China and Industrial Animal Agriculture: Prospects and Defects
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This backgrounder is based on a longer report by Mia MacDonald and Sangamithra Lyer published by Brighter Green.
Read that report here:
http://brightergreen.org/files/brightergreen_china_print.pdf
The Limits of Microcredit— A Bangladesh Case
By Jason Cons and Kasia Paprocki of the Goldin Institute
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Winter 2008 -- Volume 14 -- Number 4
Food First Backgrounder Vol. 14 #3: The Food Crisis Comes Home: Empty food banks, rising costs--symtoms of a hungrier nation
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Fall 2008
By Heidi Conner, Juliana Mandell, Meera Velu and Annie Shattuck
The food crisis is worsening. The UN World Food Program predicts a jump in the number of hungry people in the world from 860 million to more than one billion people—one of every six people in the world. Retail prices of food in the U.S. increased four percent last year, driven by a combination of speculation, high oil prices, agrofuel consumption, a weak dollar, climatic
Food First Backgrounder Vol 14 #2--New Era for Agriculture?
By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, Molly Anderson, and Ivette Perfecto
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On April 7, 2008, as the media headlines focused on falling grain reserves, soaring food prices, and food riots, representatives from 61 nations met in Johannesburg, South Africa to adopt a UN Report that proposed urgently needed solutions to the global food system's systemic problems.
Food First Backgrounder Vol 14, Number 1--From Food Rebellions to Food Sovereignty: Urgent call to fix a broken food system
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| bgr spring 2008 -Food Rebellions.pdf | 522.81 KB |
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| BG Sp08 De Rebelion por Comida 5-08.pdf | 633.48 KB |
Hunger in a World of Plenty
The skyrocketing cost of food has resurrected the specter of "food riots." The World Bank reports that global food prices rose 83% over the last three years and the FAO cites a 45% increase in their wold food price index during just the past nine months. The Economist's comparable index stands at its highest point since it was originally formulated in 1848. As of March 2008, average world wheat prices were 130% above their level a year earlier, soy prices were 87% higher, rice had climbed 74% and maize was up 31%.
Colombia palm oil biodiesel plantations: A "lose-lose" development strategy?
“We think biofuels can further our core mission, which is to bring economic opportunity and a better quality of life to the region’s low-income majority.”
--Luis Alberto Moreno, President Inter-American Development Bank
Shattering Myths: Can sustainable agriculture feed the world?
For years, critics and proponents alike have worried that the related methods of organic, low-input, low- or no-pesticide, integrated, small-scale, and sustainable production may address environmental concerns, but cannot produce sufficient food to sustain the large and growing human population. Such skepticism was understandable—the so-called Green Revolution of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s had been credited with averting widespread hunger crises by drastically increasing agricultural production, while the downsides of its technological advancements only began to enter the popular consciousness in the years after Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in 1962. Questioning the source of the cornucopia that provided plenty to people throughout the world seemed downright ungracious and backward. How could we be critical of the Green Revolution when it had staved off so much hunger?
Biofuels: Myths of the Agro-fuels Transition
by Eric Holt-Giménez, Ph.D., Executive Director,
Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy
Organic Coffee Crisis? Backgrounder Volume 13, Number 1 Spring 2007
by Eric Holt-Giménez, Ian Bailey and Devon Sampson
Coffee Crisis—Take Two
“The Coffee Crisis” used to refer to the disastrous plunge in world coffee prices in the 1980s and 1990s that bankrupted hundreds of thousands of smallholders around the world. The USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP) is now poised to bring us the “Organic Coffee Crisis.” With a breathtaking disregard for transparency, consultation and public debate, the NOP is moving to make it prohibitively expensive and logistically impossible for small-scale organic coffee growers.
