Stephanie Nieuwoudt | Cape Town | Dec 29

IPS - A few years ago 66-year-old grandmother Regina Fhiceka and her family of five ate vegetables only once a week. They would survive on maize and bread the rest of the time -- the cheapest food available in the poor township of Philippi, just 15 minutes from the affluent business district of Cape Town.

But then Fhiceka got to hear about a municipal project where people were encouraged to get together to establish community gardens.

"I knew a few of the other women in the community who had started their own backyard gardens where we were growing small amounts of vegetables. We asked the local social worker to help us obtain a bigger piece of land. We filled out the necessary application documents and the local department of agriculture made a piece of municipal land available to us."

Fhiceka and five other women were given land on the outskirts of Philippi where 150,000 people live in squalid conditions. After a few months, Fhiceka’s group had an abundance of vegetables, including tomatoes, cabbage, carrots and beans, and they started selling the surplus.

"I had no choice. I had to start farming because I had no money to buy vegetables from the shops. I also realized that if we farmed as a group, we would have more than enough food to eat and that we could generate an income from selling the rest."

Geoffrey Lean | Dec 29

The Independent - Despite the West's pledge to halve world hunger, the number of people who are short of food will soon reach a shocking landmark

One billion people will go hungry around the globe next year for the first time in human history, as the international financial crisis deepens, the United Nations has told The Independent on Sunday.

The shocking landmark will be passed – despite a second record worldwide harvest in a row – because people are becoming too destitute to buy the food that is produced.

Decades of progress in reducing hunger are being abruptly reversed, dealing a devastating blow to a pledge by world leaders eight years ago to cut it in half by 2015.

Rich countries have failed to provide promised money to boost agriculture in the Third World; the financial crisis is starving developing countries of credit and driving their people into greater poverty, and food aid to the starving is expected to begin drying up next month.

Clifford Coonan | Hebei province | Dec 29

The Independent - China has a shortage of land, Africa a shortage of food. So one entrepreneur had the bright idea of persuading Chinese farmers to emigrate.

Liu Jianjun is wearing a brightly coloured African tunic, the tall hat of a tribal leader, a string of red beads round his neck and carrying a stick with a secret knife in the handle. Beside him sits a portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong. It is a slightly incongruous scene but one that mirrors the ever-closer relationship between Asia's economic giant China and the world's poorest continent.

"The African people yell, 'Mao Zedong is all right' and they are very warm-hearted when I'm there," says one of China's most prominent private sector ambassadors. "The minute Chinese people get off the plane, the Africans are friendly. Chinese do not bring rifles and weapons; they bring seeds and technology."

China's Ministry of Commerce triumphantly announced this month that its bilateral trade with the continent is set to hit $100bn (£67.8bn) by the end of 2008, two years ahead of schedule. Africa's plentiful oilfields and rich mineral deposits are top of China's imports, and in return the world's most populous nation is exporting tens of thousands of its countrymen.

Roger Maynard | Sydney | Dec 14

The Independent - Not only is the meat low in fat, eating it could help to protect the fragile outback, in danger of being over-run by dromedaries

After trying to persuade Australians to eat kangaroo, emu and crocodile meat over the past few decades, the nation's agribusiness leaders have turned their attention to the ship of the desert.

Last week, senior public servants were served camel at a barbecue in Canberra as part of a campaign to convince the government to add the meat to Australia's bushtucker menu. Environmentalists say that camel burgers are not only better for you, but by eating them, Australians will also be doing their bit for climate change and conservation.

Camels, imported from the Canary Islands in 1840, have bred in such large numbers that the population is out of control. It is estimated that more than a million of the beasts now roam the outback, inflicting major damage on desert ecosystems, scarce water supplies and remote Aboriginal communities. As ruminants, with a tendency to expel greenhouse gases from both ends, the animals also add to global warming.

Make no mistake about it this:

Idled farm workers are searching for food in the nation's most prolific agricultural region, where a double blow of drought and a court-ordered cutback of water supplies has caused hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

This bedraggled town is struggling with an unemployment rate that city officials say is 40 percent and rising. This month, 600 farm families depleted the cupboards of the local food bank, which turned away families — more than 100 of them — for the first time.

And this are inextricably linked:

If you don't think there is a global food crisis you are wrong. One of every five people on this planet are either starving or malnourished. If my experience in Cambodia was any indication of what this means, let me reiterate what I saw there: massive inflation, massive poverty, urban and rural and a severely distressed countryside.

Add hunger, severely altered weather patterns globally and a global financial crisis and you have a real, real big mess.

