Food and Agriculture

World Bank President Admits Past Errors, Predicts Revolts Over Inequality

April 6, 2014 Jon Queally, www.commondreams.org Educate! Climate Change, Food and Agriculture, World Bank

President of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, is warning that the combined crises of planetary climate change and rising global inequality in a highly interconnected world will lead to the rise of widespread upheaval as the world's poor rise up and clashes over access to clean water and affordable food result in increased violence and political conflict. Despite the acknowledgement of the problem, however, and even as he made mea culpa for past errors by the powerful financial institution he now runs (including a global push to privatize drinking water resources and utilities), Kim laid the blame on inaction on the very people who have done the most to alert humanity to the crisis, saying that both climate change activists and informed scientists have not done enough to offer a plan to address global warming in a way he deems "serious."

Will ‘Organic’ Mean ‘Organic’

April 5, 2014 Alexis Baden-Mayer and Ronnie Cummins , www.organicconsumers.org Educate! Corporatism, Food and Agriculture

The Organic Consumers Association has a long history of defending the integrity of organic standards. Last September, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), under pressure from corporate interests represented by the Organic Trade Association, made our job harder. They also made it more important than ever for consumers to do their homework, even when buying USDA certified organic products. Without any input from the public, the USDA changed the way the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) decides which non-organic materials are allowed in certified organic. The change all but guarantees that when the NOSB meets every six months, the list of non-organic and synthetic materials allowed in organic will get longer and longer. The USDA’s new rule plays to the cabal of the self-appointed organic elite who want to degrade organic standards and undermine organic integrity.

World Wide Wave Of Action Looks To New Iberia, Louisiana

April 2, 2014 Dylan Ratigan, www.dylanratigan.com Resist! Community, Food and Agriculture, Worldwide Wave of Action

New Iberia has been an impoverished, rural, racially divided area along the Bayou in Louisiana for some time. Like countless communities worldwide, it was severely lacking available fresh local foods. Last year, a small community of people took a new approach to resolving the crisis, with solar-powered hydroponic organic greenhouses. The initiative has impacted New Iberia beyond the realm of fresh foods, as racial barriers are shattering and community members find common ground to form a collective identity. In this sense, New Iberia exemplifies how an entire community can evolve if a few people take action and get the ball rolling. Last December, Evelyn Ducote, Louisiana Agriculture Commissioner Mike Strain, Phanat Xanamane, and other local community members got the ball rolling when they purchased basic hydroponic growing equipment and enrolled Louis Lancon, an USA Military veteran, to build and operate a solar-powered hydroponic organic greenhouse in nearby Jeanerette, Louisana.

World Bank Accused Of Destroying Small Farms for Land Grabs

April 2, 2014 Kristen Thomaselli, www.oaklandinstitute.org Educate! Food and Agriculture, Land Rights, World Bank

“The World Bank is facilitating land grabs and sowing poverty by putting the interests of foreign investors before those of locals,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute. “Smallholder farmers and herders are currently feeding 80 percent of the developing world. Casting them aside in favor of industrial farming corporations from the West betrays the World Bank’s reckless and short term approach to development,” said Alnoor Ladha, Executive Director of /The Rules. The Bank’s “Doing Business” rankings, which score countries according to how Washington officials perceive the “ease of doing business” there, have caused many developing-country leaders to deregulate their economies in hopes of attracting foreign investment. But what the World Bank considers beneficial for foreign business is very often the exact opposite for existing farmers and herders.

World Bank’s New Agriculture Project Threatens Food Security

April 2, 2014 Sam Jones, www.theguardian.com Resist! Food and Agriculture, Land Rights, World Bank

A World Bank pilot project designed to measure and improve agricultural productivity will jeopardise food security in developing countries and create a "one-size-fits-all model of development where corporations reign supremely", according to a coalition of thinktanks and NGOs. An international campaign – Our Land; Our Business – is urging the Bank to abandon its Benchmarking the Business of Agriculture (BBA) programme, claiming it will serve only to encourage corporate land grabs and undermine the smallholder farmers who produce 80% of the food consumed in the developing world. The campaign, whose signatories include the US-based Oakland Institute think-tank and the Pan-African Institute for Consumer Citizenship and Development, argues that the Bank's attempts to adapt its ease-of-doing-business rankings to the agricultural sector will sow poverty "by putting the interests of foreign investors before those of locals".

