Musings on sustainable food systems, agriculture vs. agroecology, and more!
I peek around the corner of the grocery store. Well, I guess ‘store’ is a misnomer – distribution point, maybe? I am shy at first because I am wary of being an obnoxious foreigner, treating Havana as an open-air museum full of entertaining quirks that actually make up Cubans’ reality. But the clerk waves me … Continue reading State-Sponsored Food Security: The Cuban Case. Does It Work?
Well, the Warsaw summit on climate change has turned out to be a major disappointment, with many prominent NGOs walking out prematurely to signal their protest at governmental inaction and last-ditch agreements remaining vague and postponing real commitments to future meetings. Commentators especially deplored the lack of urgency that seemed to reign among the negotiators, … Continue reading What Does Warsaw Mean for Agriculture?
(click through for a larger pdf version) The FAO has just released a new infographic showcasing some of the facts and numbers its statistics unit, FAOSTAT, regularly collects. Some of the numbers that stand out to me: More than 840 million people worldwide are undernourished. Compare that with the fact that the average annual food … Continue reading The Current State of Agriculture (According to the FAO)
Since World Food Day happened recently, I was surprised to learn that the USA celebrate their own Food Day today! Maybe it’s similar to the difference between the Canadian and American Thanksgiving, or between European and North American daylight savings time? I guess globalization has its limits. 🙂 Still, why not celebrate twice? Happy Food Day! … Continue reading US Food Day – How Food Literate Are You?
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
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6qVKsf0ETdA] The Generation Food Project sounds like a really awesome documentary idea that will highlight grassroots initiatives that are fixing the food system where it matters. They describe their mission as follows: Together, we want to show how ordinary women and men the world over are setting the table for themselves, their communities, and generations to … Continue reading Explore, Follow, Support: The Generation Food Project
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?
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
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjtIl5B1zXI] This is an interesting take on the interplay between food production and climate change. The video defines a ‘safe space’ defined by the boundaries on how much food we need, how much food we can produce at given levels of climate change, and how that increased food production will further affect climate change.
