Goodness. Seems like every post today has an imperative title, and a reference to innocent causalties in needless wars. This post is something that came up a few weeks back at my Cody’s reading in Berkeley.
Hot off the presses, the Food and Agricultural Organization and OECD’s latest on agricultural food price rises.
In short, beef and pork could be 20 percent higher in nominal terms, wheat could be up to 60 high dearer, and the cost of vegetable oils might rise by 80 percent.
It doesn’t take much in these dark times for folk to find cause to celebrate. Todays ‘hell, it could be worse’ story is about childhood obesity. Word is that the number of obese US kids has remained constant since 1999.
Following up on the DewMocracy post, it’s important to remember exactly what happened when thousands of us marched in the streets of Seattle, chanting “This Is What Democracy Looks Like”.
Irene at the National Family Farm Coalition sent along this link to a blog covering the geopolitics of African agriculture. Doesn’t sound promising, but it’s a winner, and is the newest inductee into the blogroll and newswire.
The excellent folk at Focus on the Global South have just put out a special issue of their Focus on Trade dealing with the current food crisis. This issue has the full version of Walden Bello’s thoughts on the crisis (abridged in The Nation) and an abridged version of an excellent piece by Shalmali Guttal, looking at the effects of the food crisis in Timor Leste and Cambodia (click for full unabridged version).
This morning, I had a fantastic conversation with Brahm Ahmadi, Eric Holt-Gimenez and John Bela who’s working on designing the San Francisco Victory Garden that we’ll be digging outside City Hall later this year.
So, food prices are going to remain high for the next 10 years, the Farm Bill was so bad they took two attempts to pass it, and food imports are set to top $1 trillion.
You know you’ve arrived when you get dissed in the New Yorker in a Critic-At-Large discussion. You’ll be hearing more about this, and about Marco Flavio’s excellent Cook Here and Now group in the next couple of weeks.
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