Three Challenges To Sustainabilty
By Arty Mangan on Jan 13, 2011
http://www.bioneers.org/campaigns/food-farming-1/blog/three-challenges-to-sustainabilty
The dominant systems in place today- energy, food, agriculture, economy, education etc.- are unsustainable, and so by definition will fail. What are some of the obstacles to designing long-term, truly sustainable systems and how do we overcome them?
Food Label Lies: How to Sort Truth From Hype
by Lisa Gosselin, Eating Well Magazine, via The Huffington Post,
http://organicconnectmag.com/wp/2010/10/food-label-lies-how-to-sort-truth-from-hype-2/
I live in Vermont. I have cows and goats as neighbors. I buy chickens from the farm a mile down my road. I’m the editor of EatingWell Magazine, for pete’s sake, which champions wholesome, local food and healthy eating. So you would think I’d know what terms like “all natural” mean. Especially when “All Natural” appears on a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, which is made exactly 10.3 miles away from my house.
Welcome to the food deserts of rural America
by Steph Larsen 22 Jan 2011 6:00 AM
http://www.grist.org/article/2011-01-21-welcome-to-the-food-deserts-of-rural-america
The paradox of our unhealthy food system is that many rural towns lack healthy food access, even as the food we eat is grown in rural places. To put it simply, our current food system is failing the very communities that grow our food... So how is it possible that people in farm country have a hard time finding food? In short, it's complicated.
There are lots of ideas out there, from the Rural Grocery Initiative at Kansas State University to federal resources laid out on the Center for Rural Affairs page on rural food access to news stories and inspiring videos about a 17-year-old who saved the grocery store in Truman, Minn.
Rural communities need entrepreneurial skills to start and run a successful business. They also need young and energetic farmers willing to grow food and teach others how to do the same.
Food-cost shocks ripple worldwide from Iowa
10:20 PM, Jan. 29, 2011
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20110130/BUSINESS/101300340/Food-cost-shocks-ripple-worldwide-from-Iowa?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Frontpage
Shoppers who have seen hamburger prices increase as much as 10 percent in recent months will pay even more for burgers, steaks and other meat products as a result of a commodities boom that is putting money in Iowa farmers' pockets while it rocks the rest of the world.
One estimate has meat prices rising 4 percent this year. Food cost increases in 2011 are likely to jolt consumers because they follow a three-year period of flat or declining prices.
The higher prices are the result of decreased supply and increased demand. As U.S. cattle and hog herds have reached their smallest levels since 1958, export demand has risen by as much as 50 percent in recent months. Another factor is an 85 percent increase since last summer in the price of corn, a commodity that is economically and emotionally symbolic to Iowa because it is the prime feedstock for cattle and hogs.
[and... who's pushing this?]
USAID Administrator Highlights Private Sector Partnerships to Reduce Hunger and Poverty at the World Economic Forum
http://www.usaid.gov/press/releases/2011/pr110128.html
WASHINGTON, DC – At the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah gathered with the CEOs of Unilever and Monsanto to support the launch of WEF's global framework titled "Realizing a New Vision for Agriculture." The show of support emphasizes USAID's leadership in creating synergies between the public and private sectors to meet the global food security challenge.
Championed by 17 global companies and supported by key public and civil-society leaders, the New Vision framework outlines priorities and examples to illustrate the role businesses can play in meeting global food and nutrition needs through accelerated, sustainable agriculture-led growth. Through the U.S. Government's Feed the Future initiative, the New Vision for Agriculture will aim to leverage private-sector investment to scale up agricultural growth in food-insecure countries. The 17 global companies that champion the initiative are: Archer Daniels Midland, BASF, Bunge, Cargill, The Coca-Cola Company, DuPont, General Mills, Kraft Foods, Metro, Monsanto Company, Nestlé, PepsiCo, SABMiller, Syngenta, Unilever, Wal-Mart Stores and Yara International.
Water Is Life
By Arty Mangan on Jun 22, 2010
http://www.bioneers.org/campaigns/food-farming-1/blog/water-is-life
Ethics and economics compete for fair distribution of water among people, industry & ecosystems as rural New Mexico communities and Central Valley California farmers face serious challenges.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Food Price Bubble? grow your own
An era of cheap food may be drawing to a close
Reuters poll: Higher grain prices will persist, spurring more global unrest
updated 1/30/2011 1:36:58 PM ET
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41311106/ns/business-retail/from/toolbar
U.S. grain prices should stay unrelentingly high this year, according to a Reuters poll, the latest sign that the era of cheap food has come to an end. U.S. corn, soybeans and wheat prices -- which surged by as much has 50 percent last year and hit their highest levels since mid-2008 -- will dip by at most 5 percent by the end of 2011, according to the poll of 16 analysts.
The forecasts suggest no quick relief for nations bedeviled by record high food costs that have stoked civil unrest. It means any extreme weather event in a grains-producing part of the world could send prices soaring further. The expectations may also strengthen importers' resolve to build bigger inventories after a year in which stocks of corn and soybeans in the United States -- the world's top exporter -- dwindled to their lowest level in decades.
Rampant Speculation Inflated Food Price Bubble
By Stephen Leahy
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54274
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jan 28, 2011 (IPS) - Billions of dollars are being made by investors in a speculative "food bubble" that's created record food prices, starving millions and destabilising countries, experts now conclude.
