Food and Agriculture

Philly Immigrant Workers Organize To Change The Restaurant Industry

November 21, 2022 Melissa Moriarty, Labor Notes. Organize! Food and Agriculture, Immigrants, Restaurants, Worker Rights and Jobs

The first time Yuris Reyes asked for paid sick leave, she was turned down. “My bosses told me that paid sick leave was only for the managers and not something I was entitled to,” says the Philadelphia restaurant worker. That didn’t sound right to Yuris, who is a member of El Comité de Trabajadorxs de Restaurante (the Restaurant Workers Committee), a local advocacy group. She filed an anonymous complaint about her employer with the city of Philadelphia, which has had a paid sick leave law on the books since 2015. The next time she was ill and needed a leave, Yuris showed her employers a link to the relevant city law. “I had fever-like symptoms and I called out sick. When I came back, I was paid for all my sick time, without an issue in my next check.

How ‘Fist Rice’ Became A Symbol Of Korean Democracy

November 15, 2022 Jia Jung, Select. Strategize! Dictatorship, Food and Agriculture, Revolution, South Korea

On a humid summer morning in the mountain-backed metropolis of Gwangju, a cluster of fifth graders shuffled into an auditorium at 5.18 Freedom Park. Here were the former barracks where the South Korean military dictator Chun Doo-hwan and his forces imprisoned, interrogated, tortured, and in some cases killed thousands of civilians in May of 1980. Today, Koreans refer to these events as “5.18,” marking the first day of the Gwangju Uprising, when city residents demanded democracy in the wake of Chun’s 1979 power grab after the assassination of Park Chung-hee, the previous dictator president. The Chun regime’s brutal response still reverberates in the lives of the city’s residents. As the young students took a breather from their field trip, a guide passed out jumbo rice balls called jumeokbap, or “fist rice.”

Agribusiness To Dominate ‘Not Inclusive’ COP27 Talks

November 14, 2022 Paula Andrés, Euractiv. Educate! Big Ag, COP27, Food and Agriculture, Sustainability

Farming initiatives at COP27 will be dominated by agri-business players and will lack farmers’ voices, sustainable campaigners and small-holders organisations have warned ahead of the global summit’s day devoted to agriculture. For the first time, the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) gathered in these days in Egypt will address food systems and agriculture. A dedicated Agriculture and Food Pavillion at the COP27 premises has been set by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the global partnership Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), and the philanthropic organisation Rockefeller Foundation.

Courier Class War, With Antonio Solis

November 14, 2022 Michelle Chen, Dissent Magazine. Organize! Delivery workers, Food Access, Food and Agriculture, New York (NY)

Well, originally it was Ligia Guallpa, the director of the Worker’s Justice Project, who helped us start organizing in the streets. We met her at a march, and she started to talk to us about the power we could have by organizing. And that’s what we’ve been figuring out little by little. We have big WhatsApp groups where we communicate with all of our comrades, we have the Los Deliveristas Unidos Facebook page, we have GPS groups, and radio groups. We have a lot of tools to organize ourselves and take care of each other out here in the streets. Early on, we began to organize ourselves. We had a small group here of fellow workers, friends, and acquaintances that came from the same part of Mexico, and we started to organize because we were having issues with crime.

Colorado: Universal Free Meals To Students Is Close To Reality

November 9, 2022 Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, The Denver Post. Create! Ballot Initiative, Colorado, Education, Food and Agriculture, School meals

Colorado - Colorado voters are largely in favor of Proposition FF, which would provide the state’s students with free school meals — no matter their families’ incomes. With tax deduction limits in place, the price tag would fall on wealthy Coloradans. About 55% of voters backed the measure, with 1,011,114 votes, as of 9:07 a.m. on Wednesday, according to unofficial results on the Colorado Secretary of State Office’s website. That number includes all 64 counties, although post-election reporting is still in progress. The initiative would establish and fund the Healthy School Meals for All Program. It would boost taxes for households with incomes higher than $300,000 by curbing state income tax deductions. The move would impact about 114,000 joint and single-filer tax returns, or about 5% of those filed in Colorado.

