a circle jerk of olive oil and blue cheese fantasists, moving away quite sharply from its political roots. ... read more »