Food & Agriculture
FARMERS ARE DESTROYING MOUNTAINS OF FOOD
THE GUARDIAN
Crises tend to expose pre-existing societal malfunctions, and the Covid-19 pandemic has provided a bleak view into our political and economic soul. This March and April, even as an astounding 30 million Americans plunged into unemployment and food bank needs soared, farmers across the US destroyed heartbreaking amounts of food to stem mounting financial losses.
Joey Klein bounces around me like a boxer, hurling verbal enticements. Wiry, strong, and ruddy from long days in the sun, the Long Island native turned radical farmer invites me to “come on up the hill, come check out the chickens and goats!”
US AGRIBUSINESS IS SEEING GREEN IN CUBA
VICE NEWS
As Cuba-US relations gradually warm, with President Barack Obama heading to the island this weekend for the first US presidential visit in 90 years, American agribusiness is seeing green — specifically, lucrative pastures of export opportunities. While still a relatively small market, Cuba represents potentially billions of dollars of US commodity exports, just a 90-mile flight or cargo ship ride away.
The clock on climate upheaval is ticking fast with little time to lose, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made frighteningly clear last week. “Limiting global warming to 1.5ºC would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society,” the October 8 report warned. Yet just one month earlier, the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS) brushed over what may be the most critical “aspect of society,” making only marginal mention of the crisis’s top cause.
THE GREAT FOOD BLACKOUT OF 2016
FOOD FIRST
Remember the great 2016 presidential campaign debate about food and agriculture, the backbone of human nourishment and survival? Remember when the candidates were forced to articulate their stances on soil regeneration, farm subsidy inequities, labor abuse in the food industry, and how to rein in pesticides and GMOs while expanding organic diversified farming? Remember when the media pressed candidates to explain how they would make food and farming equitable, truly sustainable, and deeply healthful for generations to come?
You didn’t forget—it never happened.
HARVESTING PROFITS: THE ROOTS OF OUR FOOD CRISIS
THE PROGRESSIVE
Every day in America, as we consume whatever food we can access and aford, the system that supplies our sustenance is engaged in its own form of consumption. It feasts on human toil, commodifed animals, natural resources, and our own bodies. Food, one of the foundations of life, has become a hub of sufering and struggle.
FOOD SHIFT
CRAFTSMANSHIP.NET
In perennially water-starved Patagonia, Arizona, just 18 miles from the Mexico border, Gary Nabhan, well known as an author and ethnobotanist, farms a worldly array of desert crops that could make any food lover salivate. His harvest, more than 120 varieties strong, includes Sonoran pomegranates, Baja California Mission guavas, Winter Banana apples, amaranth, asparagus, globe artichokes, and even an arid-friendly Texas Mission variety of the infamously thirsty almond. The 5-acre farm, which he manages with his wife Laurie Monti, a medical anthropologist and professor of indigenous studies, grows these foods on precious little water—about 17 inches of rainfall a year, a dollop compared with the US-wide average of 28 inches.
BIG SODA’S FALSE POPULISM
LOS ANGELES TIMES
In its $10.5-million spending binge to defeat soda tax measures in Berkeley and San Francisco in November — and to stem the nationwide push to hold Big Soda accountable for epidemic diseases related to sugar overconsumption — the soda industry has positioned itself as a populist defender of poor people’s access to supposedly cheap soda.
NUTRITION, INC.
THE PROGRESSIVE
When thousands of the nation’s nutritionists gathered in Philadelphia for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ 2012 annual conference, they plunked down $300 apiece to hear the latest thinking on food and health. Many were surprised to find that this thinking included a hefty portion of nutritional advice from food corporations that were major sponsors of the event.
CONTROL OVER YOUR FOOD: WHY MONSANTO'S GM SEEDS ARE UNDEMOCRATIC
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
Large biotech agribusinesses like Monsanto control much of the global seed market with genetically modified (GM) crops. This centralization of GM seeds threatens food safety, food security, biodiversity, and democratic ideals.
THE FOOD DIVIDE: SAN FRANCISCO IS A CITY OF HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS WHEN IT COMES TO NUTRITION
SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN
Antonia Williams is part of a slow, quiet food revolution. After battling obesity for much of her adult life, the 26-year-old lifelong Bayview resident did some research. “I realized it had a lot to do with the food I consumed,” she told us. “As a result of growing up in the neighborhood, I suffer from obesity. I’m overweight because of the lack of options for good healthy food.”
FARM BILL: MAKING AMERICA FAT AND POLLUTED, ONE SUBSIDY AT A TIME
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
At a time of soaring food prices, America's grocery bill is about to balloon. Congress is staggering toward completion of a nearly $300 billion farm bill that upholds subsidies for big farmers and food corporations – undermining vital efforts to make our food supply more healthful and sustainable, both environmentally and economically.
MEAT ROULETTE
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Nauseating as it was, last week’s record-setting beef recall and the apparent feeding of meat from crippled “downer” cattle to our nation’s children and others should come as little surprise. Although egregious to the point of obscenity, this latest meat scandal fits a pattern of regulatory anemia -- the byproduct of a decades-long bipartisan assault on “big government” -- that has opened the floodgates to all sorts of contamination shenanigans. The deregulated chickens, cows and pigs have come home to roost.