Kroger-Albertsons Merger Means Layoffs, Higher Food Prices

November 5, 2022 Scott Scheffer, Struggle La Lucha. Educate! Food and Agriculture, Krogers, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

A proposed deal between two of the biggest grocery chains in the U.S. — Kroger and Albertsons — has many thousands of workers worried about losing their jobs. It also raises the possibility of more food deserts and worsening food prices. Grocery prices have already risen by nearly 12% in the latest capitalist inflation crisis. If the deal goes through, the new corporation will control 20% of the U.S. grocery market with 5,000 stores in the 48 contiguous states. Corporate mergers are always followed by a period of consolidation of assets. That means closures of some stores and layoffs. Both Kroger and Albertsons have a history of disregarding workers’ rights and turning their backs on the communities that have brought them billions of dollars.

The Truth About Cargill, The World’s Most Evil Company

November 3, 2022 Lee Camp, Mintpress News. Resistance Report Cargill, Corporatism, Food and Agriculture, Inflation

The biggest supervillains in the world are not human: they’re corporations. And one of those corporations owns nearly our entire food system. This year, food prices have soared and Americans are feeling it. For example, egg prices have doubled since last year to nearly $3 a dozen, which is especially difficult if you make your living as an egg-juggling busker down by the condemned jungle gym. But the supervillain companies that set those prices aren’t struggling at all. The largest one is Cargill. And this year, Cargill’s revenue jumped to a record $165 billion. That’s $30 billion more than the year before. Let’s learn a little more about Cargill. Known to friends as the evilest company in the world – and to enemies as even worse than that – Cargill Inc. is the biggest privately owned company in the U.S., and they own a large chunk of every portion of the food that ends up on your plate.

The Grain Giants Have Made A Bonanza From Hunger

October 31, 2022 Pat Mooney, Resilience. Create! Food and Agriculture, Grain, Hunger, Monopolies

As economies tumble, inflation surges and global food prices soar to critically high levels, two sectors seem to have hit the jackpot in 2022 – energy giants and grain traders. An estimated 345 million people may now be in acute food insecurity, compared with 135 million before the pandemic. Vulnerable populations face destitution in poorer food-importing countries such as Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan and Somalia. Poor consumers in rich countries are struggling to put food on the table. Supply shocks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have been the spark for this inferno of hunger. But the kindling for the fire was already stoked: the severe, underlying weaknesses in our food system. These include many countries’ heavy reliance on food imports, entrenched production systems, financial speculation, and cycles of poverty and debt.

Ahead Of Halloween, Sysco Teamsters Give Corporate Ghouls Heebie-Jeebies

October 26, 2022 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. Resist! Food and Agriculture, Massachusetts, Protests, Unions, Victory, Worker Rights and Jobs

Plympton, Massachusetts - Teamsters in Plympton, Massachusetts, won their strike at America's largest wholesale food distributor with an old-fashioned militant tactic: the mass picket line. The Sysco strike broke out on October 1. At first there were 100 workers, each with a picket sign, walking a little circle in the driveway leading to the warehouse. But in the early morning of Monday, October 17, a throng of fellow Teamsters swelled the crowd to 400. A dozen positioned their tractor-trailers athwart exits to block scabs from leaving and entering. Thirteen workers got arrested. And three days later, Teamster Local 653 members ratified a new contract, 215-2, with an $11 boost in pay over five years, improved retirement, and untouched health insurance benefits.

Portland 4 The Planet Sow Seeds Of Local Change

October 24, 2022 Rob Hopkins, Resilience. Create! Community organizing, Food and Agriculture, Transition Town, United Kingdom (UK)

Portland, United Kingdom - As one of the recipients of Transition Bounce Forward’s Seed Funding in 2020, Portland 4 the Planet is a beautiful example of what dynamic community action, when combined with little pots of funding, can unlock. Laura started the initiative in March 2019 as “my response to finding out about the climate and ecological emergency and thinking ‘what can we do to help our community try and resolve the situation?’”. Having realised the scale of the challenge, read everything she could, changed her diet, cut out plastic, transitioned to a vegan diet, her focus turned to what her community could do. She lobbied her local council to declare a climate emergency, which they did. However, her interactions with local government made her realise that given the speed at which bureaucracies move, however willing and supportive they might be, it was best to not wait for them and to get started.

