Food and Agriculture

Advancing Interconnected Solutions To The Food, Energy And Finance Crises

May 14, 2022 Shiney Varghese, Resilience. Create! Food and Agriculture, Russia, Ukraine, United Nations

The governing body of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) met in Rome on April 8, 2022 in an Extraordinary Session to examine the “impact of the Ukraine-Russia conflict on global food security and related matters under its mandate” and advise on how it should proceed. Meanwhile, just two days earlier, the Civil Society and Indigenous People Mechanism (CSIPM) at U.N. Committee on World Food Security (CFS) called for an Extraordinary Plenary Session of the CFS. We must consider these developments along with a new initiative from the U.N. and against the background of the FAO’s global food prices index reaching its highest level ever.

The Health Crisis Afflicting Black Farmers

May 14, 2022 Safiya Charles, In These Times. Educate! Black Farmers, Food and Agriculture, Health Care, Racism

At 43 and 45 years old, husband and wife farmers Angie and Wenceslaus Provost, Jr., hope they live to see age 70. They don’t fear terminal illness or a farm accident that could consign them to an early grave. Instead, they fear stress could do them in. Years of trying to protect family land from encroaching banks and government agencies have worn on them, despite their love of farming. After years of mounting debt with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and a bank, the New Iberia, La. sugar cane farmers filed a September 2018 lawsuit against a USDA-approved lender. The suit alleges that Wenceslaus, known as “June,” was all but run out of the profession in 2015 after the bank reduced his crop loans over successive years, effectively underfunding his farm operation.

How Native Americans Are Keeping The Bees Alive

May 13, 2022 Kaylee Carter, Last Real Indians. Create! Bees, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Indigenous Activism

Honeybees are a declining population. Indeed, between October 2018 and April 2019, commercial beekeepers reported a loss of 37.7% of the managed honeybee population. There are a plethora of reasons that can explain the rapid decline of the honeybee numbers, such as the varroa mite entering hives and spreading diseases, loss of habitat, pesticide exposure, and poor management practices. That being said, the good news is that Native American tribes are joining the government to turn the situation around. Also, there’s a lot you can do to help save the most important pollinators in the world and the billion-dollar crops they aid every year. Yet, this is just the tip of the iceberg of this complex topic that is paramount for humans, flora, and fauna. Read on to learn more about how Native Americans are doing their part to keep the bees alive.

The Food Crisis Didn’t Begin With The War In Ukraine

May 7, 2022 Jim Goodman , In These Times. Educate! Food and Agriculture, Inflation, Ukraine, Wars and Militarism

Even before the war in Ukraine, farmers across the U.S. were getting ready for higher prices on seed, fertilizer and crop chemicals. All winter, major farm media was warning farmers to book supplies early as prices would be high and supplies would be short. The war has only amped up the concern among farmers and input suppliers. Like the oil companies that cited the sanctions on Russian oil to justify steep price increases (even though Russian oil continues to flow almost without interruption), corporate agribusiness has used the war as a justification to ramp up fertilizer, seed and chemical prices even further, leading Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to ask the Justice Department to investigate whether “every penny of these increases” is warranted.

The Radical Roots Of Community Supported Agriculture

May 6, 2022 Jared Spears, Schumacher Center. Create! Community Control, Food and Agriculture, Local Economy

Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) is one of those rare ideas which combine transformative potential with an elegant simplicity. The CSA model of funding and sustaining locally-rooted agriculture has grown exponentially around the globe over the past four decades. Since the first formal CSA at Robyn Van En’s Indian Line Farm in South Egremont, Massachusetts in the early 1980s, CSAs have become a household fixture across the US and elsewhere; the most recent estimate by the USDA (2012) counted approximately 13,000 CSA farms in the US alone. The success of community-supported farming has coincided with rising demand for organic food since the late 1970s. But the model’s popularization has meant that, sometimes, CSAs can be misreprented as ‘just another way’ for consumers to purchase fresh, seasonal food.

