I have to say, I'm not a huge Chavista. I'm *very* pleased with the social change and equality that he's brought to Venezuela, but I've just got a thing about any model of politics that is ultimately hostage to the good intentions of just one guy. But he's come out with the goods on the world food crisis, calling it 'a massacre of the poor'. He's dead right, of course. What gets to me is that even in a good year, 850 million people were going hungry, thousands of whom died. Was that not a massacre too?

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Posted on 23 April, 2008 - 06:35

I just recorded a radio segment for The World with the splendid Lisa Mullins. I was there to talk about food riots. Unfortunately, I wasn't terribly coherent and, despite the skilled editing of the folk there, I worry that my butchery of the argument I was trying to make cannot be fixed.

I was trying to talk about Egypt, Haiti and Senegal, three places from which reporters were sending news. So here's my attempt at restitution - a short guide on how to think about the food riots. ... read more »

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Posted on 10 April, 2008 - 17:44

So here's a response from Via Campesina to the food price crisis. I imagine that in the wake of the food riots, the temptation to say 'told you so' must have been overwhelming to the representatives of farmers' and landless peoples' movements around the world.

But instead they've an admirable critique of some of the dominant myths about the way our food comes to us, about who wins and loses from the high prices, and what to do about it. Their solutions are ones that have been proposed for decades. The question is whether anyone will listen to them now, or whether the shock doctrine will prevail here too, with food corporations seeking to privatise the food system yet further. ... read more »

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Posted on 10 April, 2008 - 13:15

The price of rice recently increased by 30% in a single day. But not everywhere. Places affected were in South East Asia, places like the Philippines and Indonesia, home to a new and desperate phenomenon rice suicides.

East Asia hasn't, however, been affected. In China, the prices are barely up at all, and they're lower than last year. This compares to a 200% increase in the Philippines over the same period. South Korea is opening its grain reserves to keep prices down. Japan isn't suffering at all, by the sound of things. ... read more »

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Posted on 5 April, 2008 - 23:20

Food First, the Institute at which I'm a Fellow in Oakland, California, has come out with some fine material over the past week. First, they've put out a fantastic take-down of biofuels (more properly agrofuels), in a report with the perfect title: When Renewable Isn't Sustainable.

They've also got this handy list of food riots, to which we can add the travails in Argentina (thanks to Mary Robertson for sending news about this). I'll be writing about the other omission from this list in the next post: rice riots. ... read more »

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Posted on 5 April, 2008 - 22:49

The Financial Times again distinguishes itself by being the only major newspaper to take the global food price rises at all seriously. On Monday, front page above the fold, an article on the UN's call for $500m in food aid to avoid famine. Yesterday, on rice rationing in the Philippines. Today, front page again, the announcement that the price of rice, a staple for over 2.5 billion people, rose 30% in a single day. ... read more »

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Posted on 28 March, 2008 - 21:51

Frances Moore Lappé has a fine piece in The Nation this week, reminding us of The New Deal. She points out that

The first two economic rights [in the New Deal] assured a “useful” job that paid enough to provide “adequate food and clothing.” The third guaranteed farmers a high enough return for their crops to provide their families with a “decent living.” To begin, [Roosevelt] asked Congress to pass a “cost of food law,” putting a price floor under farmers and a price ceiling on the cost of food necessities for all. ... read more »

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Posted on 24 March, 2008 - 17:39

Okay, it's time to clear up the backlog of unposted bits and pieces. This one makes it to the front page because it's got an ace visual: a wee chart that shows you which major US food conglomerate owns your favourite crunchy hippy brand of processed food. It's put together by the folk at Good Magazine and it's a healthy reminder that there are big big bucks to be made from selling us food that looks almost exactly like it'll make a difference to the world. ... read more »

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Posted on 15 March, 2008 - 19:53

My good friend Marco Flavio Marinucci, founder of Cook Here and Now, wrote me this morning with news of two podcasts, Deconstructing Dinner and Beyond Organic that readers of Stuffed and Starved might find interesting. I'll be listening to them on the plane to Canada, and will report back soon...

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Posted on 9 March, 2008 - 22:05

International women's day commemorates, among other things, the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York. Same town, six years later, women were on the barricades again. America's support in the first world war extended to selling food to Europe. This drove up prices. Women organised. Unable to use traditional democratic channels (the nineteenth amendment wasn't passed until 1920), they used street democracy. One protester, at an East Side Jewish Women's League protest put it like this: "with $14 a week we used to just make a living. With prices as they are now, we could not even live on $2 a day. We would just exist." It's a sentiment that would be all too familiar to women surviving today's price rises. ... read more »

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Posted on 9 March, 2008 - 05:17