Could scientists have got the impacts of climate change on food supply wildly wrong? I believe we might have made a mistake: a mistake whose consequences, if I am right, would be hard to overstate. I think the forecasts for world food production could be entirely wrong. Food prices are …
Demand and supply certainly matter. But there’s another reason why food across the world has become so expensive: Wall Street greed. It took the brilliant minds of Goldman Sachs to realize the simple truth that nothing is more valuable than our daily bread. And where there’s value, there’s money to …
Never mind the drought, shrinking corn crops, rising food prices, or the possibility of global grain shortages, let’s talk about the evils of foreign oil. That was the message put out last week by the ethanol lobbyists just a day or so before Jose Graziano da Silva the director of …
Global food prices rose 6.2 percent in July, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization reported Thursday. The FAO said it released its Food Price Index ahead of its regular publication schedule as a warning against the impact of such price rises. The index, which calculates the cost of a …
It’s well established that obesity is characterized by low-level chronic inflammation. Several theories as to how this inflammation occurs have been proposed, but dietary choices seem to be the most important factor involved. It’s increasingly recognized that regular consumption of certain foods leads to diet-induced inflammation; which in turn sets …
If you’re wondering whether the US drought will create a global food crisis, the answer’s easy. It’s yes, because there’s a food crisis already. The latest year for which we have figures is 2010, when 925 million people were declared malnourished. Soon after the number was announced, the World Bank …
A large swath of the US Midwest and mid-South has been devastated by extreme heat and the worst drought since at least 1956. Last week, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) declared more than 1,000 counties disaster areas—more than half of the land surface of the country—making the drought officially …
Steven Cooksey says all he wanted to do was help other diabetics get healthy, but a North Carolina agency tried to censor his online healthy food advice column, saying he was not a licensed dietitian. Cooksey filed a lawsuit Tuesday in federal court, saying the state violated his free speech …
As the World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty takes place in Washington DC this week, farmers and environmental groups have organized to push back against the Bank’s pro-corporate, pro-privatization land grab attempts and the rights and environmental violations they bring. Screen grab from film (see below) from La Via Campesina and …
“Land governance in a rapidly changing environment” is the theme of the 2012 World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty being held April 23-26 in Washington DC. Corporate investors, governments and International Financial Institutions are meeting at World Bank headquarters to “discuss issues of concern to land practitioners and policymakers …