The Agonist - Global Food & Agriculture

Global protocol could limit Sub-Saharan land grab

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:06:06 -0800

Nick Mathiason | Nov 3

The Guardian - New code of conduct could limit aggressive moves by China, South Korea and Gulf states who have been buying vast tracts of agricultural land

Aggressive moves by China, South Korea and Gulf states to buy vast tracts of agricultural land in sub-Saharan Africa could soon be limited by a new global international protocol.

A scramble for African farmland has in recent years seen the equivalent of Italy's entire arable land hoovered up by businesses from emerging economies.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the World Bank are now discussing a new code of conduct for land buyers in Africa. Amid increasing concerns over food security, it could include ensuring consent is given prior to selling land from local people as well as ensuring smallholders do not lose out. A first draft is expected to be released next spring.

Alex Wijeratna, Action Aid's food rights campaign officer, said: "There's a new scramble for land in Africa. It's growing at an incredible rate. There's massive secrecy, poor communities can't get information and they're not being consulted. There's an argument for a moratorium on sales until there's a proper framework to assess them. We are concerned that an agreement will not come fast enough."

Earlier this year, legendary hedge fund speculator George Soros highlighted a new farmland buying frenzy caused by growing population, scarce water supplies and climate change. South Korea bought huge areas of Madagasca recently while Chinese interests bought up large swathes of Senegal to supply it with sesame.

B.A.R.F.F. Reminds You - Vote No On Issue 2!

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:10:27 -0800

That just about sums up the Agricultural Industrial Complex's effort to take over the Ohio Constitution on Tuesday, so they can self-regulate, because, you know, it worked out so well on Wall Street and with Enron (to name 2 of, oh, a trillion examples)...

In any case, Facebook group here. Video below. Happy Monday all!

Full Disclosure: I am consulting on this effort to beat back a naked power grab to corrupt the Ohio Constitution, Ohio government and put all power to regulate livestock in the hands of 13 political appointees and corporate Agri-Cronies...

The Under-The-Radar Assault By The Agricultural Industrial Complex

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:06:31 -0700

On November 3rd, there will be a Constitutional Amendment on the ballot in Ohio. This is no ordinary ballot initiative. Its very existence and marketing has been bought and paid for--to the tune of millions of dollars-- by national and international agri-business corporations and their front groups, such as Pioneer Hi-Bred International (owned by DuPont and grantee of 100K to the effort),the National Pork Producers Council (113K), and the United Egg Producers (200K!).

(You can join the anti-Issue 2 Facebook Group and help us stop this underhanded effort)

What would it do if passed? It would create a 13-member board, 10 appointed by the Governor of Ohio (and, shockingly, they could all be from the Agricultural Industrial Complex), who would have ABSOLUTE POWER over regulating all conditions on farms in Ohio. The legislature, Dept. of Agriculture, and the people need not apply. Only another Constitutional Amendment could overturn a decision handed down by what will become our very own 18th Century House of Lords in Ohio. And if it succeeds here, expect to see it on your state ballot next.

So if unaccountable government (think "TARP"), wasted taxpayer money, corporate-controlled legislating, E. Coli, environmental degradation, animal cruelty, and bankrupted family farms are not your thing, you would probably be against this.

What can you do? Once again, join our Facebook group. Vote against this travesty if you live in the Buckeye State. If you don't, call and email your friends in Ohio and tell them to vote against Issue 2. Tweet it. Make it your Facebook status. And if you really want to get involved in Ohio, through the Facebook group you will have no trouble finding out how to do that.

Full Disclosure: I am proud to be involved in the effort to protect all that is good and right in the world from Big Ag

G20: Leaders Agree on Reforms, Poor Still "Out in the Cold"

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 09:15:45 -0700

Eli Clifton | Pittsburgh | Sept 27

IPS - World leaders at the two-day G20 Summit in the U.S. city of Pittsburgh agreed to work cooperatively to recover from the global economic crisis and create structural reforms with long-term growth as the goal.