Mendota, Calif | Dec 13

MSN - Even the food bank is bare in nation's most productive agricultural area

Idled farm workers are searching for food in the nation's most prolific agricultural region, where a double blow of drought and a court-ordered cutback of water supplies has caused hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

This bedraggled town is struggling with an unemployment rate that city officials say is 40 percent and rising. This month, 600 farm families depleted the cupboards of the local food bank, which turned away families — more than 100 of them — for the first time.

"We're supposed to supply the world," said Mayor Robert Silva, "and people are starving."

"If you like foreign oil, you're going to love foreign food,"

If you don't think there is a global food crisis you are wrong. One of every five people o this planet are either starving or malnourished. If my experience in Cambodia was any indication of what this means, let me reiterate what I saw there: massive inflation, massive poverty, urban and rural and a severely distressed countryside.

Cambodia was the most expensive country in South East Asia--but also the poorest. Why?

Mostly because the influx of foreign aid has caused a massive rise in both corruption and inflation. (Oh, and Angelina Jolie is supposedly building a huge house there.) Add to that much of the countryside being very distressed, still littered with UXOs and lying fallow you have a recipe for disaster. Now toss in a rise in food prices due to inflation and a concomitant price decrease, due to the commodities market collapse, in what the farmers can get for their rice and you have a massive mess:

Still, a country like Cambodia helps illustrate that lower prices have not ended the crisis. The price of rice – the country's staple food – has gone down by about 7 percent since August. But observers say that's not enough to offset the staggering 25 percent inflation of the last year.

"Workers already spend about 70 percent of their income on food. Prices have gone down, but they're still higher than other years. If you look at people's income versus inflation, many more are poor today," says Yang Saing Koma, president of the Cambodian Center for Study and Development of Agriculture, a think tank in the country's capital, Phnom Penh.

Again, almost one in every five people on this planet are either starving or malnourished. Think about that. Sure, you'll never see it in America, we hide our poverty too well. But it is real, very, very real.

Julian Borger & Juliette Jowitt | Dec 10

The Guardian - • Rising prices mean 14% now under-nourished
• Urgency over food crisis lost amid credit crunch

Almost a billion people go hungry each day after food price rises pushed 40 million more people around the world into the ranks of the undernourished, the UN food agency reported yesterday.

According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), food prices have more than halved from their historic peaks a few months ago, but the cost of basic staples measured by an FAO index is still high: 28% higher on average than two years ago.

That has led to an increase in the number of people unable to afford to eat enough calories to lead a normal, active life. There are now estimated to be 963 million people, 14% of the world's population, going hungry in 2008, up by 40 million from last year.

Juliette Jowit & Oliver Balch | Minga Pora, Paraguay | Dec 7

The Observer - The hidden cost of our growing taste for meat
As the west's appetite for meat increases, so too does the demand for soya - used as animal feed by farmers. But the planting of huge tracts of land is causing deforestation and destroying eco-systems in developing countries.

Xan Rice | Nairobi | Dec 3

The Guardian - Qatar has asked Kenya to lease it 40,000 hectares of land to grow crops as part of a proposed package that would also see the Gulf state fund a new £2.4bn port on the popular tourist island of Lamu off the east African country.

The deal is the latest example of wealthy countries and companies trying to secure food supplies from the developing world.

Other Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have also been negotiating leases of large tracts of farmland in countries such as Sudan and Senegal since the global food shortages and price rises earlier this year.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia - Call it crisis eclipse.

CSM - The global food crisis that dominated headlines earlier this year has been overshadowed by this fall's financial crisis, but it continues to exact a crippling toll on the world's poor. And, although commodity prices for a wide range of crops have fallen by as much as 50 percent from record highs in June, the financial crisis is expected to make it dramatically worse: credit for farmers could dry up, meaning less money to buy fertilizer and seed, leading in turn to greater global shortages of food.

Money for food aid could dry up as well. In June, governments and donors pledged $12.3 billion for the food crisis. So far, only $1 billion has actually been disbursed, as lending institutions and governments instead scramble to save ailing banks.

originally posted November 4^th, but elevated as it's worthy of a re-read ~eds

Allow me to borrow a phrase from Jim Kunstler: Hallucinated wealth.

For all of us to one degree or another in these United States seem afflicted with the malady (myself included).

I recently wrote an article complaining about the cost of corn. At the time corn was selling for 5 dollars and some 70 cents a bushel (left out the cuss words this time). Now I’m faced with the prospect of selling my corn at 4 dollars and zero cents per bushel—a ridiculous number when you consider farm land in these parts is presently valued at $5,000 an acre.

