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Food 2025 blog
Playing God? Monsters, Miracles, and the Politics of Genetic Engineering
In his Food for Thought lecture below, Ron discusses how the genetic engineering of crops has become a proxy for much larger ideological and political debates. He explores the consequences of limiting this technology for poverty alleviation, global trade, and the environment.
Genetically Modified Food or Organic: Do We Have to Choose?
There's a big difference between the questions what is best for my family? and what kind of agriculture is best for the whole world?
According to Maarten Chrispeels, a plant physiologist and UC San Diego distinguished professor emeritus and Global Food Systems Forum panelist, it's very difficult to choose between organic and GM's. We're being bombarded with information, but how much of that is true? Do we even need to choose between the two?
Watch the video below to find out.
Conclusions:
"If you're concerned about your health, there isn't any scientific basis to choose for or against organic, or for or against GM."
"If you're concerned about food, there is no scientific basis for choosing for or against GM or organic. If you're concerned about the environment, organic has some interesting practices that emphasize sustainability, but GM crops already lessen the impact of agriculture on the environment."
"The small picture: There is no scientific basis for championing or rejecting either GM or organic. But...you do need to eat more fruits and vegetables: 5 helpings of fruits and vegetables per day cuts the rates of many cancers by 50%"
"The big picture: GM or organic? is a false question. The moral issue for our world is: How do we abolish the food insecurity of 800 million humans? Organic agriculture with its lower yields cannot do this. We need all available and appropriate technologies and food production systems adapted to local ecologies."
What are your thoughts? Comment below.
Women may not share the same wealth as men - what does that mean for #Food2025?
This week, we found a great research paper from Cheryl Doss, a Yale economist and #Food2025 panelist, exploring gender and economics in developing countries. The paper finds a significant gap in wealth between men and women in developing countries.
The paper also examines land ownership among men and women: "The lack of women’s land ownership feeds into the system whereby women are not seen as real farmers. This, in turn, limits their access to credit, extension services, and access to other inputs. This can be an endless cycle whereby women are not given land because they are seen as less productive and they are less productive because they have less access to land and other inputs."
Last week's video stated that food insecurity was a women's issue, as women are responsible for feeding their families in many developing countries. Women grow the food, tend the animals, and cook and prepare meals.
So what happens to this system when women are not permitted to own land?
Read the rest of the paper, Gender and the Distribution of Wealth in Developing Countries, by clicking on the attached file name below.
Do You Know What Your Pension Fund is Doing in Africa?
Betting on World Agriculture: US Private Equity Managers Eye Agricultural Returns, a new report from the Oakland Institute (OI), focuses on the private investment vehicles that advertise and manage investment opportunities in farmlands and agriculture for investors including pension funds, university and foundation endowments, and high net worth individuals. Based on months of research, involving literature review, interviews with fund managers, and examination of public as well confidential internal documents, the report casts a light on this hidden trend by profiling private investment vehicles that are either based in the US or aggressively promoting farmland and agriculture in the US.
Via Oakland Institute and Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute and Global Food Systems Forum panelist.
The Challenge of Global Hunger Today Isn't Production Based, It's Access Based -- Jim Harkness
"There are about a billion people undernourished today, far more than there were 30 years ago. But, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), we produce 17 percent more calories per person today than we did 30 years ago, and far more than enough for everyone on the planet to have plenty to eat," Jim Harkness, president of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and panelist on our upcoming Global Food Systems Forum.
Harkness spoke in October 2011 at the National Food Policy Conference and shared seven key economic areas that need to be addressed in order to be able to feed nine billion people by 2050.
1. WE HAVE TO ADDRESS GLOBAL POVERTY.
"...one place we might start is by looking at fair prices for farmers and fair wages for farm workers and food industry workers. The International Fund for Agricultural Development calculates that 70 percent of those living in extreme poverty are in rural areas. So, better prices for farmers would help to reduce poverty because agricultural development is the key basis for growth of developing country economies."
2. WE HAVE TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE CRUSHING EFFECT TWO DECADES OF TRADE LIBERALIZATION HAS HAD ON FOOD SECURITY.
"By 2007, over two-thirds of developing countries were dependent on food imports to feed their people. Then in 2007-08, and again last January, global food prices hit record highs, and those countries were priced out of the market. The result was a hundred million more people hungry, food riots and in some cases, revolution."
3. FINANCIAL DEREGULATION HAS CREATED CHAOS IN AGRICULTURE MARKETS.
"In early 2008, we heard that farmers in the Midwest were having trouble getting forward contracts from the local grain elevator. We looked into it, and later that year put out a report showing how a series of deregulatory moves in Congress and in the executive branch opened up commodity futures markets— which include agriculture—to a wave of new speculative money. This money played a role in dramatically driving up prices in 2007-08, and after a massive sell-off, prices collapsed."
4. WE MUST HAVE SERIOUS CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY THAT REDUCES EMISSIONS, AND SUPPORTS CLIMATE-RESILIENT AGRICULTURE.
"In just the last year, we saw nearly 20 percent of the U.S., primarily in the south, under extreme or exceptional drought. In the upper Midwest, torrential spring and early summer rains and flooding along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers wiped out cropland. At the global level, a severe drought in East Africa threatens the lives of more than 10 million people. Major agriculture producing countries like Russia, China, Brazil and Australia have experienced either extreme drought or widespread flooding in recent years that is affecting global food production."
5. WE NEED TO SUPPORT THE ABILITY OF FOOD INSECURE COUNTRIES TO BUILD—AND, IN MANY CASES REBUILD—THEIR OWN FOOD SYSTEMS.
"If we’re going to address poverty, food production and climate change all at once, we need to rebuild these systems through agro- ecology, an integrated approach that applies ecological principles to agriculture, with an emphasis toward what works for small-scale agriculture."
6. JUST AS WE NEED TO INTEGRATE CLIMATE-RESILIENCE INTO OUR AGRICULTURE SYSTEMS, WE ALSO NEED TO INTEGRATE PUBLIC HEALTH INTO OUR FOOD SYSTEM.
"...just because there is access to calories doesn’t mean there is access to healthy food. In fact, in many parts of the world struggling with food security, including within the U.S., unhealthy food is the most readily available."
7. FINALLY, WE ARE GOING TO NEED A MUCH MORE EFFECTIVE AND DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM OF GLOBAL INSTITUTIONS.
"....feeding the world requires action on a number of pressing global issues: better regulation of trade, investment and financial markets; climate change; and multilateral support to build sustainable food systems in the developing world. Rebuilding a strong, democratic and effective system of international institutions will be essential if we are to build the kind of food system we need, from the local level to globally, by 2050."
Harkness's full remarks are attached below. Please share your thoughts.
2011 10 20 Feeding2050 JH
