Musings on sustainable food systems, agriculture vs. agroecology, and more!
It seems the international media really started noticing the Venezuelan economic meltdown when the Coca-Cola factory shut its doors because it ran out of sugar. The national beer provider Empresas Polar soon followed, citing barley shortages. So, now Venezuelans are running out of coke, beer, and pretty much any basic commodity. Online videos show people running … Continue reading Economic Collapse: Tracing Where Venezuela Went Wrong
It’s been quiet around here. Though I’ve been writing for other outlets, and in my day job, not much of that work has found its way on this page. And that’s too bad, because of course it all goes into the same direction. So today I’m happy to share one result very close to my … Continue reading Home-Grown Hunger in the Canadian North
In addition to being a world-famous chef and juror on Top Chef, Tom Colicchio also fights for the right to food on a policy level. Food Policy Action, an NGO he co-founded, scores US policy makers on their voting record on bills related to agriculture, nutrition and hunger. What can we learn from their aggregate results? As … Continue reading Food Policy Action: A Scorecard for Policy-Makers
… or how to attain UN millennium goals without reducing hunger by Helena Robling If you follow the news on international development, you know that we are in the midst of some exciting times right now. The era of the UNs Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has come to an end and it is time for evaluation … Continue reading The Magical Hunger Numbers
It happens that once you specialize in a topic, you get a little jaded about ‘broad overview’ talks. Whenever I go to one of those now, I notice myself mentally playing the ‘food security bingo’ game – what doesn’t the presenter mention? What is emphasized? The point scale in my head looks somewhat like this: Mentions … Continue reading The @WorldResources Institute On How To "Create A Sustainable Food Future"
Español Sometimes, it´s easy to get caught up in the news of the day – Ukraine, Gaza, ISIS – that other news items go unnoticed. So, for example, that Central American agricultural producers are being hit extremely hard this year after a disease called coffee leaf rust destroyed many export crops. Now, on top of … Continue reading Drought in Central America – Sequía en Centroamérica
Man, sometimes you just have to catch yourself in moments of pure luck. Like today, after a morning spent in glorious summer weather hammering out the last formatting issues of my thesis, when I was able to attend a lunch seminar (who said there was no free lunch in economics?) with the inspiring Kate Raworth … Continue reading Review: Kate Raworth's 'Doughnut Economics'
For my new class, I was assigned the reading “The Limits to Growth: Malthus and the Classical Economists” by E. A. Wrigley. It’s a great primer into the worries classical economists had about the state of the economy, growth and population dynamics, and was interesting enough that I decided to look further into the issue. … Continue reading What Did Malthus Really Say?
Think of “food” and “North Korea” and chances are you will be reminded of the near-yearly news items speaking of hunger, starvation, and malnutrition in the country. However, times might be changing, at least if you believe Andrei Lankov, professor of Korean Studies at Seoul University. In this Al Jazeera piece, he argues that the … Continue reading 10 Facts About Food (Shortages) in North Korea
It’s nice to see that, once challenges are identified, sometimes we do take steps forward to address them. This is at least the purpose of the European food-waste prevention project FUSIONS (Food Use for Social Innovation by Optimizing Waste-Prevention Strategies) that was launched in 2012 and will run until 2016. Along with UK partner WRAP (Waste … Continue reading Tackling Food Waste – One Strategy at a Time