In their end of meeting statement, the heads of the world's biggest economies also vowed to reform banking sectors and raise capital standards, replace the G8 with the G20 as the primary forum for international economic diplomacy, endorse a World Bank-led food security initiative for the world's poorest countries, and commit to phasing out fossil fuel subsidies.

Catching most observers by surprise was the announcement that the G8 would now be supplanted by the G20, a more representative body of the world's most powerful countries but a far cry from the inclusive global governance called for by the world's poorest countries and development NGOs.

The G8 comprises Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, Russia and the United States. The G20 adds Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and the European Union.

"The G20 is more representative than the G8 but there is still no seat at the table for the poorest countries," said Oxfam senior policy adviser Max Lawson. "South Africa is the only African country included in this club. That means when the G20 talks about growth and stability, they are leaving the poorest countries in the cold."

Trees: Out of the Forest and Into the Oven

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:55:36 -0700

Stephen Leahy | Uxbridge | Sept 24

IPS/Tierramérica - Millions of trees, especially from the developing countries of the South, are being shipped to Europe and burned in giant furnaces to meet "green energy" requirements that are supposed to combat climate change.

In the last two months alone, energy companies in Britain have announced the construction of at least six new biomass power generation plants to produce 1,200 megawatts of energy, primarily from burning woodchips.

At least another 1,200 megawatts of wood-fired energy plants, including the world's largest, in Port Talbot, Wales, are already under construction.

Those energy plants will burn 20 to 30 million tonnes of wood annually, nearly all imported from other regions and equivalent to at least one million hectares of forest.

"Europe is going to cook the world's tropical forests to fight climate change; it's crazy," Simone Lovera, of the non-governmental Global Forest Coalition, which has a southern officed in Asunción, Paraguay, told Tierramérica.

Europe has committed to reducing its carbon emissions 20 percent by 2020 in an effort to fight climate change. Biofuels and biomass energy will have key roles in achieving those goals, experts say.

"Biomass is a very promising sector for energy companies," says Jarret Adams, a spokesperson for Adage, a joint venture between French nuclear power giant Areva and the U.S.-based Duke Energy.

Adage is building a 50-megawatt, wood-burning power plant in the southeastern U.S. state of Florida, the first of 12 such "green energy" plants to be built over the next six years, Adams told Tierramérica.

"Burning wood for energy is considered carbon neutral by U.S. federal and state authorities," he said. In other words, the process of generating electricity by burning wood emits an equal or lesser amount of carbon dioxide than the quantity absorbed by the trees through photosynthesis.

When Tierramérica questioned the assumption of carbon neutrality, Adams replied, "It is, but who knows for certain?"

Brazil is gearing up to meet the European woodchip demand, not by cutting down forests, but rather by expanding tree plantations by 27 million hectares, mostly of exotic species like eucalyptus, Lovera says, based on a report the Coalition has obtained.

"The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is also pushing countries to expand tree plantations," she said.

A quick examination of international trading companies reveals a new and growing global industry in wood for energy.

MagForest, a Canadian company operating in the Republic of Congo, will soon ship 500,000 tonnes of wood chips annually to Europe. IBIC Ghana Limited claims it can ship 100,000 tonnes of tropical hardwood and softwood a month from Ghana. Sky Trading, a U.S. company, is offering to supply up to 600,000 tonnes of woodchips for biomass from the United States or Brazil.

Brazil's International CMO Business Biomass says it is dedicated to reducing coal use and can obtain woodchips from Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Argentina to supply the European energy market.

Tree plantations have had devastating effects on people and the environment all over South America, Lovera says.

No one seriously argues that these plantations have anything like the biodiversity or ecological function of natural forests, be they first or even second growth. These plantations are "green deserts" because of the amount of water they consume, and because of the lack of native wildlife, according to the environmentalist.

