Recently the media has focused extensively on Toronto Mayor, Rob Ford’s proposed cuts to the student nutrition programs. At the time of writing, it seems as if Ford has been forced to back off owing to the howl of outrage this proposal produced. A ten per cent cut would mean 58 of its 669 programs would be closed, affecting about fourteen thousand children. The city is considering cutting $380 000 from its annul $3.8 million contribution to nutrition programs which cost a total of $12 million to run, the rest coming from the province and donations. To put it...
Read more »
Jomo Kwame Sundaram , United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development writes :- “Lack of food is rarely the reason that people go hungry. The world today produces enough food to feed everyone. The problem is that more and more people simply cannot afford to buy the food they need. Even before the recent food-price increases, a billion people were suffering from chronic hunger, while another two billion were experiencing malnutrition, bringing the total number of food-insecure people to around three billion, or almost half the world’s population. Global food prices are at the highest level since the United...
Read more »
Wheat is the new gold. As poor countries brace for shortages, it’s boom time for Kansas farmers. “It feels like Christmas in August,” admitted Darrell Hanavan, of the Colorado Wheat Administrative Committee, noting that the harvest just completed in his state seems to have been the most bountiful for 25 years. The dollar value for the crop is almost sure to set a record. The US Department of Agriculture expects US exports to surge by 36 per cent this year. The futures prices of wheat on the Chicago commodities exchanges are spiking at heights that even a few weeks...
Read more »
The ongoing food crisis in the Sahel, West Africa is actually a purchasing power crisis: there is food in the markets, but the poorest households cannot afford it said Bakari Seidou, food security advisor to Save the Children UK. “The market is their main source of food, but they need money. Their main source of cash is their labour: they earn an average of 20 cents a day per person; even if there is food available on the markets, they can not afford it.” Insufficient agricultural production: the poorest families have insufficient earning power; more than 50 percent of...
Read more »
Capitalism and food security – an oxymoron Food security for all the people of the world will only be possible whem the profit motive is taken out of food supply. It’s official! Now more than one billion people are hungry and in desperate need of food aid according to the World Food Programme. To meet this need $6.7 billion will be required this year alone (of which less than half has been raised so far). $6.7 billion equates to less than 0.01 percent of that heaped on the needy banks and corporations during the recent and ongoing financial crisis....
Read more »
Eat Your Heart Out. Felicity Lawrence. Penguin. Following on from Not on the Label, this is another book by Felicity Lawrence that exposes much that’s wrong with the food we eat and the way it’s produced and, therefore, much that’s wrong with capitalism as a way of running the world. Lawrence describes conventional farming as ‘a system for turning oil into food’. There is simply more profit in industrial food production than in plain healthy food like fruit and veg. Consequently consumers’ food choices are manipulated, so that we ‘want’ what the food industry sells at the biggest profit...
Read more »
In 1921 36 companies were responsible for 85 percent of US grain exports. By the end of the 70s six companies controlled 90+ percent of Canadian, European, Australian and Argentinian grain and currently Cargill and Continental each control 25 percent of the world’s grain trade. While 37 nations have been plunged into food crisis Monsanto has had record sales from herbicides and seeds and Cargill’s profit increased by 86 percent. On the one hand these corporations use, wherever there is a perceived advantage, the poorer countries for cash crops, manufacturing using cheap labour, cheaper processing and they take advantage...
Read more »
President Bush in an interactive business session had argued that while prosperity in countries like India is good, it triggers increased demand for better nutrition, which in turn leads to higher food prices.The comments came close on the heels of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s controversial statement that ‘apparent improvement’ in the diets of people in India and China is among the causes of the current global food crisis. The Truth Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% – far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report. The figure emphatically contradicts...
Read more »
“American supermarkets are epics of excess: it often seems like every item in the store comes in a “Jumbo” size or has “Bonus!” splashed across the label. But is it possible that the amount of food Americans are buying is, in fact… shrinking? Well, yes. Soaring commodity and fuel prices are driving up costs for manufacturers; faced with a choice between raising prices (which consumers would surely notice) or quietly putting fewer ounces in the bag, carton or cup (which they generally don’t) manufacturers are choosing the latter. This month, Kellogg’s started shipping Apple Jacks, Cocoa Krispies, Corn Pops,...
Read more »
Read more »