Wall Street investment firms and banks, along with their kin in London and Europe, were responsible for the technology dot-com bubble, the stock market bubble, and the recent U.S. and UK housing bubbles. They extracted enormous profits and their bonuses before the inevitable collapse of each.
Now they've turned to basic commodities. The result? At a time when there has been no significant change in the global food supply or in food demand, the average cost of buying food shot up 32 percent from June to December 2010, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Nothing but price speculation can explain wheat prices jumping 70 percent from June to December last year when global wheat stocks were stable, experts say.
"There is no food shortage in the world. Food is simply priced out of the reach of the world's poorest people," said Robert Fox of Oxfam Canada in reference to the estimated one billion people who go hungry. "Hunger is not a food production problem. It is an income problem," Fox told IPS.
The conditions that created the 2007-08 price hike and food riots have not changed, he said. It is no surprise to see record-high food prices and riots again in Egypt, Algeria, Jordan and elsewhere.
Weather used to be the big determinant of food prices, but not anymore. Trillions of dollars have been pumped into food commodities markets in the last few years thanks to deregulation of commodities trading in the U.S., reports Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.
In an analysis of the food price crisis of 2007-08, De Schutter documents how the U.S. government passed legislation in 2000 deregulating the food commodity markets and for the first time permitted speculation on speculation.
Here's how it used to work. In January, Farmer Brown would sign a contract to sell his 2011 future crop to a grain trader like industry giant Cargill for 100 dollars a tonne. In the fall, Cargill would then sell Farmer Brown's grain at whatever price they could get to a bakery or feedlot company for cattle. These "futures" contracts insulated both the farmer and the grain trader from wild price fluctuations.
Now, after the passage of the U.S. Commodity Futures Modernisation Act in 2000, Cargill could sell Farmer's Brown "futures" contract to an investment bank on Wall Street for 120 dollars a tonne, who could in turn sell it to a European investment company for 150 dollars a tonne and then sell it to a U.S. public pension fund for 175 dollars a tonne and so on. Add in some complex financial instruments like 'derivatives', 'index funds', 'hedges', and 'swaps', and food become part of yet another highly-profitable speculative bubble.
Reuters poll: Higher grain prices will persist, spurring more global unrest
updated 1/30/2011 1:36:58 PM ET
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41311106/ns/business-retail/from/toolbar
U.S. grain prices should stay unrelentingly high this year, according to a Reuters poll, the latest sign that the era of cheap food has come to an end. U.S. corn, soybeans and wheat prices -- which surged by as much has 50 percent last year and hit their highest levels since mid-2008 -- will dip by at most 5 percent by the end of 2011, according to the poll of 16 analysts.
The forecasts suggest no quick relief for nations bedeviled by record high food costs that have stoked civil unrest. It means any extreme weather event in a grains-producing part of the world could send prices soaring further. The expectations may also strengthen importers' resolve to build bigger inventories after a year in which stocks of corn and soybeans in the United States -- the world's top exporter -- dwindled to their lowest level in decades.
Rampant Speculation Inflated Food Price Bubble
By Stephen Leahy
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54274
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jan 28, 2011 (IPS) - Billions of dollars are being made by investors in a speculative "food bubble" that's created record food prices, starving millions and destabilising countries, experts now conclude.
Wall Street investment firms and banks, along with their kin in London and Europe, were responsible for the technology dot-com bubble, the stock market bubble, and the recent U.S. and UK housing bubbles. They extracted enormous profits and their bonuses before the inevitable collapse of each.
Now they've turned to basic commodities. The result? At a time when there has been no significant change in the global food supply or in food demand, the average cost of buying food shot up 32 percent from June to December 2010, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Nothing but price speculation can explain wheat prices jumping 70 percent from June to December last year when global wheat stocks were stable, experts say.
"There is no food shortage in the world. Food is simply priced out of the reach of the world's poorest people," said Robert Fox of Oxfam Canada in reference to the estimated one billion people who go hungry. "Hunger is not a food production problem. It is an income problem," Fox told IPS.
The conditions that created the 2007-08 price hike and food riots have not changed, he said. It is no surprise to see record-high food prices and riots again in Egypt, Algeria, Jordan and elsewhere.
Weather used to be the big determinant of food prices, but not anymore. Trillions of dollars have been pumped into food commodities markets in the last few years thanks to deregulation of commodities trading in the U.S., reports Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.
In an analysis of the food price crisis of 2007-08, De Schutter documents how the U.S. government passed legislation in 2000 deregulating the food commodity markets and for the first time permitted speculation on speculation.
Here's how it used to work. In January, Farmer Brown would sign a contract to sell his 2011 future crop to a grain trader like industry giant Cargill for 100 dollars a tonne. In the fall, Cargill would then sell Farmer Brown's grain at whatever price they could get to a bakery or feedlot company for cattle. These "futures" contracts insulated both the farmer and the grain trader from wild price fluctuations.
Now, after the passage of the U.S. Commodity Futures Modernisation Act in 2000, Cargill could sell Farmer's Brown "futures" contract to an investment bank on Wall Street for 120 dollars a tonne, who could in turn sell it to a European investment company for 150 dollars a tonne and then sell it to a U.S. public pension fund for 175 dollars a tonne and so on. Add in some complex financial instruments like 'derivatives', 'index funds', 'hedges', and 'swaps', and food become part of yet another highly-profitable speculative bubble.
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