I'm not a farmer. And I'm not an expert on the WTO either. But I did grow up on a farm and I do know a little bit about global trade and the effects it has had on small, freeholding, peasant farmers. Still, take all this with a big dollop of salt.

I wanted to write about this after reading Don's comment and question about farming in Cambodia.

He asked: "I can't help but wonder what effect big ag (cheap industrial food) has played on the abandoned farm land you describe." All I can add are my observations. And a kind of question. As far as I know, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos have signed on to the WTO, but they have not agreed to any of the agricultural components of the global free trade system. I think that's why they gave the big industrial economies the finger several years back in Mexico, or in Doha. I can't recall exactly which one it was. Regardless, farming, from what I have seen (and that's a damn lot of the countryside) has not been corporatized or industrialized in the region. There is some in Peninsular Malaysia, but Malaysia is a bit of a rogue when it comes to economics in the region.

More after the jump.

Julian Borger | Nov 22

The Guardian - • States and companies target developing nations
• Small farmers at risk from industrial-scale deals

Rich governments and corporations are triggering alarm for the poor as they buy up the rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in developing countries in an effort to secure their own long-term food supplies.

The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, has warned that the controversial rise in land deals could create a form of "neo-colonialism", with poor states producing food for the rich at the expense of their own hungry people.

Rising food prices have already set off a second "scramble for Africa". This week, the South Korean firm Daewoo Logistics announced plans to buy a 99-year lease on a million hectares in Madagascar. Its aim is to grow 5m tonnes of corn a year by 2023, and produce palm oil from a further lease of 120,000 hectares (296,000 acres), relying on a largely South African workforce. Production would be mainly earmarked for South Korea, which wants to lessen dependence on imports.

"These deals can be purely commercial ventures on one level, but sitting behind it is often a food security imperative backed by a government," said Carl Atkin, a consultant at Bidwells Agribusiness, a Cambridge firm helping to arrange some of the big international land deals.

Ravi Kanth Devarakonda | Geneva | Oct 20

IPS - The Doha Round was launched in 2001 in Doha, Qatar, to provide a developmental dimension to global trade by enabling developing and least developed countries to secure enhanced access for their products in rich country markets. However, there is a pronounced shift in the negotiations in the last seven years -- from developmental issues to the purely market-driven concerns of the dominant players.

Wolfgang Kerler | United Nations | Oct 15

IPS - Relief for the world's hungry remains a distant prospect, with this year's "Global Hunger Index" (GHI) attesting that even before the ongoing food crisis, 33 countries had "alarming" or "extremely alarming" levels of hunger.

India, home to the world's largest food insecure population, launched its own India State Hunger Index Tuesday.

"Although we found several success stories, there was no across-the-board success," Marion Aberle, a spokesperson for Welthungerhilfe (formerly known as German Agro-Action), told IPS about the recent GHI.

She added that "it is simply a scandal that almost one billion people worldwide are still suffering from hunger."

Geoffrey Lean | London | October 5

The Independent - It is less than two months since Prince Charles was on the receiving end of a fusillade of scientific, political and commentariat criticism for voicing, yet again, his concerns about GM crops and foods. He was widely accused of "ignorance" and "Luddism"; of being too rich to care about the hungry, and even of trying to increase sales of his own organic produce. It was put about that Gordon Brown was angered by his intervention.

Yet the Prince has responded by stepping up his campaign, making his most anti-GM speech yet, in delivering – by video – the Sir Albert Howard Memorial Lecture to the Indian pressure group Navdanya last Thursday. And he made it clear that he was going to continue. "The reason I keep sticking my 60-year-old head above an increasingly dangerous parapet is not because it is good for my health," he said " but precisely because I believe fundamentally that unless we work with nature, we will fail to restore the equilibrium we need in order to survive on this planet."

Sept 18

BBC - The number of people living "on the edge of emergency" has nearly doubled to 220m in just two years, one of the world's biggest aid agencies has said.

Care International says billions of dollars in aid will be wasted if it continues to be spent in the wrong way.

Failure to resolve underlying issues trapping people in extreme poverty has left millions unable to cope with surging food prices, the agency warns.

"The world's inaction on food emergencies has proved costly and it is the world's poorest people - stripped of enough to eat - who are paying the price," said Geoffrey Dennis, chief executive of Care International UK.

