Archive for October, 2009
Behind the Label
By admin on 10/30/2009 in Stuffed & Starved with No Comments
Fifteen Canadian Minutes
By admin on 10/30/2009 in Stuffed & Starved with No Comments
I promise to get back to posting food-related pieces (like this one on agflation) soon.
FoodCasts
By admin on 10/30/2009 in Stuffed & Starved with No Comments
My good friend Marco Flavio Marinucci, founder of Cook Here and Now, wrote me this morning with news of two podcasts, Deconstructing Dinner and Beyond Organic that readers of Stuffed and Starved might find interesting. I’ll be listening to them on the plane to Canada, and will report back soon…
Women’s Day Past
By admin on 10/30/2009 in Stuffed & Starved with No Comments
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.
New York Times on the Federal Barriers to Local Farming
By admin on 10/30/2009 in Stuffed & Starved with No Comments
Half a dozen of you fine fine people have sent in this New York Times op-ed about sustainable farming. Seems a shame not to repost it here.
Indian Jubilee
By admin on 10/30/2009 in Stuffed & Starved with No Comments
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.
US Presidential Politics #3
By admin on 10/30/2009 in Stuffed & Starved with No Comments
All credit to him. Mike Huckabee has a sense of humour about his prospects in the US election.
The Human Costs of Agflation
By admin on 10/30/2009 in Stuffed & Starved with No Comments
Front page, above the fold, in the Financial Times today – the UN is going to ration food aid because of the high price of agricultural commodities.
Only Intellectuals Love Poverty
By admin on 10/30/2009 in Stuffed & Starved with No Comments
I’ve been having a fine exchange with Eric Holt-Gimenez at Food First about Slow Food. Slow Food is an idea about which I’m a little ambivalent. It was founded on some fairly important political principles, particularly around the politics of taste. Slow Food’s founding question: ‘why can’t the masses have pleasure when they eat, why is it only the rich who can afford to eat well’?
Behind the Label
By admin on 10/30/2009 in Stuffed & Starved with No Comments
Fifteen Canadian Minutes
By admin on 10/30/2009 in Stuffed & Starved with No Comments
I promise to get back to posting food-related pieces (like this one on agflation) soon.
FoodCasts
By admin on 10/30/2009 in Stuffed & Starved with No CommentsMy good friend Marco Flavio Marinucci, founder of Cook Here and Now, wrote me this morning with news of two podcasts, Deconstructing Dinner and Beyond Organic that readers of Stuffed and Starved might find interesting. I’ll be listening to them on the plane to Canada, and will report back soon…
Women’s Day Past
By admin on 10/30/2009 in Stuffed & Starved with No CommentsInternational 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.
New York Times on the Federal Barriers to Local Farming
By admin on 10/30/2009 in Stuffed & Starved with No CommentsHalf a dozen of you fine fine people have sent in this New York Times op-ed about sustainable farming. Seems a shame not to repost it here.
Indian Jubilee
By admin on 10/30/2009 in Stuffed & Starved with No Comments
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.
US Presidential Politics #3
By admin on 10/30/2009 in Stuffed & Starved with No CommentsAll credit to him. Mike Huckabee has a sense of humour about his prospects in the US election.
The Human Costs of Agflation
By admin on 10/30/2009 in Stuffed & Starved with No CommentsFront page, above the fold, in the Financial Times today – the UN is going to ration food aid because of the high price of agricultural commodities.
Only Intellectuals Love Poverty
By admin on 10/30/2009 in Stuffed & Starved with No Comments
I’ve been having a fine exchange with Eric Holt-Gimenez at Food First about Slow Food. Slow Food is an idea about which I’m a little ambivalent. It was founded on some fairly important political principles, particularly around the politics of taste. Slow Food’s founding question: ‘why can’t the masses have pleasure when they eat, why is it only the rich who can afford to eat well’?