And there are many instances of local people, often poor or indigenous, who are kicked off the land to make way for these huge monocultures, she says.

Because of the mounting evidence about the negative social and environmental impacts, an international coalition of non-governmental organisations has set Sept. 21 as International Day Against Tree Monocultures.

"Burning wood is called carbon-neutral, but it's not," said Rachel Smolker, a research scientist who works with the Global Justice Ecology Project in the United States, told Tierramérica.

Disfiguring Disease Linked to Right to Food

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 05:58:27 -0700

Gustavo Capdevila | Geneva | Aug 7

IPS - Noma, an ulcerous disease whose name comes from a Greek word that means "to devour" because it literally eats away at malnourished children's faces in just a few months, is found in the developing world, mainly in Africa.

It attacks small children among the poorest of the poor. And although it can be easily treated by common antibiotics if caught in the early stages, 70 to 90 percent of its victims die. The disease is closely linked to malnourishment.

"The mere existence of this disease demonstrates that the right to food of the most vulnerable is being violated," said Jean Ziegler, vice-chairperson of the United Nations Human Rights Council Advisory Committee, a group of experts created a year ago that held its third session in Geneva Aug. 2-7.

Ziegler told IPS that "noma is absolutely dreadful…Families in Africa are ashamed by it, and hide away their sick children" because of the stigma attached to the disease.

Noma or "cancrum oris" is an infective gangrene that generally starts as gingivitis or another kind of ulcer in the mouth. If treatment is delayed, it rapidly destroys the hard and soft tissues of the mouth and often the face, leaving its victims – mainly children between the ages of one and five – "horribly disfigured," the expert said.

In his report to the Advisory Committee, Ziegler states that there are some 30,000 cases a year of noma worldwide.

US should give Chinese chicken a chance-meat group

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:55:22 -0700

Roberta Rampton | Washington | July 28

Reuters - The U.S. meat sector on Tuesday urged Congress to lift a ban that effectively prevents Chinese poultry imports in order to avoid retaliation on their own exports to China.

U.S. law allows any of the other 152 countries that belong to the World Trade Organization to be able to apply to export meat to the the United States, and it is unfair that China has been singled out, a coalition of meat companies and trade groups said in a testimony to a House committee that has championed the ban.

"We will not be able to avoid a serious trade confrontation with China if Congress does not reconsider" the measure, trade lawyer Kevin Brosch said, speaking for the coalition in remarks prepared for the House agriculture appropriations subcommittee.

China has launched a WTO complaint about the ban, and trade groups said China recently stopped issuing import permits for U.S. chicken in retaliation, threatening the largest market for U.S. poultry, worth almost $700 million per year.

Tent city that awaits the G8

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:06:40 -0700

Peter Popham | July 7

The Independent - The choice of L'Aquila to host this week's summit of world leaders has highlighted Italy's failure to help the victims of the quake

Silvio Berlusconi switched the location of the G8 summit to the city of L'Aquila as a way of focusing world attention on Italy's most disastrous earthquake for 30 years.

But as Hu Jintao, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, touched down in Rome yesterday, the first of 40 world leaders to arrive for the summit, residents were sceptical that the presence of so many grandees on their doorstop would do them much good.

...

But progress now appears to have ground to a halt, with attention more focused on cosmetic makeovers for the arrival of Barack Obama, Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy and the rest, according to Massimo Manieri, a spokesman for the Association for the Reconstruction of L'Aquila.

"The first phase of the emergency was great," he said. "But then the authorities made a massive mistake: instead of building temporary housing to get the homeless out of tents as fast as possible, they decided to skip that phase altogether and move to permanent housing immediately. But none of that has been built yet. I will be surprised if even a fraction of what is required is built by December."

Mr Manieri said that 15,000 people were still living in tents and another 30,000 in hotels and in other accommodation, at huge public expense. Bureaucratic delays in getting building permits issued meant that work on reconstruction had barely begun.

