Raj Patel » Uncategorized

Leaked report on Land grabs

Raj — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:21:24 +0000

Today’s Financial Times has a preview of a much-awaited World Bank report on land grabs. The Bank has, for months, been promising the arrival of a report that makes a cast iron case for why allowing rich foreign investors to buy land in poor countries is win-win-win-win. The release date for the report keeps slipping because it appears that even the Bank is struggling to massage the facts to fit its case. From a leaked version of the report:

“Investor interest is focused on countries with weak land governance,” the draft said. Although deals promised jobs and infrastructure, “investors failed to follow through on their investments plans, in some cases after inflicting serious damage on the local resource base”.

The report was leaked by

a person who said they wanted to prevent the World Bank releasing the report in the middle of the summer holiday period.

With the FT piece comes a graph showing the countries with the largest land transfers. But the FT doesn’t say whether the draft report tracks the recipients of land transfers. For that, you’ll need to look to Franca Roiatti’s Il Nuovo Colonialismo, in which it appears that in Africa the two leading land-grabbing countries are China and the United Kingdom. More globalisation old and new, it’d seem.

Full article here, and watch this space for further developments.

Palo Alto, California

Trisha — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:28:36 +0000

Raj will be moderating a talk with Jonathan Safran Foer for the Commonwealth Club

Jacksonville, Florida

Trisha — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:14:00 +0000

[ November 4, 2010; ] University of North Florida

Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA

Trisha — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:13:58 +0000

The Carmel Authors and Ideas Festival

This is the fourth annual Carmel Authors and Ideas Festival. There will be 35 award winning authors and speakers, who will discuss their books. These include authors of New York Times best-sellers, Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winners, and winners of nearly every prestigious literary award.

Toronto, Canada

Trisha — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 07:00:48 +0000

[ October 17, 2010; ] University of Toronto

Turin, Italy

Trisha — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 07:00:29 +0000

TERRA MADRE world meeting of food communities

In 2010, the fourth edition of Terra Madre will bring together food communities, cooks, academics and youth delegates for four days to work towards increasing small-scale, traditional, and sustainable food production.

Mendocino, California

Trisha — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 07:00:10 +0000

[ October 9, 2010; ] Sustainable Mendocino is a collective of people who have come together to discuss and work on issues of sustainability in Mendocino County

Globalisation New and Old

Raj — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 05:43:22 +0000

It’s all here – transnational capital flows, land grabs, Chinese investment, Brazilian regional hegemony, and water wars. Twenty first century concerns if ever there were. And, right in the middle, a very nineteenth century name. The first sentence from a recent Financial Times article demonstrates why globalisation is always old and always new.

A farmland development group backed by Jacob Rothschild is hoping to become the first Brazilian company to list on the Hong Kong stock exchange, after attracting investments from some of the territory’s largest tycoons.

More here.

School Bilk Programme

Raj — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 01:02:59 +0000

One day, I’ll find time to write at length about Jamie Oliver but for now, an observation widely shared: when he ran into the food service regulations in his recent US school meal adventures, it was clear he was outgunned in ways he couldn’t fathom. That’s not his fault. School meal regulations in the US are almost deliberately unfathomable. A small legion of food activists and journalists are trying to get to the bottom of it, though – the Time for Lunch campaign is trying to transform school meals, for instance, but two new bits of investigation, across the US and in DC, suggest the scale of the task. The kickback agreements that industrial caterers have with brand suppliers is something that they’ll fight very hard to keep, even if it means that the fresh, local and sustainable produce needed to head off the US obesity epidemic remains off the menu. [Via Jenny Huston]

FEMINIST HULK SMASH PATRIARCHY

Raj — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:01:19 +0000

As someone who gets a little more ALL CAPS email than he’d like, it’s good to find a source that is both fully upper-case and entirely sensible: Feminist Hulk. HULK SAY FUCK PATRIARCHY. HULK NOT HAVE PROBLEM WITH “FUCK.” ONLY BAD WORDS ARE ONES USED TO MAKE PEOPLE FEEL SMALL.

(HULK MAKE CAPITALIZATION EXCEPTION FOR bell hooks. HULK LOVE HER ESSAY ON MADONNA AND RACIST APPROPRIATION.)

Feminist Hulk, interviewed here by Ms Magazine, rocks. On FeministHulk’s feed, there’s even the occasional edifying link, like this one: http://bit.ly/byH1oe, in which HULK SMASH CORNELL RESEARCHER’S SEXUALLY ABUSIVE MEDICAL PRACTICES. Having just finished reading the very good Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, it’s unsurprising and angering to see that some things don’t change. Very angering. And you wouldn’t like Hulk when Hulk angry.