Four Takeaways From Rural Resilience Gathering In North West France

October 23, 2022 Oliver Moore, Resilience. Create! Community organizing, Food and Agriculture, France

When you encounter a rural, farming and food community as the one encountered in Loire-Atlantique, one which to some extent is actively seeking out opportunities to work together and to share, this resonates with an old idea – that of mutual aid. Each of the four main sections above displayed this – community wellbeing, institutional relationships, systemic cooperation, engagement and alliance building. Each can be seen as an iteration of the spirit of mutual aid as a strategy for building solidarity economies. This community and institutional engagement work also chimes with ideas as developed in the English speaking world in Cleveland and Preston (UK). With these models, community wellbeing means institutions are asked to step up to the plate, as it were, and be a reliable, core, not-for-profit hub in the region, helping drive the required transition via local circular economic activity where possible.

Sysco Strikers Reach A Deal

October 21, 2022 Eloise Goldsmith and Rohan Montgomery , In These Times. Resist! Food and Agriculture, Strike, Sysco, Worker Rights and Jobs

This week, two Teamster locals won new contracts with the behemoth food distributor Sysco, ending a nearly monthlong strike that drew national support. More than 200 workers for Sysco — America’s largest food distributor — went on strike in Syracuse, N.Y., on September 27. Days later, more than 300 drivers for Sysco Boston went on strike in Massachusetts. Workers in Arizona also reportedly struck in solidarity. On October 17, workers at a Syracuse distribution center ratified their new contract with Sysco — one that Sean Miller, a warehouse worker and shop steward with Teamsters Local 317, says involved “zero concessions to the company.” In one key victory, Sysco agreed to limit the grueling six-day workweeks and the 16-hour days some drivers spoke of, and dropped a plan that would prevent new employees from taking consecutive days off.

In Bangladesh, Concerns Mount Over Mass Displacement And Climate Change

October 18, 2022 People's Dispatch. Educate! Bangladesh, climate crisis, Food and Agriculture, Global South

Rising sea levels and extreme flooding in Bangladesh are devastating lives and livelihoods. This year, floods in Bangladesh killed more than 100 people and, according to AFP, eroded at least 1,800 hectares (4,500 acres) of land according to estimates by Bangladesh’s Center for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS). The homes of at least 10,000 people were also affected. Totally, as many as 7.2 million have been affected by the floods, as per the International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC) and Red Cross Societies, and nearly half a million had to flee their homes and take refuge elsewhere as water levels rose this summer. As per a report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in February, climate change is also severely impacting the country’s food production. According to *New Age Bangladesh,* the report points with alarm to the “declining production” of basic food grains such as rice and wheat, by 12-17% and 12-61%, respectively, by “mid-century.”

Big Agriculture Casts Itself As Climate Champion Ahead of COP27

October 16, 2022 Rachel Sherrington, DeSmog. Educate! Big Ag, climate crisis, COP26, Environment, Food and Agriculture

A US-led sustainable farming initiative, which aims to raise billions of dollars to tackle climate change, has been criticized for favouring big business and promoting uncertain techno-fixes ahead of U.N. climate talks in Egypt in November. Launched at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow last year by the U.S. and United Arab Emirates governments, the AIM for Climate (Aim4C) coalition pledged to accelerate innovation in agriculture and food systems to support climate action. Alongside 40 states, partners include major agribusinesses, such as Brazilian meat giant JBS, and agricultural trade groups such as CropLife International, as well as research centres such as the University of Edinburgh’s Climate Change Institute. Multi-billion-dollar nonprofits the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and The Nature Conservancy are also taking part.

Sri Lanka’s Untold Story Of Resilience

October 16, 2022 Richard Flyer, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Community organizing, Food and Agriculture, Food Sovereignty, Sri Lanka

Over the past six months, Sri Lanka has been in the news. You have likely read accounts or seen videos of a civil revolution sparked by government corruption and shortages of both food and fuel. Amidst this uprising — involving all religions, ethnicities, and classes of the population with a call for systems change — thousands of protestors stormed and occupied the presidential palace, forcing the president to flee in July. In a world beset by supply chain issues, where the war in Ukraine is one of the multiple factors compromising the world’s food supply, it seems that Sri Lanka is the proverbial “canary in the coal mine.” It’s the first domino to fall, as a worldwide globalized economy based on large-scale, corporate monoculture and shipping food halfway across the planet wobbles toward collapse.

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