"The city's situation is frozen," he said. "Until people get into homes, even temporary ones, economic activity cannot begin."

Meanwhile the feverish preparation for the summit had removed attention, money and people from the reconstruction effort, he claimed.

Yet the only work that had been done on the city in the run-up to the event had been superficial, he said.

Wheat shoots more yellow than green

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:53:46 -0700

Michael Janda | July 6

abc.net.au - A leading commodity forecast predicts that prices for many major Australian agricultural commodities will remain subdued over the next year. The Rabobank Agri Commodities Monthly report says that prices for wheat and oilseeds (such as canola) are likely to fall slightly lower over the near-term, before remaining flat later this year, and gradually recovering into 2010.

The bank says corn prices have been hit in large part by sales from speculators, and wheat prices have also been affected by the growing perception that the 'green shoots' of economic recovery in the US are actually yellow and stunted.

"Sentiment has weakened from March and April with the 'green shoots' of economic recovery looking decidedly less certain and resulting in a substantial withdrawal of speculators and investors from all commodity markets," the report said.

If the forecasts are accurate, it could place even greater pressure on Australia's trade balance and total GDP figures as commodity exports have been a major sector holding Australia out of a technical recession (commonly defined as two consecutive quarters of economic contraction).

Rabobank says that lower prices are not the only threat to Australian farmers, with recent Southern Oscillation Index readings showing an above 50 per cent chance of an El Nino weather pattern developing in the Australian spring. The El Nino pattern tends to bring drier conditions which would dramatically reduce the yields on what so far looks set to be a bumper wheat crop, due to good rains in June over wheat growing areas.

However, the news is much sweeter for Australia's sugar producers: India's production is forecast to be down because of a weak monsoon season, and anticipation of reduced global supply has pushed prices strongly higher in June.

Rabobank expects sugar prices to keep going up, albeit at a slower pace, until the end of the year, before stabilising around those high levels early next year.

Hungry, But I Don't Want To Eat This Food!

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:54:21 -0700

Gawd, the food sucks in America. My bowels are in an uproar right now. What's a guy gotta do to get vine ripened tomatoes? Fresh cucumbers? Arugala in his salad and decent cheese--and not pay an arm and a leg for it? And don't get me started on bread, mkaay?

Everything I have eaten in the last two days tastes like three day old cardboard and Cheezewiz. This whole food thing is going to be a real adjustment. And it is something I was really unprepared for. I've never been a real food hound, eating what's in front of me just like the rest of us. But after a year of eating local, non-industrialized food I can see why people in the rest of the world shake their heads at us.

I'll be taking what I eat a lot more seriously in the weeks to come.

Lettuce From the Garden, With Worms

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:25:42 -0700

Nicholas D Kristof | NYT

Growing up on a farm near Yamhill, Ore., I quickly learned to appreciate the difference between fresh, home-grown foods and the commercial versions in the supermarket.

...

I’ve often criticized America’s health care system, and I fervently hope that we’re going to see a public insurance option this year. But one reason for our health problems is our industrialized agriculture system, and that should be under scrutiny as well.

A terrific new documentary, “Food, Inc.,” playing in cinemas nationwide, offers a powerful and largely persuasive diagnosis of American agriculture. Go see it, but be warned that you may not want to eat for a week afterward.

(It was particularly unnerving to see leftover animal bits washed over with ammonia and ground into “hamburger filler.” If you happen to be eating a hamburger as you read this, I apologize.)

Store-bought lettuce was always lush, green and pristine, and thus vastly preferable to lettuce from my Mom’s vegetable garden (organic before we called it that). Her lettuce kept me on my toes, because a caterpillar might come crawling out of my salad.

We endured endless elk and venison — my Dad is still hunting at age 90 — or ate beef from steers raised on our own pasture, but “grass-fed” had no allure for me. I longed for delicious, wholesome food that my friends in town ate. Like hot dogs.

