It’s Thanksgiving here in the United States, and it’s a very good time to be contrarian, and remember those who have little to be thankful for.

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This is a special posting for all y’all who receive this blog via email. At the end of this week, I’ll be moving my blogging over to RajPatel.org, and retiring this venerable site.

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The World Food Summit has just ended in Rome, at which the head of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, lauded the declaration as “an important step towards the achievement of our common objective – a world free from hunger.”

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Here’s a bit of a plug for the new book – out in the UK in December, in the US in January. I was lucky enough to get to make this book trailer with Scott Hamilton Kennedy, whose documentary about the South Central Los Angeles farm, The Garden was spectacular, well deserving the Oscar nod that it got (and it was a particularly good year to be nominated ). Keep Reading »

The USDA has released its data for hunger in the United States, and the numbers aren’t good.

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Photo: G Online

I often get asked whether I think fair trade is a bad idea, and my response is usually “it’s much better to buy fair trade than to buy unfair trade- but if you care about farmers, ask them what they want”. In general, I’m not favourably inclined toward green consumerism.

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I know I bang on a lot about food sovereignty on this blog, but it’s not all hot air. I’ve just guest edited a section of The Journal of Peasant Studies (really the most hard-hitting academic journal of its kind) and was lucky enough to pull together some excellent papers and interviews. Although the JPS can get dry in parts, the section I edited was the Grassroots Voices bit, which is intended as a forum and resource for activists. And they’ve decided to make it available free (as opposed to the $100+ individual subscription rate).

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Last night, I had the chance to be on a panel with Brahm Ahmadi, Vini Bhansali and a new friend, Jeff Conant.

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Well, it has only been two years, but in Internet time, that’s almost a generation. Which is why, soon, StuffedAndStarved.org will be taken out behind the sheds, patted on the head, and put out of its all-too-2006 misery.

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Variants of this quote have been cropping up a great deal recently:

It is not acceptable for women to constitute
70 per cent of the world’s 1.3 billion absolute poor. Nor is it acceptable for
women to work two-thirds of the world’s working hours, but earn only one-tenth
of the world’s income and own less than one-tenth of the world’s property.

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