For Mexican workers, farmers, and the poor, the pandemic and the new treaty replacing NAFTA are a devastating one-two punch.
Will the New NAFTA Make the Pandemic Worse for Mexicans?
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agriculture
Can Coronavirus Be a Catalyst for Thinking Globally?
In an age of pandemics and climate crisis, countries’ health, environmental, and development policies are globally important.
Creating Fossil-Fuel-Free Communities Globally
It’s time for a new back-to-the-land movement.
Trump and Trade: The Perils for Agriculture
The news is full of efforts to read the tea leaves of incoming President Trump’s startling and somewhat erratic pronouncements on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). NAFTA was a bad deal, he says, and as a consummate dealmaker, he will tear up the...
Seeds of Corporate Power vs Farmers’ Rights
The consolidation of corporate power in agriculture has been in the news a lot lately, first with the proposed ChemChina-Syngenta and Dow-DuPont mergers, and now with Bayer’s proposal to purchase seed giant Monsanto. National Farmers Union president Roger Johnson...
Zero Growth Can be Dynamic
Growth is considered the foremost driver of prosperity. The growth rate of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) gives an immediate measure of how well a national economy is functioning. Such economic growth drives business expansion and job creation. The relatively low US...
Will Scarcity Lead to Anarchy in China as Robert Kaplan Maintains?
Renowned American journalist Robert D. Kaplan warned the West that, in the light of the quick deterioration of the arable land quality in interior China due to “deforestation, loss of topsoil and salinization”, when China’s population has reached “1.54 billion by...
US and Cuba Swap Embassies: Victory of Diplomacy and Democracy
The governments of United States and Cuba are opening embassies this week in Havana and Washington. This is a major watershed in the road to full normalization of relations between the two states and the two societies. This is also a major win for democracy because...
Menu for a Hot Planet
In many ways the human race hit the skids when we stopped throwing spears and gathering berries. Once we started planting seeds and harvesting the produce, we grew shorter, fatter, sicker, and considerably more overworked. An alien visiting from another planet during...
Obama: Into Africa
President Obama is definitely “into” Africa. As much as possible in a world riven by multiple crises, the president has made the continent a focus of his policymaking. Turning his own Kenyan heritage into a personal bridge to the region, he has visited Africa three...