Next week sees World Food Day. Some of us will be trying to draw some indication about food policy out of the McCain and Obama camps by holding a big event in New York City. But in Asia, the Pesticide Action Network is telling it how it is, for nearly a billion people. Below, the press release for World Foodless Day. ... read more »

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Posted on 8 October, 2008 - 18:54

Here's a press release from the Kenyan Bunge la Mwananchi (Swahili for "the Peoples' Parliament"). Unlike many of the press releases that I put up here, this one reads like poetry. It's well worth a read, not least because it's always worth reminding oneself that, around the world, hunger is never experienced impassively. There is anger in peoples' bellies, even when there's nothing else. Via Shailja. ... read more »

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Posted on 21 September, 2008 - 22:29

The splendid George Caffentzis has kindly allowed me to share this piece, written for Turbulence in the UK.

Starvation Politics: From Ancient Egypt to the Present

... read more »

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Posted on 31 July, 2008 - 03:19

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