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

In case you thought that the whole baby milk saga was over, WomensENews has a article reminding us that corporations are still encouraging women to switch to infant formula, despite abundant evidence that mothers' milk is invariably better. Is it a coincidence that, as Molly M. Ginty notes below, "half of the infant formula sold in the U.S. is distributed by the government to low-income mothers"? Read and decide. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 4 comments

Posted on 21 November, 2008 - 20:58