Musings on sustainable food systems, agriculture vs. agroecology, and more!
Given that I am living in Europe right now and haven’t been a resident of the US for more than 17 years, it seems I am posting disproportionately about US politics, doesn’t it? Well, my apologies to my European readers, I will try to balance it in the future – however, right now there are … Continue reading The US Government Shutdown and Its Impacts on Food Policy
Add a new chapter to the US Farm Bill debate – which seems to further complicate the prospect of ever coming to a conclusion. After the huge disagreements between the Republican-dominated House and Democrat-dominated Senate on the nutrition program versus subsidy expenditures and the consequent divorce of the two issues in legislation, the House has … Continue reading "The Most Heartless Bill"
Close your eyes for a moment and wipe every notion of “it’s this way because it has always been this way” from your mind. Now let’s try a thought experiment. What does a human need to survive? The very basic needs? You’ll probably find three, just as Jose Luis Vivero Pol found in his paper “Food … Continue reading What If Food Were A Common Good? – A Thought Experiment
Remember the failure of the Farm Bill in the U.S. House of Representatives? And the uncertainty of the way forward? Two weeks ago, I wrote: “Fiscal conservatives are suggesting to split the bill in two, thereby divorcing the historically-married issues of farm support and food stamp programs. However, the combination of these two in one bill has … Continue reading The Food Bill Divorce
This weekend, David Cameron hosted the G8 “Hunger Summit” in Northern Ireland, resulting in promises, pledges, praise – and a lot of backlash from African civil society, who this summit was supposed to help. What was the problem? [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-E3iPJZ6_g] (the IF campaign actually had a really good promotion video.) Prior to the summit, Cameron announced … Continue reading IF … Policymakers Would Listen to Civil Society?
If you were asked to design an efficient, responsive, economical system to deliver food aid to poor people in a hunger crisis due to food price spikes, how would you do it? a) Buy grain from your country’s farmers, put it on big boats, ship it across an ocean, hire some trucks, drive the trucks … Continue reading Shift in U.S. Food Aid Policy At The Horizon?!
Click here to access the interactive map! After looking up some information for yesterday’s post, I realized that the International Food Policy Research Institute has a great visualization tool of their last World Hunger Index report online. Click on the country of your choice to find out where it ranks on the Index and to … Continue reading A Map of Hunger
Here is a mind-boggling Sunday statistic for you: India is estimated to have more undernourished people than all of Sub-Saharan Africa combined. I had to re-read that sentence three times before really grasping its consequences. I think especially in academia, we are now so used to think of India as an “emerging economy”, a “model … Continue reading India On the Verge to Legally Implement Right to Food