Slow Food Nation will hit San Francisco this weekend. The City's already fluttering with SFN posters, and the Victory Garden, planted on the land outside City Hall, looks very handsome indeed. To prepare for the jamboree, I thought I'd go back to Carlo Petrini's book of the same name, and to Geoff Andrews' new book, The Slow Food Story. Together, these writers offer a corrective to the hoity toity food culture that has become synonymous with the organization. Although it’s often forgotten, Slow Food’s roots are radical. ... read more »

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Posted on 28 August, 2008 - 20:50

Some good-ish news from the world of agribusiness. Monsanto has reported that it's leaving the recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone business. The Ethicurean asks whether Monsanto's exit from the market might be because people are worried about the toxic effects of rBGH in their milk. Monsanto, however, insists that "This is really a great product… Business has been strong. Sales have been strong." So that's all cleared up then.

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Posted on 18 August, 2008 - 16:35

It took tens of thousands of people, dollars and hours to fight back the ambitions of a few agricultural capitalists, but good sense has at least temporarily prevailed here in California. After making their water-tight case for spraying most of Northern California with an untested pesticide to kill a harmless moth, the state government has backed down.

One of the arguments that the spray was safe was that the active ingredient wasn't a straightforward toxin. It was a pheromone, which was meant to pose less of a threat, and able to degrade quickly. The claims of the chemical companies hasn't quite matched the reality, though. ... read more »

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Posted on 30 June, 2008 - 15:28

Another winner from Portside: this time, it's a behind-the-scenes story about the salmonella outbreak in tomatoes in the United States. To blame is the systematically underfunded Food and Drug Administration - against which I've tilted in the past. Read more about the organisation that's supposed, and is utterly unable, to protect public health and food safety.

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Posted on 17 June, 2008 - 05:34

Source: Ted Taber

The floods in the Midwest have already killed four people. Thousands have been evacuated, and the bill for clean-up will surely run into the hundreds of millions (the Red Cross alone is spending $15 million) - the estimate for Cedar Rapids' clean up just in: $700 million.

But these are the most cosmetic costs - the ripples from this storm will spread globally. Already, the price of corn has broken through the $7/bushel point. Soybeans are also up, and I'd be shocked if the price of white corn isn't going through the roof too - it has already been kicking up the price of tortillas in Mexico. Certainly, the ethanol price is soaring to its highest point since June 2006.

Large agribusinesses are taking a hit here too. See, for instance, Archer Daniels Midland’s flatlining share price. The disaster in the Midwest has put a serious dent in their profit forecasts. There’s just less corn around for them to make money off through trading, reselling, and using in meat, ethanol and high fructose corn syrup manufacture.

Worse for them, the disaster-induced shortage is making it politically harder to support corn-based ethanol, which is making ADM’s business plans – a glorified way of saying ‘sucking at the government teat’ – a little less politically and therefore economically viable.

But not all agricultural capitalists are taking a beating. The hedge funds and commodities traders are having a ball. According to The Wall Street Journal, “the decline in the dollar and rise in crude prices is resulting in investors piling on in the corn market, buying futures in anticipation that the price will continue to rise.” Yep, it’s speculative open season.

Meanwhile, stories abound about the floods’ horrors. A recurring theme is that people who step into the floodwaters immediately seek tetanus shots. The water is utterly polluted.

I’ve not read it in any of the reports so far, but I’ll put money on some of this pollution coming from burst sewage reservoirs from Concentrated Animal Feed Lots. We saw it happen in North Carolina and there’s no reason to think that it hasn’t already in Iowa.

Citizens in Iowa have long been active in trying to Clean Up Iowa. They’ve been stymied by large agricultural interests. The University of Iowa is the place I’d go to find more information – they’ve a fine research unit looking at some aspects of CAFOs, but at the time of writing, the University site says:

“Due to the flood situation on campus, The University has suspended normal operations. Classes have been cancelled and UI employees designated as non-essential are asked to stay home beginning Friday, June 13 through Sunday, June 22.” ... read more »

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Posted on 17 June, 2008 - 05:10

The Financial Times is doing what it usually does - providing concise and honest insight into how the elite bosses think, this time around genetically modified crops. The recent op-ed by John Gapper follows a logic that I've been bumping into increasingly.

1. We need to increase food production to feed the world.
2. Yield-increasing science has worked before.
3. The nay-sayers want to reduce output through organic agriculture.
4. Monsanto, on the other hand, is investing in science.
5. Therefore we ought to embrace GM technology to fight the food crisis.

Almost everything about this argument is wrong. ... read more »

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Posted on 13 June, 2008 - 17:36

It doesn't take much in these dark times for folk to find cause to celebrate. Todays 'hell, it could be worse' story is about childhood obesity. Word is that the number of obese US kids has remained constant since 1999.

To quote from the New York Times article:

“It may be that we’ve reached some sort of saturation in terms of the proportion of the population who are genetically susceptible to obesity in this environment,” Dr. Ogden said. “A more optimistic view is that some things are working. We don’t really know.” ... read more »

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Posted on 29 May, 2008 - 06:21

"Being a mother, you want to cut back on things for yourself first before you cut back for the family." It's the sort of sentiment we hear a lot of in developing countries, as mothers skip meals so that the rest of their families can eat.

But the latest credit crunch, the recession and the food price rises mean that it's happening in America, too.

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Posted on 22 April, 2008 - 04:37

We recently stumped up not-very-much money to subscribe to Vanity Fair, and it's a subscription we're likely to keep, especially now that we're practiced in ignoring the large wodge of adverts for cosmetics and high fashion that fill out the space between articles.

This month's issue is "The Green Issue". Again, ignoring Madonna on the front cover, there's some fine journalism to be found. In particular, there's a very good exposé of Monsanto's seedy practices. (An unintentional pun but worth keeping, I feel.)

Check it out here. ... read more »

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Posted on 5 April, 2008 - 13:17

Source

Eric Holt Gimenez over at Food First sent along this wee nugget from Grand Island, Nebraska.

It's a story about biofuels, based on a report from, er, the American Meat Institute, which ascribes the rise in the price of meat to biofuels. The estimates per animal are striking: "the costs [are] 53 cents per chicken; $3.40 per turkey; $38 per hog and $117.50 per fed beef animal." These are the costs associated with higher corn-feed for the animals, the price of which has been driven up by the US governments hare-brained biofuels schemes.

But statistics, like love, is a battlefield. ... read more »

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Posted on 20 March, 2008 - 22:32