Food & Farm Archives - Page 13 of 30 - Foreign Policy In Focus

Malawi Makes, Africa Takes?

by Simone D'Abreu | Aug 11, 2011

In 2005, President Bingu Wu Mutharika of Malawi embarked on an innovative five-year solution to promote Malawi’s agriculture sector by increasing farm subsidies and allocating 10 percent of the national budget to the agriculture sector to help promote infrastructure and farm training. Despite concerns from the World Bank and the UN, President Mutharika promoted Malawi’s agriculture sector and decreased poverty from 52 percent to 40 percent while turning Malawi into a food basket not only for its people but also for export.

Land ‘investment’ deals in Africa: Say ‘no way!’

by Jeff Furman, Anuradha Mittal, Frederic Mousseau | Jul 12, 2011

The real question at the heart of the matter is for whom are Africa’s resources and who do they benefit? Africa’s resources – land, water, minerals… are for the people of Africa. Despite its rich resources, African nations are reeling from widespread hunger and poverty. In that context, to talk about who should have strategic investor status, or export guarantees, is the wrong question to ask.

100% Scared: How the National Security Complex Grows on Terrorism Fears

by Tom Engelhardt | Jun 13, 2011

In terms of damage since 9/11, terror attacks have ranked above shark attacks but below just about anything else that could possibly be dangerous to Americans, including car crashes which have racked up between 33,800 and 43,500 deaths a year since 2001.

Contamination: From Minamata to Fukushima

by Christine Marran | May 16, 2011

As with methyl-mercury a half century ago, Japan is once again threatened by a new persistent toxin accumulating in its food and water. But unlike the early days of the discovery of mercury poisoning, Japan’s government has quickly launched responses to this contamination, even far beyond the local site of contamination.

Monsanto Uses Latest Food Crisis to Push Transgenic Corn in Mexico

by Alfredo Acedo | Apr 14, 2011

Monsanto has turned the drop in international corn reserves and the havoc wreaked on Mexican corn production by an unexpected cold snap into an argument for speeding up commercial planting of its genetically modified (GM) corn in Mexico. The transnational is claiming that its modified seeds are the only solution to scarcity and rising grain prices.

Food Security and National Security

by Jim Harkness | Feb 23, 2011

Sounding the alarm about various threats posed by a rising China has become a cottage industry among pundits and politicians. One of the oldest warnings is that China’s increasing demand for food will wreak havoc on international markets, causing mass starvation in food-importing countries. But this concern ignores the safeguards China has in place for food shortages and the lessons the rest of the world could learn from this approach.

The Year of Living Dangerously

by Michael Klare | Jan 25, 2011

Get ready for a rocky year. From now on, rising prices, powerful storms, severe droughts and floods, and other unexpected events are likely to play havoc with the fabric of global society, producing chaos and political unrest. Start with a simple fact: the prices of basic food staples are already approaching or exceeding their 2008 peaks, that year when deadly riots erupted in dozens of countries around the world.

Art, Activism, and Permaculture

by Lars Kwakkenbos | Jan 20, 2011

Infamous for fomenting mass disobedience on bicycles during the Copenhagen climate Summit, touring the UK recruiting a rebel clown army, running courses in post-capitalist culture and falling in love with utopias, the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination exists somewhere between art and activism, poetry and politics. The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination is not an institution or a group, not a network nor an NGO, but an affinity of friends who recognize the beauty of collective creative disobedience. It treats insurrection as an art, and art as a means of preparing for the coming insurrection.

How the Farm Lobby Distorts U.S. Foreign Policy

by Marc-William Palen | Jan 7, 2011

Thanks to the hard work of the U.S. Farm Lobby, America’s love of cheap food has stretched more than an engorged waistline. It now stretches the limits of American foreign policy.Over the past century, the Farm Lobby’s influence on the U.S. government has increased alongside the consolidation and growth of U.S. agribusinesses, the principle recipients of federal farm subsidies. Now it appears the Farm Lobby’s efforts are hamstringing American national security, as well.

Patent Grab Threatens Biodiversity and Food Sovereignty in Africa

by Hope Shand | Nov 16, 2010

Under the guise of developing ‘climate-ready’ crops, the world’s largest seed and agrochemical corporations are pressuring governments to allow what could become the broadest and most dangerous patent claims in intellectual property history. A new report by ETC Group[1] reveals a dramatic upsurge in the number of patent claims on ‘climate-ready’ genes, plants and technologies that will supposedly allow biotech crops to tolerate drought and other environmental stresses (i.e. abiotic stresses) associated with climate change.