Over the years, though, I’ve become nostalgic for an occasional bug in my salad, for an apple that feels as if it were designed by God rather than by a committee. More broadly, it has become clear that the same factors that impelled me toward factory-produced meat and vegetables — cheap, predictable food — also resulted in a profoundly unhealthy American diet.

AFRICA: What will we eat in the future?

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:58:19 -0700

Johannesburg | June 17

IRIN - It will take at least ten years to develop a variety of staple grain that will survive in the climates caused by global warming in most parts of Africa, and the continent has less than two decades in which to do it, warn the authors of a new study.

"The countries have to start developing varieties now, but many of these countries don't have breeding programmes," said Luigi Guarino, one of three authors of a study to be published on 19 June in the US journal, Global Environmental Change. "This study, we hope, at least raises the flag."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international scientific body, has predicted that food production in Africa could halve by 2020 as global warming pushes temperatures up and droughts become more intense.

The new study by researchers at Stanford University's Program on Food Security and the Environment, in the US, and the Rome-based Global Crop Diversity Trust, noted that "For a majority of Africa's farmers, warming will rapidly take climate not only beyond the range of their personal experience, but also beyond the experience of farmers within their own country."

_{Previously posted articles:

** Africa: The Second Scramble for Africa Starts

** Researchers urge rules to stop 'land-grabbing' worsening hunger

** Foreign land grabs for food could fuel unrest

** China's new export: farmers

** Financial crisis may worsen food crunch it eclipsed

** Rich countries launch great land grab to safeguard food supply}

Fertilizer industry finds its alternative energy: corncobs

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 07:32:20 -0700

Renee Schoof | Washington | June 16

McClatchy - American agriculture has become increasingly dependent on foreign sources of natural gas, a key ingredient in the nitrogen fertilizer that farmers use to get high yields of crops such as corn and wheat.

Now, a California start-up company is preparing to open a plant that will make fertilizer in the U.S. and reduce fossil fuel emissions from agriculture.

Nothing exotic needed, said the company, SynGest of San Francisco. The raw ingredient for the same ammonia-based fertilizer farmers have used for decades is something many already have and don't really need: corncobs.

This kind of innovation is the upside of energy price increases, said Jack Oswald, the chief executive of SynGest.

"When energy prices were very, very low, you couldn't compete," he said. But natural gas prices have increased over recent years, driving many U.S. fertilizer companies to close their doors because natural gas prices overseas were lower. Today more than half the country's nitrogen fertilizer is imported, and about 20 percent of the imports are from Russia.

Natural gas is used to make ammonia, the basic component for nitrogen fertilizer. Prices for natural gas rose dramatically in the U.S. over the past 10 years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Because natural gas is cheaper in other countries, the U.S. has increasingly turned to foreign supplies for ammonia since 1990.

"We don't relish being in Ukraine's shoes," Oswald said, referring to Russia's embargo on natural gas supplies to its neighbor during the winter.

The cost of natural gas now accounts for up to 90 percent of the cost of making nitrogen fertilizer, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Last year, when natural gas prices rose, so did the cost of fertilizer, one of farmers' biggest expenses.

SynGest says its plan to build small plants in the Midwest to make fertilizer from corncobs would eliminate the price volatility farmers have had to put up with and help ensure that U.S. farmers won't face a shortage.

"If energy supplies in general become tight we can always turn down the thermostat and we can always carpool," Oswald said. "But when nitrogen fertilizer is missing or reduced in farming, crop production drops by a measurable amount. That directly affects the amount of food available, which is not replaceable. You can't just hitch a meal the way you can hitch a ride."

Dennis Harding, a former farmer who directs new business development for the Iowa Farm Bureau, said one of the most attractive parts of the SynGest plan is that it would set a more stable price for fertilizer.

