Food and Agriculture

It’s Not The Conflict In Ukraine, Our Food System Is Broken

June 20, 2022 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Corporatizaiton, Democracy, Farmers, Food and Agriculture

Much attention is being given to the impacts the conflict in Ukraine and the US sanctions on Russia will have on our food supply this year, but farmer Jim Goodman, president of the National Family Farm Coalition, explains why our food system has been in crisis for a long time. Goodman discusses how the causes of the broken food system - corporatization, consolidation, a rigid supply chain and the climate crisis - are all coming together to make farmers reconsider whether it even makes sense to plant crops. He also explains that farmers could feed the world in ways that are good for our health and for the planet, but this requires returning control to the small farmers and communities throughout the world.

Beware The Corporate Appropriation Of ‘Sustainable’ Farming Practices

June 19, 2022 Philip A. Loring, In These Times. Strategize! Agroecology, Corporatism, Food and Agriculture, Sustainability

Global food systems are at a breaking point. Not only are they responsible for roughly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, they are also the top contributors to water pollution and biodiversity collapse. On top of that, many aspects of our food systems are extremely vulnerable to disruptions from climate change and other shocks, as we saw in the first months of the pandemic. Agroecology — an approach to farming long practiced by Indigenous and peasant communities around the world — could transform our food systems for the better. And agribusinesses in the Global North are actively looking to agroecology to rebrand and build new markets under the banners of carbon farming and regenerative agriculture.

Rural Europe Takes Action

June 16, 2022 Die Freien Bäcker, Resilience. Create! Agroecology, Europe, Farming, Food and Agriculture

We feel like we are sandwiched between unfair market competition at the bottom and unfair production regulations at the top. The industrial baking industry has all the comparative advantages of size, it uses standardized raw materials and many types of additives. We have all the disadvantages of standards tailored to industrial production. These rules have not been adapted to the possible risks of our small-scale artisanal production methods. With lower production volumes and higher labor costs, we are disproportionately burdened by these over-regulations, which hardly help to fulfil the goals they are supposed to serve. As competent, independent and socially responsible craftspeople, we are disenfranchised and penalized by rampant bureaucratic regulations.

Spiritual Leader Sadhguru Takes 100-Day Motorcycle Journey To Save Soil

June 16, 2022 Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch. Organize! climate crisis, Food and Agriculture, Soil

More than half of the world’s agricultural soils are already degraded, and both scientists and UN agencies agree that the remaining soil will only take us another 40 to 50 years. Yet despite the threat this poses to biodiversity, the climate and global food security, soil health receives less attention than other looming environmental crises. That’s why yogi, mystic and visionary Sadhguru has set off on a 100-day, 30,000 kilometer (approximately 18,641 mile) motorcycle journey to save soil. “Everybody knows the problem. Everybody generally knows what is the solution, but they’ve all been waiting for one idiot to come and bell the cat,” the 64-year-old said during a talk in Tbilisi, Georgia, on day 37 of his journey. “So here I am.”

Peasants Agitate Against The 12th Ministerial Conference Of WTO

June 15, 2022 La Via Campesina. Resist! Food and Agriculture, Geneva, La Via Campesina, World Trade Organization, WTO

Geneva - On Saturday, 06/11, La Via Campesina began its mobilizations against the 12th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization that is underway in Geneva this week. An international delegation of peasants – representing social movements, peasant and indigenous organizations and farm unions – from the rural territories of Kenya, Korea, Paraguay, USA, France, India, Indonesia, Canada, Thailand, Spain, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, Mali and Gambia took to the streets of Geneva with a massive demonstration against the World Trade Organization (WTO). The message was loud and clear: FREE TRADE FUELS HUNGER, WTO OUT OF AGRICULTURE!

WTO Meeting Is An Opportunity To Challenge Corporate Control Of Food

June 15, 2022 Anthony Pahnke, Truthout. Educate! Food and Agriculture, Global Economy, World Trade Organization

Look no further than to the fruit and vegetable farmers in Europe and the United States who destroyed perfectly good produce because corporate food processors lacked the resiliency to adapt to changing consumption demands. The 2.5 million farmworkers in the U.S., at the same time, risked their lives for poverty-level wages without personal protective equipment. Meanwhile, just four corporations, globally, control 75 percent of the world’s grain trade and 60 percent of our seeds. In the U.S., four firms dominate 75 percent of the fertilizer supply and 85 percent of beef processing. Such concentration takes freedom from farmers, taking from them the ability to negotiate the prices of what they sell and the inputs, such as feed and seed, that they purchase.

Seven Stars Bakery Workers In Providence Announce Union Drive

June 14, 2022 Dan Connolly, Liberation News. Organize! Food and Agriculture, Labor Movement, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Providence, Rhode Island - Workers at three Seven Stars Bakery locations in Providence, Rhode Island publicly announced their intent to unionize with the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 328 on June 10 after they issued a letter to ownership seeking voluntary recognition. Workers began organizing six months ago when one of the longest serving employees was turned down for a raise, despite years of stellar performance. In response, a group of workers across several locations began talking about how they could improve conditions together. The first thing the workers at Seven Stars Bakery want people to know about their union drive is that they love their coworkers, they love their jobs and they want their union to help make them even better.

Young Activists Disrupt Bonn Climate Talks To Call For Plant Based Treaty

June 13, 2022 Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch. Resist! climate crisis, Factory Farming, Food and Agriculture, Plant Based Diet

How should the global agricultural system change in order to prevent the worst impacts of the climate crisis? A group of young activists believe the answer is a global shift towards plant-based diets, and they are not afraid to make their voices heard. The campaigners disrupted a meeting at the UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany, on Friday to call for a Plant Based Treaty. “This is a do or die decade, particularly when it comes to the methane crisis,” Plant Based Treaty campaigner Yael Hanna said in a press release emailed to EcoWatch. “We need an immediate and rapid shift away from animal-based foods to plant-based foods in response to the climate emergency. The science presented by the IPCC is irrefutable, a vegan diet is the optimal diet for the planet and we need to negotiate a Plant Based Treaty now.”