The report, "Living on the edge of emergency: Paying the price of inaction", comes ahead of a UN summit on the organisation's Millennium Development Goals (MDG), to be held in New York next week.

Best Pizza in Italy :)

Ian Sample | Sept 8

The Guardian - The rise of organic farming and rejection of GM crops in Britain and other developed countries is largely to blame for the impoverishment of Africa, according to the government's former chief scientist.

Sir David King, who left the job at the end of last year, says anti-scientific attitudes towards modern agriculture are being exported to Africa and holding back a green revolution that could dramatically improve the continent's food supply.

Juliette Jowit | Sept 7

The Observer - · Climate expert urges radical shift in diet
· Industry unfairly targeted - farmers

People should have one meat-free day a week if they want to make a personal and effective sacrifice that would help tackle climate change, the world's leading authority on global warming has told The Observer

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which last year earned a joint share of the Nobel Peace Prize, said that people should then go on to reduce their meat consumption even further.

His comments are the most controversial advice yet provided by the panel on how individuals can help tackle global warning.

Pachauri, who was re-elected the panel's chairman for a second six-year term last week, said diet change was important because of the huge greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental problems - including habitat destruction - associated with rearing cattle and other animals. It was relatively easy to change eating habits compared to changing means of transport, he said.

Sara Miller Llana | Mexico City | Sept 5

CSM -

Teresa Trujillo's family income took a hit when her husband, a carpenter and the family's sole breadwinner, lost his job due to an illness just as food prices in Mexico started to skyrocket. So she looked for help with putting food on the table wherever she could find it.

It turns out the mother of two didn't have to look far: right around the corner, among concrete-block homes, some with sheets hanging as doors, neighbors grow squash, spinach, and cauliflower in neatly potted beds.

It's one of 21 community gardens planted in Mexico City since last year as part of Mayor Marcelo Ebrard's push to improve the quality of life for this sprawling city of 20 million. It's also part of the city's answer to food inflation that has led to clashes and riots the world over.

"Our goal is that Mexico City be self-sufficient when it comes to food," says Pedro Ponce, who directs the community garden program for the Mexico City government. "This is not to make anyone rich, but it can help."

Podlesny Russia | Aug 31

NYT - The fields around this little farming enclave are among the most fertile on earth. But like tens of million of acres of land in this country, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they literally went to seed.

Now that may be changing. A decade after capitalism transformed Russian industry, an agricultural revolution is stirring the countryside, shaking up village life and sweeping aside the collective farms that resisted earlier reform efforts and remain the dominant form of agriculture.

The change is being driven by soaring global food prices (the price of wheat alone rose 77 percent last year) and a new reform allowing foreigners to own agricultural land. Together, they have created a land rush in rural Russia.

“Where else do you have such an abundance of land?” Samir Suleymanov, the World Bank’s director for Russia, asked in an interview.

As a result, the business of buying and reforming collective farms is suddenly and improbably very profitable, attracting hedge fund managers, Russian oligarchs, Swedish portfolio investors and even a descendant of White Russian émigré nobility. SLIDESHOW

** Previous articles in The Food Chain Series here.

Asia Times Online-August 15, 2008 When sudden food price increases started to make headlines last summer, an estimated 852 million people were already living with crippling hunger, which the United Nations defines as continuously getting too little food to maintain a healthy and minimally active life. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates another 50 million people were added to the count in 2007. For people living with hunger, a long-term solution won't come quickly enough. Many of them will need emergency assistance. Clearly, the UN and donor nations need to plan and invest more strategically to ensure a more food-secure future.

Jeffrey Gettleman | Ed Damer | August 10

NYT - Even as it receives a billion pounds of free food from international donors, Sudan is growing and selling vast quantities of its own crops to other countries, capitalizing on high global food prices at a time when millions of people in its war-riddled region of Darfur barely have enough to eat.

Farmers plowed a field last month before planting sorghum in Gezira, south of Khartoum, Sudan. Although Sudan receives food aid, it exports many of its crops.

Here in the bone-dry desert, where desiccated donkey carcasses line the road, huge green fields suddenly materialize. Beans. Wheat. Sorghum. Melons. Peanuts. Pumpkins. Eggplant. It is all grown here, part of an ambitious government plan for Sudanese self-sufficiency, creating giant mechanized farms that rise out of the sand like mirages.

But how much of this bonanza is getting back to the hungry Sudanese, like the 2.5 million driven into camps in Darfur? And why is a country that exports so many of its own crops receiving more free food than anywhere else in the world, especially when the Sudanese government is blamed for creating the crisis in the first place?