"Over the last couple years grain prices went up but inputs went up as well because of changes in energy costs, and we had a lot of volatility," Harding said. "Sometimes volatility is the hardest thing to manage."

A girl and her fish

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 20:26:54 -0700

Food is the new fur for the celebrity with a conscience

Actors, designers, pop stars have all got behind the hot new ethical campaign: food. From saving species to investigating conditions for pigs, star quality is pushing it to the foreground.

The Guardian - It is, by anybody's standards, an arresting image: a truly beautiful photograph of a luscious, radiant creature, all shiny eyes and silky skin. And Greta Scacchi, who is pictured clutching the cod to her naked body, doesn't look bad either. In the months and years to come, this picture, flashed throughout the British media last week, will doubtless come to be seen as the seminal image for a particular moment, when the gruelling, knotty business of campaigning around food issues finally became sexy.

The use of celebrity skin to push an ethical issue is nothing new, of course. In the 1990s, Peta - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - convinced a bunch of supermodels, including Naomi Campbell, to appear in the buff under the legend "I'd rather go nude than wear fur". But fur is just so passé. And, in any case, Campbell proved just how fickle the modern celebrity can be by soon deciding that actually, come to think of it, she would much rather wear fur than go nude, and did so on the catwalk in Milan.

Where celebrities are concerned, it seems, food is the new fur. The current set of images featuring Scacchi alongside actress Emilia Fox, director Terry Gilliam and actor Richard E Grant, were launched to back the cinematic release of The End Of The Line, a film about the threat of overfishing - but they are only a part of it. Tomorrow, Paul McCartney and his daughters Stella and Mary are launching a campaign to convince the public to go meat-free for one day a week. Another movie, Food Inc, which looks at the excesses and foul side-effects of industrial food production has just been released in the US and will shortly arrive here. Plus there is a major investigation by environmental campaigner Tracy Worcester into the dark underbelly of the global pig-rearing business which is about to be screened on digital channel More4. Food, and more importantly, really bad food, is hot.

What marks out these campaigns is their sophistication. It began a couple of weeks ago with the news that Nobu, the global high-end chain of Japanese restaurants favoured by the glitterati, was still serving bluefin tuna despite it being an endangered species. The restaurant had added a note to its menu pointing out the threat to the magnificent bluefin and inviting diners to ask for an alternative, but had refused to stop serving it, unlike big-name chefs such as Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver.

Could we be the generation that runs out of fish?

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 18:03:15 -0700

Johann Hari | June 6

The Independent - The process of trawlering is an oceanic weapon of mass destruction

In the babbling Babel of 24/7 news – where elections, bailouts and beheadings blur into one long shriek – the slow-motion stories that will define our age are often lost. An extraordinary documentary released next week, The End of the Line, forces us to stop, and see. Its story is stark. In my parents' lifetime, we have killed 90 per cent of the world's fish. In my lifetime, we will finish off the rest – unless we change our ways, fast. We are on course to be the people who wiped fish from the earth.

The story begins in the sleepy Canadian resort of Newfoundland. It was the global capital of cod, a fishing town where the scaly creatures of the sea were so abundant they could be caught with your hands. But in the 1980s, something strange happened. The catches started to wane. The fish grew smaller. And then, in 1991, they disappeared.

It turned out the cod had been hoovered out of the sea at such a rapid rate that they couldn't reproduce themselves. But the postscript is spookier still. The Canadian government banned any attempts at fishing there, on the assumption that the few remaining fish would slowly repopulate the waters. But 15 years on, they haven't. The population was so destroyed that it could never recover.

A growing number of scientists are warning that we could all be living in Newfoundland soon. Professor Boris Worm of Dalhousie University published a detailed study in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Nature saying that at the current rate, all global fish populations will have collapsed by 2048. He says: "This isn't some horror scenario, it's a real possibility. It's not rocket science if we're depleting species after species. It's a finite resource. We'll reach a point where we run out."