Land In South Africa Shall Be Shared Among Those Who Work It

June 10, 2022 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Africa, Farmers, Food and Agriculture, South Africa

In March 2022, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres warned of a ‘hurricane of hunger’ due to the war in Ukraine. Forty-five developing countries, most of them on the African continent, he said, ‘import at least a third of their wheat from Ukraine or Russia, with 18 of those import[ing] at least 50 percent’. Russia and Ukraine export 33% of global barley stocks, 29% of wheat, 17% of corn, and nearly 80% of the world’s supply of sunflower oil. Farmers outside of Russia and Ukraine, trying to make up for the lack of exports, are now struggling with higher fuel prices also caused by the war. Fuel prices impact both the cost of chemical fertilizers and farmers’ ability to grow their own crops.

Chad Declares Food Emergency, International Agencies Sound Alarm

June 9, 2022 Abayomi Azikiwe, Popular Resistance. Educate! Africa, Chad, Food and Agriculture, Hunger

The World Food Program (WFP) and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) have identified numerous states warranting immediate attention as the problems of climate change, internal conflict, economic downturns and the continuing war in Ukraine are exacerbating the current crisis. In the Sahel region of Africa, the nation of Chad, is challenged by grain supplies which have dropped to dangerous lows forcing the transitional military-dominated government to declare a food emergency requesting that aid be sent into the country to avoid further food deficits. Chad has been severely impacted by drought leaving large areas of farmland unproductive. A landlocked country in Central Africa consisting of 16.4 million people, historically the former French colony has suffered from political instability engendered by its ongoing dependency on Paris and the United States for economic assistance and military involvement.

The Food Shortage Solution In Your Own Backyard

June 9, 2022 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. Create! Food and Agriculture, Organic Farming, Urban Farming

A confluence of crises—lockdowns and business closures, mandates and worker shortages, supply chain disruptions and inflation, sanctions and war—have compounded to trigger food shortages; and we have been warned that they may last longer than the food stored in our pantries. What to do? Jim Gale, founder of Food Forest Abundance, pointed out in a recent interview with Del Bigtree that in the United States there are 40 million acres of lawn. Lawns are the most destructive monoculture on the planet, absorbing more resources and pesticides than any other crop, without providing any yield. If we were to turn 30% of that lawn into permaculture-based food gardens, says Gale, we could be food self-sufficient without relying on imports or chemicals.

African Union Leaders Meet With Russian Government

June 4, 2022 Abayomi Azikiwe, Popular Resistance. Educate! African Union, Food and Agriculture, Russia, US Sanctions

In at least two regions of the African continent food deficits are a major concern for political officials and humanitarian organizations. The Russian special military operations in neighboring Ukraine have brought to the surface a number of persistent economic problems which have plagued the world since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic that emerged during the early months of 2020. President Macky Sall of the West African state of Senegal, the current elected chairman of the 55 member-states African Union (AU) along with AU Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat, visited the Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss measures which could alleviate the escalating problems related to the lack of food and agricultural inputs.

The Fight Over Land And Genetically Engineered Agriculture

June 1, 2022 Mitchel Cohen, Covert Action Magazine. Educate! Food and Agriculture, GMOs, Russia, Ukraine

Ten months before Russian troops poured into Ukraine, that country’s President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a bill into law authorizing the private sale of farmland, reversing a moratorium that had been in place since 2001. An earlier administration in Ukraine had instituted the moratorium in order to halt further privatization of The Commons and small farms, which were being bought up by oligarchs and concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. As documented in a series of critical reports over ten years by the Oakland Institute based in California*,* the moratorium on land sales in Ukraine aimed to prevent the acquisition and consolidation of farmland in the hands of the domestic oligarch class and foreign corporations. The marketization of farmland is part of a series of policy “reforms” that the International Monetary Fund stipulated as a precondition enabling Ukraine to receive $8 billion in loans from the IMF.

G7 Downplays US Sanctions’ Role In Food Shortage

May 28, 2022 John Ross, Consortium News. Educate! Food and Agriculture, Global Economy, Hunger, US Sanctions

“There is really no true solution to the problem of global food security without bringing back the agriculture production of Ukraine and the food and fertilizer production of Russia and Belarus into world markets despite the war.” These blunt words by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres accurately describe the present global food crisis. As the U.S. and the G7 (comprising Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States) insist that cutting off food exports from Ukraine poses the biggest threat to world food security, rather than admitting the far more powerful negative effect of Western sanctions against Russia, their propaganda does immense damage to the world’s understanding and capability of avoiding a looming global food disaster.

Food Sovereignty As A Path To Liberation And Justice

May 27, 2022 Adalah Justice Project and The American Friends Service Committee, Mondoweiss. Create! Food and Agriculture, Food Sovereignty, Liberation, Palestine

As apartheid Israel’s brutal siege of Gaza enters its 15th year this June, food sovereignty and climate activists Mohammed AbuJayyab and Asmaa Abu Mezied emphasized the centrality of the agricultural space in building resistance, autonomy and community in the greater fight for justice and Palestinian liberation in a recent public conversation hosted by Adalah Justice Project (AJP) and American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). “To talk about agriculture in Gaza particularly, the first thing that comes to mind is the systematic challenges that face farmers in Gaza,” related to climate change and daily worries of production, yield and market prices, says Abu Mezeid, an economic development and social inclusion specialist .“Diving deep into them, you will understand how political and politicized these challenges are.”

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