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The Unhealthiest City in the United States

Raj — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:03:36 -0700

This, I thought, was a very well written article. It's one thing to read, in PLoS Medicine, that in some US counties, life expectancy is falling. It's quite another to read what it means in practice. The "$10 Kentucky Fried Chicken Challenge" below is a warning, if ever there were, about quite how ass-backwards we've managed to set prices for food, and for everything else. ... read more »

Potatoes!

Raj — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:39:10 -0700

The New York Times recently carried an article on how the world can be saved by potatoes. But I much prefer the seasoned scepticism of Joan Obra, who wrote this article a month or two back, in the Fresno Bee (despite my toe-curling metaphor choice at the end of the article). ... read more »

Post-A-Thon

Raj — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:11:49 -0700

Yep, it has been nigh on three weeks since I managed to update things here. I'll try by get through the huge backlog of material I've accumulated. But I can't promise that it won't happen again.

Things are going to change a little on this site. I'll not be generating what passes for original thoughts about food politics for the front page, at least not quite as frequently as I used to. Instead, I'm trying to use what little brain and time I have for work on my next book (more about that in a few weeks).

That said, I know that this site is used by hundreds of people every day, and that it's a useful resource. I'm not about to give up on StuffedAndStarved.org yet, and there are still one or two site improvements in the future. But they'll not be quite as regular as once they were. ... read more »

Make America Again

Raj — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:54:49 -0700

Image credit:Mitchell Siporin

Tonight, I can't read Langston Hughes' Let America Be America Again without crying. When Hughes uses "America" twice in the title of his poem, he uses the word to signify a promise and a betrayal. Tonight my tears come not through the joy of a Democrat elected to the White House nor, it must be said, from one gin and tonic too many. For me, tonight is painfully familiar; the betrayal can’t be far off.

Growing up under nearly two decades of Conservative rule in the UK (Margaret Thatcher 1979-1990 and John Major 1990-1997), I remember when the British electorate put Tony Blair 1997-2007 in power. Having voted Green in the 1997 British Election, I came to America on the day that Blair's Labour Party came to power. I wasn't around to see the day when, I'm told, people smiled at one another on the London Underground - a sign of unrefined joy if ever there were.

But Blair's Britain turned to ashes. And I've no doubt that the Obama presidency will disappoint the vast majority of those who voted for him - he will not redistribute as forcefully, nor demilitarise as vigorously, nor change quite as hopefully as he offered.

Despite all that, tonight is still a promise partially delivered. In Britain it would have been, and still is, impossible to imagine a native-born person of colour winning the highest office in the land. It couldn't happen anywhere in Europe. When the United States elects a person of colour, one who grew up without the benefit of inheritance or patrimony, that's a clear sign of transformation, even if it's ultimately an egalitarianism among the bourgeoisie. That said, of course, this wee table from CNN is rather telling.

As we'll soon discover though, in any person's vision of how the future might be, there are always exclusions. In Hughes' poem, it's women. It won't be long before we find out who Obama's forgotten are. And it's as well to understand that Hughes' full promise will be fulfilled not when there's one Barack Obama, but where there are millions. To get from here to there, though, we'll still need to to celebrate the fall of tonight's a very real barrier (even as another is erected).

Let America Be America Again

by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.) ... read more »

Financial Crisis and Food Crisis - the Links

Raj — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:00:49 -0700

The last in today's bumper posting marathon - a piece by the French intellectual Eric Toussaint, explaining the connections between our two recent crises. Tomorrow, depending who wins, we'll see if the number of crises can be kicked up to three... ... read more »

Ag Policy Column

Raj — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:12:13 -0700

Daryll Ray is a Professor at the University of Tennessee, and one of the minds behind the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center, from which weekly he sends out consistently splendid missives on food and the food system. He's a source whose induction into the Blogroll and Newswire is long overdue, and his thoughts on the Doha Round of WTO Negotiations and Country of Origin Labelling are good ways to dip your toe into his analytical style. ... read more »

Water!

Raj — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:34:38 -0600

Bill at Toplab has been sending on a good few pieces on water and water politics, of which a few of my favourites are: ... read more »

Zimbabwean water wars, which makes the case that Zimbabweans are merely the canaries in the mineshaft of global water shortages. Which is ironic because
the population of nearby Namibia could drink the water that Starbucks wastes every day. And Seattle's coffee imperium is at the trivial end of the

Website special

Raj — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:17:50 -0600

A couple of sites I've been meaning to write about at length, but will have to write about in haste. Since they're both in the early stages, I'm sure I'll have cause to revisit them as they blossom. ... read more »

Bill Clinton "blows it" with food

Raj — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 20:32:33 -0600

It's not often that a President of the United States admits to, and regrets, commodity fetishism. But, apparently everyone's reading Marx these days and when Bill Clinton admits that food oughtn't to be treated like a commodity, he's making a Marxist observation. Of course, the ultimate end point of Clinton's analysis should be that no commodity should be treated like a commodity, but we can hope that he'll get there in time. ... read more »

Offsets for people who don't think they're a good idea

Raj — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:22:27 -0600

I've worried before about my mammoth carbon footprint, particularly as I flit across North America giving talks. I'm convinced that the solutions to climate change proposed by George Monbiot in Heat are among the most sensible, with individual carbon accounts for everyone, and trading between each of us to balance out the disproportionate damage caused by people like me.

It's important to fight for that system but, while we fight, there is other work to be done. Individual offsets, in some form, seem to me to be a part of that. Granted, the folk at CheatNeutral brilliantly put the boot into the idea of carbon offsets - see the video below for more.

But my friend Anirvan Chatterjee, who stands fully behind Monbiot's arguments, is nonetheless serious about getting to the bottom of what's good and bad about carbon offsets. His new site, Offset Consumer is online here, and it's very helpful.

In Anirvan's words:

A lot of really nice people buy personal carbon offsets without understanding that they vary in quality and price. Offset Consumer's an attempt to bridge that gap by helping folks make better choices (environmentally and financially) with their carbon offset dollar. ... read more »