Briarpatch Magazine » food politics

Seeds, crops and GMOs: New variety registration regulations threaten organic farming

dave — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:31:11 +0000

Listen to this special Making the Links Radio program, "Seed Variety Control by Private Interests" on how the Canadian Food Inspection Agency seed regulations will be changed to accommodate the interests of private concerns and the transnational corporations who are pursuing genetically engineered seed production. Host Don Kossick talks with organic farmer and National Farmers Union leader, Terry Boehm, about what these changes in seed variety registration will mean for farm communities and the organic farm movement in Canada. The SOD position paper states, "The availability of high quality seed free from contamination by GMO varieties and seed that is certified organic or eligible for use in certified organic seed propagation is fundamental requirement for organic grain faming in Canada. The proposed Seed Variety regulation threatens quality, access, public accountability, and the buyers right to unbiased information about seed." Listen here.

The Black Hole of Debt: Haiti can’t feed itself, and is sending millions abroad in loan payments

dave — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:53:39 +0000

By Nick Dearden Counterpunch.org In recent weeks, Haiti has been gripped by violent protest yet again. And yet again the inhabitants of this impoverished country are suffering the most brutal consequences of the fallout of the global economic crisis. This time it is the rise in global food prices, which has sparked riots in Port au Prince, [...]

MediaScout: Scarcity hits the headlines

dave — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:16:19 +0000

By Daniel Tencer MediaScout An easily overlooked article, buried in today’s La Presse and the Star, suggests that the human race came within a whisker of extinction seventy thousand years ago, when the homo sapiens population may have dropped to as few as two thousand people. That should give us pause for thought as we look at today’s news cycle, which is, almost without exception, focused on the apparently sudden arrival of serious problems with our supply of two basic necessities: food and energy. CIBC economist Jeff Rubin is all over last night’s broadcasts and today’s papers, announcing that we can expect a serious shock at the pumps: By this summer, Rubin says, we’ll be paying $1.40 per litre of gas, and that will rise to $2.25 per litre over the next several years, bringing the cost of an average tank of gas to around $100. And, in a not unrelated story, Canadians can soon expect to pay considerably more for basic foodstuffs as well, as grain prices (and therefore, by extension, meat prices) soar over the next few years. The two issues come down to a basic problem that is at the heart of all economics, but one that we, in our age of affluence and seemingly endless economic growth, have mostly forgotten about: scarcity. As developing nations become wealthier, the demand for food and energy rises, while the supply remains stagnant. That is what is happening, and the result appears to be a return to an us-or-them, zero-sum mentality. As Rubin told The National last night: “For every new driver who gets on the road in India or China or Russia, someone’s got to get off the road in [our] part of the world.” In all fairness, we could have seen this coming. Economists and academics have been warning us for years that oil supplies are peaking, and will begin to decline, and that increasing demand for food will put pressure on the planet’s ability to sustain the human race. The predictions of social unrest and war arising from the problem of scarcity continue to be ignored, even as food riots break out in poor countries and the US continues to fight a war in the middle of the world’s largest oil pool. What is conspicuously absent from the Big Seven’s coverage of this issue today is any discussion as to how to solve these problems. There are few questions posed on how to increase food production, no discussion of alternative energy sources. Yet it is becoming increasingly obvious that, if we want to maintain our standard of living, then finding alternatives to fossil fuels and reforming the creaky, at times senseless structure of global agricultural trade can no longer be treated as political footballs to be accepted or rejected-they have to be seen, quite literally, as matters of survival. If we fail to rise to the challenge, then nature itself will no doubt provide a draconian solution. As an example, take another lesson from pre-history in today’s news cycle, an item in The National (not available online) and the Star regarding the fate of the king of the dinosaurs, the tyrannosaurus rex. New genetic evidence suggests that, when conditions became unfavourable for the enormous creature, the t-rex evolved into something more manageable-the everyday barnyard chicken, and the ostrich, to be precise. If we fail to address the problems facing us now, nature could reduce us, too, to a species that is less demanding.

An Alternative Agriculture is Possible: The Politics of Food is Politics

dave — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:55:08 +0000

By De Clarke and Stan Goff CounterPunch.org

"The Food Underground is already here. It has been invisible to many of us, because our eyes were fixed on 'higher' ideological struggles, while the basis of effective counter-ideology -- skill and design -- quietly passed us by. It is time to change that. Political resisters need to learn and apply the skills and designs of the food underground; and the food underground needs deeper, more focused and intentional politicization."

In recent days, we have seen the rising price of oil and the devaluation of the dollar create two quantum shifts in the economy: the beginning of the collapse of the air travel industry and a global crisis of food-price inflation. These are related in ways that are crucial to understand -- because we are seeing the outlines of an historic opportunity to change the terms of theory and practice for a politics of resistance. As air carriers have gone bankrupt, the knock-on effects on travel agents, airports, airport-colocated hotels, "package" vacation resorts, etc. are considerable.

Chaos spreads as food prices skyrocket

dave — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:15:38 +0000

Spiegel Online The scenes in Haiti have been dramatic. Gunfire on the streets in the capital Port-au-Prince; thousands parading through the streets; and 9,000 United Nations peacekeepers powerless to stop the violence and the widespread looting. Five people have been killed in the violence since last Thursday, according to unofficial reports. Even an impassioned plea by the Caribbean country's President Rene Preval on Wednesday failed to restore order. "The solution is not to go around destroying stores," he said. "I'm giving you orders to stop." Haitians, though, are reacting to problems that cannot simply be wished away. Food prices across the globe have been skyrocketing in recent years. Rice prices in Asia have spiked as has the price of bread in Egypt, milk products in Europe and pasta in Italy. The result has been unrest in a number of countries and many more concerned that a mass protest is but a price hike away.

Why the price of ‘peak oil’ is famine

dave — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 18:23:21 +0000

This is the logical outcome of using fossil fuel inputs to grow food, and then turning that food into fuel. As Evans-Pritchard points out, “energy and food have ‘converged’ in price and can increasingly be switched from one use to another,” which is just a polite way of saying that, in a time of scarcity, rich people’s ability to pay for fuel will quickly outstrip poor people’s ability to pay for food.

Why the price of 'peak oil' is famine
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor The London Telegraph February 9, 2008 Vulnerable regions of the world face the risk of famine over the next three years as rising energy costs spill over into a food crunch, according to US investment bank Goldman Sachs.