Musings on sustainable food systems, agriculture vs. agroecology, and more!
‘As Common As Dirt‘ just received the 2013 James Beard Award in the Politics/Policy/Environment category, one of the most prestigious awards for food journalism. Click the link above to get an eye-opening reminder of the realities of American farm labor. Particularly, it exposes the ‘farm labor contractor’ system, a system in which an intermediary between … Continue reading 'As Common As Dirt', an Expose on Farm Labor in California
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?!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lcSL2yN39JM#at=867] If you ever feel powerless or overwhelmed by the challenges we are facing to reform our food system, just watch the video above. Steve Ritz, an educator from the poorest congressional district of America, the South Bronx in New York, talks with contagious enthusiasm and energy about how he founded the “Green Bronx Machine“. His … Continue reading The Power of the Green Bronx Machine
If you live in the US, you may have heard about the recent proliferation of regulations in around a dozen states that opponents call “ag-gag laws”. These laws make it illegal to covertly videotape livestock farms or to apply for jobs without disclosing ties to animal welfare organizations. Such undercover taping however is often crucial … Continue reading "Ag-Gag" Laws – What Stands Behind Them?
The challenge with large governments (such as the USA’s) is that they produce huge packages of legislature that only few individuals can understand in its entirety. Thus, everybody focuses on what they are interested or specialized in, and there is the potential to slip things in that legislators aren’t aware of or don’t understand the … Continue reading What Is The "Monsanto Rider"?
Yesterday, a New York State Supreme Court Judge struck down the first attempt in the U.S. to fight against obesity by legally regulating portion sizes. A day before a law was due to take effect that would limit the allowed size of sugary drinks sold in restaurants, food courts and movie theatres to 16 ounces, … Continue reading New York's Soda Ban Overruled – Defeat of the "Nanny State" or Public Health Setback?
Yesterday marked the first day of a period in US politics that was never supposed to happen – the deadline to prevent sequestration ran out, triggering through-the-board spending cuts of $85 billion dollars. This article (and the one-minute-video) gives a great overview of what stands behind it – basically, it was a bipartisan deal of … Continue reading Sequestration – When Partisan Politics Affect Real Food Security
In the latest stage of an extended legal tussle, mid-January of this year the Canadian Supreme Court refused to hear a case that claimed the Conservative government’s actions in abolishing the Western Canadian Wheat Board were unlawful since they failed to take into account a plebiscite by the very farmers that had been using the … Continue reading The Grand Wheat Board Controversy
Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the oral arguments in a case that promises broad ramifications for the future of seed patents in America and, by extension, globally. The case of Vernon Bowman v. Monsanto is complex and shows gaps in the current legal framework with regard to seeds as patentable items that might make … Continue reading Of Farmers and Supreme Court Judges
During my undergraduate degree in Political Science, I wrote my Bachelor’s Thesis on Russia’s definition of food security and their food policies in general, so I still follow news about that topic with great interest. To summarize my 50-page paper in two sentences, Russia seems to be striving for total food independence (meaning that all … Continue reading Russia's Ban on U.S. Meat Exports – Is It Legit?