Fracking Near Nuclear Waste Threatens Water Contamination

April 1, 2014 Amy MacPherson, www.freethepresscanada.org Educate! Environment, Food and Agriculture, Fracking, Nuclear Energy

Ontario residents have been kept in the dark, but Canada’s most populous province is about to become an unlikely and international battleground. After all, how many times does the Great White North threaten the drinking water of more than 40 million people, including their neighbours in America? Legislators from south of the border have already taken issue with plans for a deep geologic repository. Less than a mile from the shores of Lake Huron, Bruce Power intends to store 200,000 cubic meters of nuclear waste within the natural rock formation. Senators and congressmen shared their dissent with the Canadian government, but the fed responded by sending police to the homes of eco protesters, in what some would call an act of intimidation.

Cesar Chavez Comes to Life In Film About California’s Heroic Labor Leader

March 31, 2014 Matt Carter, www.occupy.com Educate! Cesar Chavez, Food and Agriculture, Worker Rights and Jobs

one Mexican actor-turned-director has made Chavez’s life the subject of a new film – opening in theaters across America this Friday, March 28 – which, for him, was both a cause to educate himself and an invitation to resolve Chavez’s legacy. “I knew his name and that he was an activist, and part of the movement that had something to do with the farm workers in California,” said director Diego Luna, who starred most recently alongside Matt Damon in last year's dystopian sci-fi film Elysium. “But I didn’t know what they had achieved, and what he represents. Once I realized there was no film that celebrated his legacy, he became a necessity and it became my priority.” Luna, who also had a role in the 2008 film Milk, about the life of gay San Francisco politician and activist Harvey Milk, said he took extensive input from the family of Chavez in writing the script.

Access To Affordable, Healthy Food In Canada’s North Nears Crisis

March 31, 2014 Benjamin Shingler, www.america.aljazeera.com Educate! Food and Agriculture, Indigenous Rights

"Evidence from a variety of sources concludes that food insecurity among northern aboriginal peoples is a problem that requires urgent attention to address and mitigate the serious impacts it has on health and well-being," the report said. The cause of food insecurity — the lack of consistent access to an adequate amount of healthy food due to cost or other factors — is complex. It is more than the high cost of flying food into isolated communities far from distribution centers in the south of Canada. Environmental and cultural as well as economic factors are in play, the researchers said.

Vertical Farms Sprouting Up All Over The World

March 31, 2014 Paul Marks, www.newscientist.com Create! Climate Change, Food and Agriculture

URBAN warehouses, derelict buildings and high-rises are the last places you'd expect to find the seeds of a green revolution. But from Singapore to Scranton, Pennsylvania, "vertical farms" are promising a new, environmentally friendly way to feed the rapidly swelling populations of cities worldwide. In March, the world's largest vertical farm is set to open up shop in Scranton. Built by Green Spirit Farms (GSF) of New Buffalo, Michigan, it will only be a single storey covering 3.25 hectares, but with racks stacked six high it will house 17 million plants. And it is just one of a growing number. Vertical farms aim to avoid the problems inherent in growing food crops in drought-and-disease-prone fields many hundreds of kilometres from the population centres in which they will be consumed.

Heinz Targeted: All Natural Does Not Mean GMO Food

March 30, 2014 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Food and Agriculture, GMOs

The campaign to require labeling on products containing GMO's is using the tactic of targeting individual products as well as seeking law demanding labeling. Elaine Watson writes about how Heinz is the latest target. She writes a lawsuit filed in California on March 17 by Debbie Banafsheha alleging false advertising as the term "natural ingredients" does not mean the unnatural GMOs. “Defendant’s ‘all natural’ representations are false, deceptive, misleading, and unfair to consumers, who are injured in fact by purchasing products that Defendant claims are ‘all natural’ when in fact they are not,” reads the lawsuit, according to FoodNavigator. Banafsheha calls it "false, deceptive and misleading; and unfair to consumers." She also notes that consumers can be injured by these products.

