Last month, La Via Campesina held an agroecology training workshop in Zimbabwe. Most of the time was spent, as you’d expect, learning about what agroecology actually means, but they also drafted a declaration, the full text of which is here, and from which this paragraph makes an economic case for sustainable farming methods. Keep Reading »

The massive unreported #landgrab in China is behind unrest and protest. Women are the most vulnerable. http://t.co/iSC5shw

Excellent take-down of pop development economics – esp Paul Collier – by Yale’s Mike McGovern http://t.co/TsWz9hl

#ViaCampesina “will not wait for our governments” to fix the food crisis. http://t.co/Mmh9q5O

Grain.org report: public pension funds are bankrolling the global #LandGrab http://t.co/h3dnRaP

RT @CivilEats: Now on Civil Eats: Organic in Cuba: Something from Nothing http://is.gd/OqtwLh by @eathere2

The Food and Agriculture Organization will have a new director-general, José Graziano da Silva. Among Graziano’s accomplishments is the Zero Hunger programme, which has been partly responsible for getting 40 million people out of hunger. But you don’t get to run an international organisation without the support of your home country, and you don’t get that support in Brazil without deep debts to agribusiness. At his first press conference, Graziano started to pay them off, announcing that biofuels should not be “demonised” for their role in driving up food prices. That this contradicts the latest evidence is only surprising for as long as it takes to remember quite how big Brazil’s biofuel industry is.

Before Graziano’s remarks on biofuels were made public, Joao Pedro Stedile from the Brazilian Landless Rural Workers Movement gave this interview, which gives some helpful context, and puts agrofuels in their place. More below the fold. Keep Reading »

Everything but the squeal. Ted Genoways in #MotherJones :working on Hormel’s horrific killing floor http://t.co/4TnJg67

Carbon Markets Don’t Work http://t.co/yefBsdj via @anirvan

Diabetes underestimated – 350 million people have it now and it’s set to dominate world health in future – http://t.co/5pmXE5m