Jump-Starting A Commune: Voices From Monte Sinaí

April 28, 2022 Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert, Venezuelanalysis. Create! Communes, Food and Agriculture, Sanctions, Venezuela

Monte Sinaí Commune is a young organization working hard to foster communal production and strengthen non-market social relations. This commune’s territory reaches into both Anzoátegui and Miranda states, but has its epicenter in the small town of Santa Bárbara in the Guanape Valley. Various crops, including coffee, cocoa, black beans, diverse tubers, and avocado, all grow in this lush and varied region. Since the coffee trees here are old and low in yield, the commune has built a plant nursery to grow coffee seedlings to replace the old trees. The process of forming the Monte Sinaí Commune began about a year ago. Since then, we have been working very hard. As the saying goes, we are a diamond in the rough, but the beauty of the project is beginning to show. Our parliament meets every Wednesday no matter what. That is where we bring our ideas to the table, debate, and plan.

The World’s First Ohlone Restaurant Is Opening Soon At UC Berkeley

April 26, 2022 Elena Kadvany, San Francisco Chronicle. Create! Berkeley, California, Food and Agriculture, Indigenous culture

Dolores Lameira Galvan, 91, remembers hearing from her mother, aunts and uncles about their time working as housekeepers and laborers at Phoebe Apperson Hearst’s opulent mansion in what is now Pleasanton. She still prefers not to speak of the time her Ohlone family spent as servants on what had been the Indigenous people’s own land, says her nephew, Vincent Medina. For the Ohlone, it represents just one painful chapter in hundreds of years’ worth of trauma and loss in the East Bay and beyond. But decades later, Medina is working to reclaim his tribe’s history by opening the world’s first Ohlone restaurant in a space that carries the Hearst name. Cafe Ohlone, which he started as a pop-up with partner Louis Trevino in 2018, will debut in June at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley.

US Imposes Flawed Food System On The World

April 24, 2022 Jim Goodman, Consortium News. Educate! Famine, Food and Agriculture, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

Even before the war in Ukraine, the sanctions on Russia, and the shipping blockade of the Black Sea, farmers across the U.S. were getting ready for higher prices on seed, fertilizer, and crop chemicals. All winter, major farm media was warning farmers to book supplies early as prices would be high and supplies would be short. The war in Ukraine has only amped up the concern among farmers, input suppliers, and those who erroneously proclaim that we, the U.S., must feed the world. The farm media offers suggestions as to how farmers, despite relatively higher crop prices, might deal with the even steeper increase in input costs. Use less, get your old tillage equipment out or, heaven forbid, consider manually pulling weeds like farmers used to do — of course, years ago, farmers didn’t run thousands of acres.

Bolivian Agricultural Production Company Created For Food Sovereignty

April 22, 2022 Kawsachun News. Create! Bolivia, Food and Agriculture, Food Sovereignty, Socialism

According to Minister of Rural Development and Lands Remmy Gonzales, the company will be in charge of producing different crops and covering the deficit in food production, with aims to ensure food sovereignty for Bolivians. The authority clarified that the government doesn’t intend to compete with entrepreneurs in the agricultural sector, but to establish actions to support and promote food production. The MAS government is also taking measures to encourage wheat production. Minister Gonzales said that actions are being implemented through the National Wheat Program and that the purchase of wheat grain production from the winter agricultural campaign will be guaranteed.

Here’s What The Situation In Ukraine Means For US Agriculture

April 12, 2022 Johnathan Hettinger, Investigate Midwest. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Food and Agriculture, Russia, Ukraine

As Ukraine continues to fight against Russian forces, experts warned of potential fallout for the U.S. agriculture industry. On Feb. 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” in Ukraine, and Russian troops stormed into the country. Reportedly, tens of thousands have died, and about half a million people have fled their homes, according to The New York Times. The same day as Putin’s announcement, Ukraine's military halted all commercial activities at its ports in the Black Sea. Also that day, a missile struck a ship chartered by Cargill, according to Reuters. Multinational agricultural corporations stopped operations in Ukraine as farmers expect the Russian invasion of the country — and the subsequent economic sanctions — to drive up already high prices for fertilizer, a key input for U.S. growers, according to interviews and company statements.

