The excellent ETC Group has just come up with a fine bit of social science that cuts through the guff of the recent FAO Food Summit in Rome.

As part of their 'translator' series, in which they parse the meaning of UN documents for the general public, they've come out with their latest report, Another "Failure-as-usual" Food Summit.

Alongside the fine analysis of the substance of the summit document, they've compared and contrasted the final declarations of the Food Summits in 1996, 2002, and 2008. The findings are striking:

... read more »

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Posted on 30 June, 2008 - 15:57

Not for nothing is gender one of the most frequent tags here at Stuffed and Starved. The modern food system is tilted against women, in everything from land ownership to life expectancy because of poor diet to, now, access to the biofuels market. The road ahead is long. ... read more »

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Posted on 29 April, 2008 - 19:29

"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

International women's day commemorates, among other things, the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York. Same town, six years later, women were on the barricades again. America's support in the first world war extended to selling food to Europe. This drove up prices. Women organised. Unable to use traditional democratic channels (the nineteenth amendment wasn't passed until 1920), they used street democracy. One protester, at an East Side Jewish Women's League protest put it like this: "with $14 a week we used to just make a living. With prices as they are now, we could not even live on $2 a day. We would just exist." It's a sentiment that would be all too familiar to women surviving today's price rises. ... read more »

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Posted on 9 March, 2008 - 05:17

Photo Credit: Debt Slayer

This is some interesting populist politics. The Indian government has just announced that it will be cancelling all farmer debt by the beginning of next year, at a cost of $15bn. Predictably, this spike in rural funding comes before an election year, and 70% of Indians live in rural areas. Also, the government has pledged to keep food prices under control because, well, many Indians are having a hard time affording it.

So what to think of this? ... read more »

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Posted on 29 February, 2008 - 16:29

A reader writes from the UK with the following observation about Stuffed and Starved.

There is one issue which is scarcely mentioned in the book or on this web-site, and that is human over-population. This seems to me to be the Achilles heel of the political left.

Let’s remedy the omission, because for people who care about food, population is a serious concern. ... read more »

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Posted on 26 November, 2007 - 17:59

Fatima Shabodien, from the Women on Farms Project in South Africa put out this important article in the Cape Times earlier this week. Reposted below, in case you've difficulty accessing it through the link above....

Farmworkers need dignified home in South Africa

November 19, 2007 Edition 1

Fatima Shabodien ... read more »

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Posted on 24 November, 2007 - 16:19

The informative WomensEnews network sends this fine commentary on GlaxoSmithKline's new drug, Alli. Like Olestra, a fine history of which is online at Wikipedia, this is another attempt to make millions off a drug that fuels body-image insecurity, avoids tackling the root causes and, at the end of the day, doesn't even work. Sales are assured.

What I particularly like about this article is the holistic solutions offered at the end - not just 'regulate the unscrupulous drugs industry', but also 'encourage bicycle-friendly architecture'. No surprise - the authors are involved in the excellent Boston Women's Health collective. Now read on... ... read more »

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Posted on 2 July, 2007 - 23:05

ActionAid, one of the UK's best aid organisations, has come out with a new report:

Who Pays: How British Supermarkets Are Keeping Women in Poverty".

Covering nuts, bananas and clothing, the report does a fine job of looking at the chains of exploitation that link British consumers to women workers in the third world. Really top stuff, and a great teaching resource, this.

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Posted on 26 April, 2007 - 06:02

Photo credit :: myberyL

What have TV, lipstick and a can of Coke got to do with each other? Here's a clue from Anne Becker, researcher at the Harvard Department of Social Medicine, whose most recent work on this appears in Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry. ... read more »

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Posted on 28 March, 2007 - 19:41