Food Security

Africa’s Dividing Farmlands A Threat To Food Security

September 29, 2016 Miriam Gathigah, www.ipsnews.net Educate! Africa, Farming, Food Security

By Miriam Gathigah for IPS - NAIROBI, Sep 10 2014 (IPS) - When Kiprui Kibet pictures his future as a maize farmer in the fertile Uasin Gishu county in Kenya’s Rift Valley region, all he sees is the ever-decreasing plot of land that he has to farm on. “I used to farm on 40 hectares but now I only have 0.8 hectares. My father had 10 sons and we all wanted to own a piece of the farmland. Subdivision … ate into the actual farmland,” Kibet tells IPS. “From 3,200 bags a harvest, now I only produce 20 bags, at times even less.”

Boulder To Transition Away From Growing GE Crops

March 20, 2016 Barb Halpin, www.content.govdelivery.com Create! Food and Agriculture, Food Security, GE crops, GMOs

By Boulder County Commissioner's Office. Boulder County, Colo. – At a public meeting today, the County Commissioners directed county Parks and Open Space staff to work with local farmers to develop a transition plan for phasing out the use of genetically engineered (GE) corn and sugarbeets on County Parks and Open Space agricultural lands within a time frame of 3 to 7 years, and for staff to bring a recommendation on the transition plan back for consideration as soon as practicable. Additionally, the Board expressed a preference for phasing out the use of neonicotinoids and greatly reducing the use of herbicides and pesticides on county-owned open space lands. The Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) further provided direction to staff to develop a work plan that includes the continued monitoring of soil health, water quality, and pollinator health on Boulder County agricultural land, and that also looks at developing an Agricultural Research Station in Boulder County, and studies other identified barriers to successful local farming in Boulder County.

Hunger Strike Continues As Food Security, Environmental Concerns Persist

March 19, 2016 Alyse Kotyk, www.rabble.ca Resist! Environment, Food Security, Hunger Strikes

By Alyse Kotyk for Rabble - Five days ago, Kristin Henry started a personal hunger strike to protest B.C. Hydro's Site C Dam project. She, along with some other supporters, have camped outside the provincial utility company's head office in downtown Vancouver. Earlier this month, supporters of Treaty 8 Stewards of the Land began a daily, 9-hour hunger strike after B.C. Hydro was granted an injunction against protesters at Site C. This culminated in a rally outside of B.C. Hydro on Sunday March 13, which drew about 50 protesters.

How Detroit Is Working to Change Food Desert Rep

January 28, 2016 Sherrell Dorsey, www.nextcity.org Create! Detroit, Food Access, Food Security

By Sherrell Dorsey for Next City - Mike Feinman owns and operates E&L Supermercado in Southwest Detroit. The grocery store has been in his family for three generations, and has supplied the surrounding community with a variety of Hispanic food offerings and farmers-market-fresh produce since the 1940s. Despite a much-debated reputation for food deserts (some point to not a lack of stores, but rather a lack of transportation available to help people access existing stores), Detroit has several indie grocers like E&L that have spent several decades feeding residents.

Food Sovereignty: This is What Anarchy Looks Like

December 27, 2015 Boyan Atzev, www.resilience.org Strategize! Anarchism, Food and Agriculture, Food Security, Sovereignty

By Boyan Atzev for Resilience. The principles of food sovereignty are best followed in anarchy. The definition states that one should have direct control and choice over the kind of food one consumes and produces. The beauty of anarchy is that rather than worrying about a large scale, complex, centralized society one can focus on the immediate matters of one’s community. In case of peasants' movements these immediate matters are exactly the production and distribution of food locally. The knowledge coming from direct involvement with food production ensures well informed appropriate decisions made directly by the peasants based on their immediate needs.

US Beekeepers Lost Almost Half Their Honeybees

May 17, 2015 Melissa Breyer, www.treehugger.com Educate! Bees, Food and Agriculture, Food Security

Each year the Bee Informed Partnership in collaboration with the Apiary Inspectors of America conducts a survey among both commercial and backyard beekeepers to track the health and survival rates of their honeybee colonies. What the results reveal for April 2014 to April 2015 are dismal. Beekeepers surveyed lost a total of 42.1 percent of their colonies during the period. And while winter loss rates dipped .6 percent (from 23.7 percent last year to 23.1 percent this year), summer loss rates increased significantly, from 19.8 percent to 27.4 percent, which is troubling. The health of bee colonies isn't getting better. "We traditionally thought of winter losses as a more important indicator of health, because surviving the cold winter months is a crucial test for any bee colony," said Dennis vanEngelsdorp

NASA: Global Groundwater Crisis Threatens Food Supplies & Security

November 3, 2014 Joe Romm, www.thinkprogress.org Educate! California, Food and Agriculture, Food Security, Groundwater, Water

An alarming satellite-based analysis from NASA finds that the world is depleting groundwater — the water stored unground in soil and aquifers — at an unprecedented rate. A new Nature Climate Change piece, “The global groundwater crisis,” by James Famiglietti, a leading hydrologist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, warns that “most of the major aquifers in the world’s arid and semi-arid zones, that is, in the dry parts of the world that rely most heavily on groundwater, are experiencing rapid rates of groundwater depletion.” The groundwater at some of the world’s largest aquifers — in the U.S. High Plains, California’s Central Valley, China, India, and elsewhere — is being pumped out “at far greater rates than it can be naturally replenished.” The most worrisome fact: “nearly all of these underlie the word’s great agricultural regions and are primarily responsible for their high productivity.”

Ten Reasons To Say ‘No’ To North Over Trade

August 5, 2014 Ravi Kanth Devarakonda and Phil Harris, www.ipsnews.net Educate! Food Security, India, Trade, WTO

India’s decisive stand last week not to adopt the protocol of amendment of the trade facilitation agreement (TFA) unless credible rules were in place for the development issues of the South was met with “astonishment” and “dismay” by trade diplomats from the North, who described New Delhi’s as “hostage-taking” and “suicidal”. It obviously came as something of a shock for representatives of Northern interests that any party should have the brass neck to place the interests of its constituents on the negotiating table. After all, why should such banal issues as food security and poverty get in the way of a trade agenda heavily weighted in favour of the industrialised countries? New Delhi was demanding nothing more than credible global trade rules to ensure that “development,” including the challenges of poverty, in the countries of the South take precedence over the cut-throat mercantile business interests of the transnational corporations in the North In fact, it was India’s firm stand for permanent guarantees for public stockholding programmes for food security that turned this trade agenda upside down at the World Trade Organization (WTO) last week, putting paid to the adoption of the protocol of amendment for implementation of the contested TFA for the time being.

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