Food and Agriculture

‘World’s First Library Farm:’ Home To Gardens And Community Innovations

July 15, 2022 Chad Small, Resilience. Create! Community, Food and Agriculture, Food Sovereignty, Inflation, Innovation, Library

With food costs at near-record prices, the idea of growing your own food has never been so attractive. But food production requires space, and space can be a precious commodity — even a rarity — for people who live in urban areas. For decades, communities in cities around the U.S. have created urban farms and gardens. These spaces make use of empty lots to grow low-cost produce or flowers for communities. These urban farms are not always in high-profile or easily accessible places, however. But, what if your urban farm was in a central location? Perhaps your local library? The Cicero Branch of the Northern Onondaga Public Library (NOPL) in Upstate New York has explored precisely this question. In 2011, they created the Library Farm — partly the brainchild of Meg Backus, then the adult programming director and public relations coordinator.

The Nitrogen Problem In Agriculture

July 12, 2022 Vandana Shiva, Regeneration International. Educate! Big Ag, Fertilizers, Food and Agriculture, Nitrogen

The nitrogen problem in Agriculture is a problem created by synthetic nitrogen fertilizers made from fossil fuels. Nitrogen fertilizers contribute to atmospheric pollution and climate change in the manufacture and the use of fertilizers. The manufacture of synthetic fertilizer is highly energy intensive. One kg of nitrogen fertilizer requires the energy equivalent of 2 liters of diesel. Energy used during fertilizer manufacture was equivalent to 191 billion liters of diesel in 2000 and is projected to rise to 277 billion in 2030. This is a major contributor to climate change, yet largely ignored. One kilogram of phosphate fertilizer requires half a liter of diesel. Nitrogen fertilizers also emit a greenhouse gas, N2O, which is 300 times more destabilizing for the Climate System than CO2.

UN Agencies Warn Of ‘Looming Catastrophe’ As Global Hunger Rises

July 11, 2022 Jean Shaoul, WSWS. Educate! Food and Agriculture, Hunger, NATO, Wars and Militarism

A staggering 2.3 billion (30 percent) of the world’s population were moderately or severely food insecure in 2021, with nearly 12 percent facing severe food insecurity. Millions across the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Yemen and Syria already experiencing severe levels of hunger and poverty face the prospect of mass starvation. This is set to worsen due to the US/NATO provoked war in Ukraine, with executive director of the UN’s World Food Program (WPF) David Beasley warning that the food crisis caused by the war would push countries into famine, causing “global destabilization, starvation and mass migration on an unprecedented scale.”

Billions Of Humans Depend On 50,000 Wild Species For Food, Fuel And Income

July 10, 2022 Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch. Educate! Biodiversity, Economic, Energy, Food and Agriculture, Sustainability

A new report from the The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) – which is often described as the “IPCC for biodiversity” – found that billions of people depend on 50,000 wild species for food, medicine, fuel and income from activities like tourism. “70% of the world’s poor are directly dependent on wild species. One in five people rely on wild plants, algae and fungi for their food and income; 2.4 billion rely on fuel wood for cooking and about 90% of the 120 million people working in capture fisheries are supported by small-scale fishing,” assessment co-chair Dr. Marla R. Emery said in a press release.

Achieving Self-Funding Local Sovereignty As Food Systems Collapse

July 9, 2022 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. Create! Food and Agriculture, Food Sovereignty, Local Currency, Local Economy

“Deglobalizing” and “dedollarizing” have been much in the news. Reducing dependence on the global supply chain and the U.S. dollar are trends that are happening not just internationally but locally. In the United States, we have seen movements both for local food independence and to divest from Wall Street banks. The burgeoning cryptocurrency movement is another push to “dedollarize” and escape the international bankers’ control grid. This article is a sequel to one discussing home gardens and community food co-ops as local counter-measures to an impending food crisis.

Dutch Farmer Protests Inspire More Actions Amid Food Shortages

July 8, 2022 Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance. Resist! climate crisis, Farmers, Food and Agriculture, Inflation

Dutch farmers are blocking roads, airports and food distribution centers in an effort to shut their country down. These actions are in response to climate laws designed to lower nitrogen levels that will result in putting farms out of business and underscore why addressing the climate crisis requires a just transition for displaced workers. Farmers want the government to know that without farmers, there won't be food. The protests are now spreading to more countries. They are occurring as inflation hit double digits in June, especially for food and fuel, and food shortages are expected this fall.

There Are Hungry People There Are Hungry People

July 1, 2022 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Children, Finance and the Economy, Food and Agriculture, Human Rights

The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) reports that, every minute, a child is pushed into hunger in fifteen countries most ravaged by the global food crisis. Twelve of these fifteen countries are in Africa (from Burkina Faso to Sudan), one is in the Caribbean (Haiti), and two are in Asia (Afghanistan and Yemen). Wars without end have degraded the ability of the state institutions in these countries to manage cascading crises of debt and unemployment, inflation and poverty. Joining the two Asian countries are the states that make up the Sahel region of Africa (especially Mali and Niger), where the levels of hunger are now almost out of control. As if the situation were not sufficiently dire, an earthquake struck Afghanistan last week, killing over a thousand people – yet another devastating blow to a society where 93% of the population has slipped into hunger.

Sustainable Practices, Less Chemical Fertilizer Lead To Higher Crop Yields

June 29, 2022 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Create! Farming, Food and Agriculture, Organic Farming, Sustainability

In farming, high crop yields are often associated with the use of human-made fertilizers. But what if these abundant results could instead be achieved by using farming practices that were more environmentally friendly? An extensive new study of 30 farms in Africa and Europe has shown that the combination of small amounts of fertilizer with natural farming methods like mixing compost or manure with the soil, cultivating a wider variety of crops and cultivating plants like clover or beans that amplify soil’s fertility can result in high crop yields while maintaining the harmony of agricultural ecosystems, a press release from Rothamsted Research said. The study found that a significant amount of chemical fertilizers could be replaced by adopting these more natural techniques, which would have multiple benefits.

Food Insecurity Increases In The US While It Declines In Nicaragua

June 27, 2022 Nan McCurdy, New Cold War. Create! Food and Agriculture, Food Insecurity, Food Sovereignty, Nicaragua

In 2018, 48% of U.S.-based churches had their own food-distribution ministry or supported efforts run by other churches or organizations such as food pantries or food banks. These faith-based ministries, unlike government programs, provide immediate help to hungry people with no requirements. And more than two million people volunteer at a food pantry, soup kitchen, emergency shelter or after-school programs in the U.S., working more than 100 million volunteer hours a year—according to Hunger in America 2014, a study conducted by Feeding America. This wave of charity recognizes a serious problem in the United States: Despite being a wealthy nation, food insecurity remains high.

We Need To Build The Architecture Of Our Future

June 24, 2022 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Enregy, Food and Agriculture, Global Economy, Inflation

In April 2022, the United Nations established the Global Crisis Response Group on Food, Energy, and Finance. This group is tracking the three major crises of food inflation, fuel inflation, and financial distress. Their second briefing, released on 8 June 2022, noted that, after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic: the world economy has been left in a fragile state. Today, 60 per cent of workers have lower real incomes than before the pandemic; 60 per cent of the poorest countries are in debt distress or at high risk of it; developing countries miss $1.2 trillion per year to fill the social protection gap; and $4.3 trillion is needed per year – more money than ever before – to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This is a perfectly reasonable description of the distressing global situation, and things are likely to get worse.

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!

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