Blog
Give Greece A Chance
July 2, 2012
Recent media reports on Greece have been dominated by images of civil discontent and unrest. As the country enters its fifth consecutive year of depression, the most severe since the Second World War, I rediscover another Greece.
The Greece of corruption and inefficiency, you hear so much of in…
The True Cost Of The Cheap Potato
July 1, 2012
Editor’s note: This article is one of three runners up for the 2012 IUCN – Thomson Reuters Environmental Media Award announced today.
Over the last decades, the EU Common Agricultural Policy achieved its goals of producing sufficient amounts of food in low prices. This came at a cost,…
Hans Herren at Rio+20: True Pricing Of Food Is The Way Forward
June 25, 2012
Many thanks to Pavlos Georgiadis of Young Organics for producing this video!
He met with Dr. Hans Herren at Rio+20, to talk about IAASTD and the way forward. The 1995 World Food Prize Winner didn’t mince his words. “It will take more than just words to change the system,” he said. According to him, food consumption is the key towards the effective transformation of food production and distribution.
How? By pricing food according to its true cost and value, and by informing consumers of what’s in the food they buy through correct labeling. In other words, ending subsidies to commodity crops, factoring the environmental, social and public health costs of industrial food production into the price tag of food items, and labeling GMO, are the name of the game!
Rio+ has come and gone… Now what?
June 22, 2012
The 2012 Earth Summit has come to a close. This campaign lives on.
The Outcome Document, “The Future We Want”, hasn’t brought us any closer to any implementation of public policies to actively promote and support sustainable agriculture.
Its chapter on “Food security and nutrition and sustainable agriculture” lists what needs to happen but fails to define “sustainable agriculture”, and doesn’t include any sort of commitment with regard to agricultural policies:
Food security and nutrition and sustainable agriculture
108. We reaffirm our commitments regarding the right of everyone to have access
to safe, sufficient and nutritious food, consistent with the right to adequate food and
the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunge…
The Most Important Form of Capital is Human Capital
June 22, 2012
I’ve heard this phrase espoused several times at Rio+20, particularly within a session on the UN’s initiative for Sustainable Energy For All.
I agree. There is no question that development could not exist without a strong human resource which has produced all of our structures, organizations, societies, institutions, problems, successes, and ideas.
But what would human capital be without food?
Humans need food to survive. We all know this. But when we discuss the importance of recognizing and strengthening human capital the concept of food is left out of conversation.
Humans don’t need just food, but healthy food. If we want a strong workforce to support the world’s growth, we need to make sure that people have access to what’s required to support their thr…
Rio+20: Biovision Assesses Progress Made
June 22, 2012
On the last day of Rio+20, David Fritz, the media director for Biovision, a co-sponsor of nourish9billion.org, gives a quick wrap-up of progress made, including the successful introduction of sustainable agriculture in the Zero Draft of the Summit’s outcome document. He also looks forward to the next step with regard to policy implementation.
Press Review
Farm Bill Draft Spells Out Business As Usual — Or Worse
April 24, 2012
Few legislative texts are as essential and convoluted as the Farm Bill. Reshaped every five years, this piece of legislation plays a major role in defining the American food system. It frames the priorities of the US agricultural policy (say, increase commodity crops for exports and biofuels). Hi…
Pesticides’ Biggest Cost: Honeybee Colony Collapse
April 11, 2012
Claiming that pesticide-free agriculture is better for our health and the health of the planet is an understatement. Take the honeybees, for instance. Our master-pollinators have been disappearing in huge numbers, driving up the cost of crop pollination, and creating serious concern not just in t…
FDA’s Lip Service On Antibiotics
April 11, 2012
It sounds so good: “Farmers and ranchers will for the first time be required to get a prescription from a veterinarian before using antibiotics in cattle, pigs, chickens and other animals, federal food regulators announced on Wednesday,” according to the New York Times.
What?! You mean that using antibiotics as an additive in the feed of industrial farm animals will soon be a thing …
Awareness Index Up On Climate Change, Farm Workers Exploitation
April 10, 2012
Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have determined that the accelerated increase in atmospheric nitrous oxide in the last few decades has been caused by synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use. In other words, The Science has spoken again, and established beyond the shadow of any re…
Pressure on GM food labeling is mounting
April 5, 2012
Monsanto has been busy. The chemical and biotech juggernaut that has brought Round-Up herbicide and genetically-modified (GM) seeds to a field near you, recently scored a victory in Washington DC with the Food & Drug Administration’s announcement that 1 million signatures demanding GM f…
“Pink slime” takes front stage
April 2, 2012
How did “pink slime”, the unsavory food additive made from ammonia-cleansed beef trimmings, become a hot consumer issue after languishing for years under the general public’s radar? Salon tells the story.
While this consumers’ success story warrants celebration, food dem…
