“This is a deeply thought-provoking book about the dramatic changes we must make to save the planet from financial madness” — Naomi Klein. Opening with Oscar Wilde’s observation that “nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing,” Patel shows how our faith in prices as a way of valuing the world is misplaced. Continue reading “The Value of Nothing”
Stuffed and Starved
Half the world is malnourished, the other half obese—both symptoms of the corporate food monopoly. To show how a few powerful distributors control the health of the entire world, Raj Patel conducts a global investigation, traveling from the “green deserts” of Brazil and protester-packed streets of South Korea to bankrupt Ugandan coffee farms and barren fields of India. What he uncovers is shocking—the real reasons for famine in Asia and Africa, an epidemic of farmer suicides, and the false choices and conveniences in supermarkets. Yet he also finds hope—in international resistance movements working to create a more democratic, sustainable, and joyful food system.
This is What Democracy Looks Like
Any Neruda fan will tell you that poetry can be political. But how about the other way around?
How to Save the Forests
One of the central ideas in my new book, The Value of Nothing, is that there are other ways of governing ourselves than either the free market or central government. While there’s plenty of evidence that the state-market dichotomy is a false one, it’s always good to have more data.
Promised Land
From FoodFirst.org:
Agrarian reform is back at the center of the national and rural development debate, a debate of vital importance to the future of the Global South and genuine economic democracy. The World Bank as well as a number of national governments and local land owning elites have weighed in with a series of controversial policy changes. In response, peasants landless, and indigenous peoples’ organizations around the world have intensified their struggle to redistribute land from the underutilized holdings of a wealthy few to the productive hands of the many.
Food Rebellions
The real story behind the world food crisis and what we can do about it.
By Eric Holt-Giménez and Raj Patel with Annie Shattuck
A joint international publication with Fahumu Books and Grassroots International
Voices of the Poor
World Bank Publications/Oxford University Press
A multi-country research initiative to understand poverty from the eyes of the poor, the Voices of the Poor project was undertaken to inform the World Bank’s activities and the upcoming World Development Report 2000/01.
Land Grabs and Biofuels in Africa
Pambazuka News has a fine article on how land-grabs in Africa are being driven by the biofuels bonanza in which the man who I idolised in the early 1980s, Bob Geldof, falls even further from his pedestal. More below the fold. … read more »
Kraft does unions
Meanwhile, in Argentina, Marie Trigona writes about Kraft’s union busting tactics. The moment you make use of your right to organise is the moment it’s taken away. Marie writes:
Agribusiness Does Obama
Here’s a fine op-ed written be friends at The National Family Farm Coalition and the Pesticide Action Network on how the Obama administration is ensuring that the food system remains firmly in the hands of those who screw it up for everyone else. It’s a status quo we can all believe in. … read more »