Judge Stops Government-Sanctioned Pollution

March 29, 2014 David Guest, www.earthjustice.org Resist! Environment, Food and Agriculture

A major decision in federal court today will put an end to government-sanctioned pollution that’s been fouling Lake Okeechobee for more than three decades. The case, first filed in 2002 by Earthjustice, challenged the practice of “backpumping.” For years, South Florida sugar and vegetable growers have used the public’s waters, pumped out of giant Lake Okeechobee, to irrigate their fields. They wash the water over their industrial-sized crops, where it is contaminated with fertilizers and other pollutants. Then, they get taxpayers in the South Florida Water Management District to pay to pump the contaminated water back into Lake Okeechobee, where it pollutes public drinking water supplies. Lake Okeechobee provides drinking water for West Palm Beach, Fort Myers, and the entire Lower East Coast metropolitan area.

Emergency Action At BP’s Chicago Headquarters

March 29, 2014 Staff, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Energy, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Tar Sands

Monday afternoon, March 24, an estimated 500 gallons of oil from the tar sands in Alberta, Canada, leaked into Lake Michigan, poisoning the source of drinking water for 7 million people in and around Chicago. The BP refinery on the lake’s shore has admitted responsibility, but has yet to take sufficient action to ensure the safety of drinking water and the ecosystem. This serves as further evidence that the reliance on fossil fuels in all its forms has serious and long-term effects on the health of the planet and the people who inhabit it. This is doubly true in the case of the processing of tar sands that goes on at BP’s Whiting facility. This most current spill comes after years of legal challenges to the Whiting plant, which is one of the largest sources of industrial pollution in the nation.

Did Tar Sands Spill Into The Great Lake?

March 29, 2014 Steve Horn, www.desmogblog.com Educate! Energy, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Tar Sands

Is it conventional crude or tar sands? That is the question. And it's one with high stakes, to boot. The BP Whiting refinery in Indiana spilled between 470 and 1228 gallons of oil (or is it tar sands?) into Lake Michigan on March 24 and four days later no one really knows for sure what type of crude it was. Most signs, however, point to tar sands. The low-hanging fruit: the refinery was recently retooled as part of its “modernization project,” which will “provide Whiting with the capability of processing up to about 85% heavy crude, versus about 20% today.” As Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Midwest Program Director Henry Henderson explained in a 2010 article, “heavy crude [is] code for tar sands.”

Lettuce Picking and Left-Wing Organizing

March 28, 2014 Steve Early, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Food and Agriculture, Labor, Worker Rights and Jobs

In recent years, two college-educated writers, Gabriel Thompson and Tracie McMillan, have followed in the footsteps of Barbara Ehrenreich, producing their own versions of Nickel and Dimed. Both went undercover to blow the whistle on worker abuse in low-wage jobs. Unlike Ehrenreich, the much younger authors of Working in The Shadows and The American Way of Eating each tried their hand at farm labor. In contrast, Bruce Neuburger spent much of the 1970s as a picker of lettuce and other California agricultural products, during the heyday of the United Farm Workers (UFW). As recounted in Lettuce Wars: Ten Years of Work and Struggle in The Fields of California (Monthly Review Press), Neuberger’s experience was very different than Thompson and McMIllan’s—and not just because the union has virtually disappeared from the scene during the intervening decades.

Walmart Admits Public Assistance For Workers Needed For Their Profits

March 27, 2014 Angelo Young, www.ibtimes.com Educate! Food and Agriculture, Walmart

Nestled in the latest annual report from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE:WMT) is a line that underscores just how much the world’s largest general merchandise retailer and its shareholders have depended on public assistance programs in recent years. A couple of items stand as newcomers to Walmart’s menu of risks. Here’s what the annual report released on Friday says: “Our business operations are subject to numerous risks, factors and uncertainties, domestically and internationally, which are outside our control ... These factors include ... changes in the amount of payments made under the Supplement[al] Nutrition Assistance Plan and other public assistance plans, changes in the eligibility requirements of public assistance plans, ...”

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