In case you thought that the whole baby milk saga was over, WomensENews has a article reminding us that corporations are still encouraging women to switch to infant formula, despite abundant evidence that mothers' milk is invariably better. Is it a coincidence that, as Molly M. Ginty notes below, "half of the infant formula sold in the U.S. is distributed by the government to low-income mothers"? Read and decide. ... read more »

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Posted on 21 November, 2008 - 20:58

The excellent Tom Philpott has posted a story at Grist Magazine about the move to fix the pollution caused in the United States by Concentrated Animal Feed Operations (CAFOs) through the simple expedient of moving the production to the Global South. It has worked well with toxic waste (check out this fine report by Al Jazeera on the political economy of toxic waste in Somalia), so I imagine it'll bring in cash for its pioneers in the meat industry. ... read more »

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Posted on 21 November, 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

The headline says it all, and the article gives the details.

What's curious for me, though, is the organisation that sponsored the research. On its 'about' page, the Organization for Competitive Markets advertises itself thus:

We are "pro- business" because we believe in free markets and the law of supply and demand to allocate resources properly. We are "conservative" because we view American values such as honesty and morality should be demanded of our businesses and politicians. We are "liberal" because we believe government has a regulatory role to create and enforce the rules of doing business, thereby avoiding crony capitalism. We are "populist" because we have determined our nation is made economically and culturally wealthy by preserving the ability of independent families to produce our food without fear of the economically dominant firms in agribusiness.

In other words, they think that capitalism would be great if it weren't for the capitalists. It's something that my libertarian readers might like to chew over and, if they're libertarian, agree with. Oo, and that reminds me, I know I owe Luddhunter a fuller response, and I'll try to get to that in a couple of weeks time (I'm married to a lapsed libertarian, and have a rehab system that I'm happy to share). Until then, though, I get to post my favourite libertarian joke, as told to me by the excellent Martin O'Neill:
Q: What's the difference between anarchism and libertarianism?
A: Under anarchism, poor people get to shoot back. ... read more »

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Posted on 29 July, 2008 - 06:14

Roger Burbach, whose 1980 book Agribusiness in the Americas blew open the story of corporate power and food on this continent, has sent his latest thoughts on agribusiness and Bolivia.

The Rise of Food Fascism:
Allied to Global Agribusiness, Agrarian Elite Foments Coup in Bolivia

By Roger Burbach

Like many third world countries Bolivia is experiencing food shortages and rising food prices attributable to a global food marketing system driven by multinational agribusiness corporations. With sixty percent of the Bolivian population living in poverty and thirty-three percent in extreme poverty, the price of the basic food canasta--including wheat, rice, corn, soy oil and potatoes, as well as meat—has risen twenty-five percent over the past year with prices gyrating wildly in the local markets. ... read more »

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Posted on 30 June, 2008 - 16:58

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

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

My friend Patrick Wilkinson has put together a fine video about the upcoming spraying of large parts of California in the ongoing war on the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM, pronounced el-bam).

As Patrick's film suggests, there'd better be something mighty scary about this moth to warrant monthly aerial spraying over most of Northern California over the next five years.

So what's the danger? Will the moth summon forth the apocalypse? No. Is it the harbinger of some strange Africanized disease? Not even. Will it ravage California's agriculture? Kinda. But not actually by eating anything or laying anything or causing anything to be damaged.

The reason LBAM is a menace is, er, NAFTA. ... read more »

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Posted on 31 May, 2008 - 04:03

Two important bits of news from the world of agricultural technology. First, we've a report that genetically modified soy beans yield less than ordinary ones. The study was motivated by a professor who heard soybean farmers asking "how come I don't get as high a yield as I used to?". A good question indeed. One answer - it wasn't designed to yield more, it was designed to withstand a herbicide sold by the same company that sells the seed.

But there's a bigger answer to the question of the future of agricultural technology. It comes with a report of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). Snappy title? No. Bed-time reading? Hardly. It's hundreds of dense pages long (and I'll be reading it over the next week, so you won't have to).

But already, the IAASTD is an acronym to remember. ... read more »

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Posted on 21 April, 2008 - 03:11

I'll be writing about troubles in Kenya more fully in the future. But this press release from Food and Water Watch caught my eye. It shows how profoundly callous agribusiness can be in the run up to Valentine's day. ... read more »

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Posted on 4 February, 2008 - 20:14