Green Haven Project Is Nurturing Underserved Communities One Garden At A Time

April 10, 2022 Monée Fields-white, Resilience. Create! Community Garden, Florida, Food Access, Food and Agriculture

Three years ago, Jorge Palacios, David Roper and Josh Placeres came together with a shared vision to make a better world for communities of color in Miami. They wanted to create a space where Black and Brown families can access fresh produce and learn how to live a healthy lifestyle. Borne of their own social justice and community activism, the trio cultivated a food movement by transforming an empty land lot into a lush community garden in the heart of the historically Black Overtown neighborhood. Carrots, eggplant, garlic chive, kale, cranberry hibiscus, papaya, Thai basil, and moringa are in abundance for a community that has limited fresh produce options. The three launched the Green Haven Project in 2019, to expand their efforts.

The Labor Disputes At Amy’s Kitchen, Explained

April 8, 2022 Jaya Saxena, Eater. Resist! Amy's Kitchen, Food and Agriculture, Worker Rights and Jobs, Workplace Safety

“We’re now proudly B Corp certified!” chirps a green banner on the homepage of Amy’s Kitchen, the organic packaged and prepared-foods giant. It’s positioned above an image of the company’s founders, the Berliner family — Andy, who is currently the CEO of Amy’s Kitchen, with his wife Rachel and their daughter, Amy, after whom the company is named — dressed in down vests and worn-in scarves, smiling and windswept in front of a blue sky. “B Corp certification is awarded to businesses that use profits and growth as a means to a greater end: Positive impact for their employees, communities, and the environment,” Amy’s explains in a blog post from March 2021. “The B Corp community works toward reducing inequality, lower levels of poverty, a healthier environment, stronger communities, and the creation of more high-quality jobs with dignity and purpose.”

Greenwashing Of Biofuel Project Rejected By Civil Society Groups

April 7, 2022 Stay Grounded, Popular Resistance. Resist! Air Travel, Biofuels, Food and Agriculture, Paraguay

A new case study by NGOs detailing the environmental and social harm that would cause the Omega Biofuel refinery being built in Paraguay by the Brazilian company ECB has garnered an inaccurate response from the company in the form of a press release issued on 2 April 2022. The organizations behind the report–Centro de Estudios Heñói, Stay Grounded, Biofuelwatch and Global Forest Coalition–assert that Grupo BSBIOS Paraguay/ECB ignored several requests for comment and is denying the facts and merely engaging in greenwashing, a common practice for these biofuels projects that seek to obscure their true harm to biodiversity and human rights. The organizations mentioned in the undated press release by Grupo BSBIOS Paraguay/ECB (signed by Analítica Comunicaçao), object to the company’s false statements.

Know Thy Farmer

April 6, 2022 Jeff Tkach, Food Tank. Create! Food and Agriculture, Food Security, Local Economy

Their names are Ben and Karah. And they grow my food. I shake hands with and hug them on most Sundays when I visit the farmer’s market in my town. Sometimes I drive out to see Ben and Karah on their farm just outside of town where I pre-order and pick up my food for the week. I walk the farm. I take it in. The pastures, bull calves grazing in the distance, Ben and Karah’s children running down the lane. I duck into a hightunnel greenhouse to see the purple kale variety bursting through the soil in the middle of January (yes, with the right farming practices, you can grow fresh green vegetables in the dead of winter in the soil in Pennsylvania). The same kale that I will sauté for dinner that evening. This is my spiritual practice.

US-EU Sanctions Hit Latin America’s Banana Growers

April 2, 2022 Kawsachun News. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Food and Agriculture, Latin America, Russia, Sanctions, US Imperialism

Russia is a large consumer of the Latin American banana—but western sanctions have dealt a devastating blow to farmers who can no longer get their products to market. For Ecuador, the world’s largest exporter of bananas, the setback has been disastrous. Around 25% of Ecuador’s banana exports go to Russia and 90% of all bananas consumed in Russia come from Ecuador. However, commercial ships carrying the bananas can no longer reach the port of St. Petersburg due to sanctions imposed by the US and EU. The sudden drop in demand has left producers with excess supply. Prices have collapsed as a result. Richard Salazar, Director of Arcobanec (exporters association) said that Ecuador usually exports bananas for up to $US 5.50 per box.

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