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Food Justice
RSS FeedAfrica: Economic growth equals ongoing food security
2012-05-16, Issue 585
Everlyne Wanjiku, a single mother of five, has earned a living selling vegetables in the sprawling Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya, for over three decades. And even though her earnings were meagre, she was able to provide all her children with a tertiary education. But now, like her many fellow poverty-stricken slum dwellers in this East African nation, she is feeling the pinch of the high cost of food and other commodities, which have skyrocketed globally.
South Africa: False 'made in Israel' labeling to be banned
2012-05-21, Issue 585
The South African government decided last week to draw attention of consumers that products they buy labeled “Made in Israel” could have been made in illegal Jewish settlements mushrooming the occupied Palestinian territories, a press release issued by the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee said. It said that after more than a year of joint work between Palestinian and South African organizations, South Africa’s Minister of Trade and Industry Rob Davies announced he will forbid false and misleading labeling of settlements products.
Gambia: Small country with a big crisis
2012-05-21, Issue 585
There is mounting concern that The Gambia, Africa’s smallest country, could face yet another shortfall in the 2012/2013 agricultural season in the production of rice, millet, maize and groundnuts, the main crops, crippling its efforts to become food secure. The planting season has begun, yet there is a huge seed deficit. 'It is essential that farmers receive quality drought-tolerant seeds, as well as fertilizer and other production support by the end of May 2012 to start their next production campaign,' said Sonia Nguyen, a spokesperson for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in the Sahel.
Angola: Drought hits Angola's already struggling farms
2012-05-08, Issue 584
A drought is threatening Angola's already modest food production, in a setback for efforts to revive once-vibrant farmlands abandoned during decades of war. The dry season that normally lasts only about three weeks in December has stretched to three months in parts of the southern African country where most regions are used to abundant rainfall almost year-round. 'Production has collapsed throughout the central and southern regions,' said Belarmino Jelembi, national coordinator of the Association for Rural and Environmental Development.
Senegal: Change of direction in hunger response
2012-05-08, Issue 584
One day after being sworn in on 2 April, Senegal’s new President Macky Sall reversed months of public denial of the hunger affecting over 800,000 of his people - part of the Sahel-wide crisis affecting 16 million inhabitants - by calling on partners to help the country get food to those in need. UN agencies and NGOs are struggling to raise enough money to get programmes working so they can catch up with the steadily rising number of hungry people.
Global: In 80 years, we lost 93% of variety in our food seeds
2012-05-13, Issue 584
This National Geographic infographic by John Tomanio is staggering. Using the metaphor of a tree, it charts the loss of US seed variety from 1903 to 1983. And what you see is that we’ve lost about 93 per cent of our unique seed strands behind some of the most popular produce.
Kenya: The Gates foundation link to Frankenfoods
2012-05-14, Issue 584
Small farmers are central to a push to deploy genetically modified (GM) technology within Kenya. In recent years, donors such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have invested millions of dollars. But serious concerns about viability, corporate dependency and health effects linger - even while leading research firms and NGOs do their best to smooth them over.
Global: Top 10 food trailblazers
2012-05-07, Issue 583
Who are the people behind grassroots movements, farming unions, groundbreaking research and government policy that are helping to stave off hunger, boost crop harvests and put more food on tables? AlertNet put this question to dozens of experts and researchers from leading non-governmental organisations and research institutes involved in nutrition and agriculture and have come up with a 'Top 10 food trailblazers' list.
Global: Support 'Take the Flour Back'
2012-05-07, Issue 583
As media interest mounts around a GM wheat trial taking place at Rothamsted Research Institute, the Gaia Foundation and partners African Biodiversity Network have voiced support of the challenge being led by campaign group Take the Flour Back. Later this month they will be launching the film 'Seeds of Freedom', a 30-minute documentary exploring the corporate takeover of seed, and the impact that this is having on communities across the world. Visit the webpage to find out more.
South Africa: Smallholders lose battle for seed security
2012-04-29, Issue 582
The traditional farming methods of smallholder farmers – which, researchers say, also help to fight soil depletion, reduce irrigation needs and adapt to climate change – may soon disappear. They are being wiped out by governments focused on promoting commercial monocultures that they hope will bring fast, high yields in order to boost national agricultural sales on global markets.
Global: When Bill Gates pushes high-tech agriculture, who benefits?
2012-04-30, Issue 582
The Globe and Mail has an article about Bill Gates and his advocacy of technology in the agriculture sector. 'Relying on genetically modified (GM) crops and chemicals to push up output per acre may help Monsanto (which was one of the stocks in the Gates Foundation’s investment portfolio), Syngenta and other tech-driven food biggies, but won’t necessarily support those who need the most help-poor smallholder farmers and underdeveloped countries. Making them part of Big Ag’s global supply chain might not help either.'
South Africa: Tolls a risk for food security, says union
2012-04-17, Issue 581
The farmers' union TAU SA has voiced concern over the impact toll fees would have on food prices. Union president Louis Meintjes said farmers already have their backs against the wall with rising fuel prices and higher vehicle registration and licence fees. The additional burden of toll fees on Gauteng freeways would put farmers in an impossible position, he told Transport Minister Sbu Ndebele in a letter released to the media.
Global: Food sovereignty slams UKs DFID
2012-03-28, Issue 579
The report contrasts the UK government’s preferred approach of ‘food security’, based on free markets supplemented by aid, with the positive alternative of food sovereignty, which returns control over the food system to farmers. It shows how the government has driven a free trade agenda at the international level, while pressing countries to remove social protections that would reduce suffering. Far from relieving hunger among the world’s poorest, the Department for International Development (DFID) funds development of new crop technologies that deepen farmers’ reliance on those companies’ seed and agrochemicals at ever greater prices, leading to hunger on an unprecedented scale.
Global: For farmers everywhere, small is (still) beautiful
2012-03-14, Issue 576
There is battle raging across the world over who can better feed its people: small-scale farmers practicing sustainable agriculture, or giant agribusinesses using chemical fertilizers and pesticides. It was small-scale organic farmers growing rice for themselves and local markets in the Philippines who first convinced us that they could feed both their communities and their country. Part of what convinced us was simple economics: These farmers demonstrated substantial immediate savings from eliminating chemical inputs while, within a few harvests - if not immediately - their yields were close to or above their previous harvests. From these farmers, we also learned of the health and environmental benefits from this shift.
DRC: Farmer organisations slam new law
2012-02-29, Issue 572
Farmers’ organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo say the country’s new Agriculture Law - enacted last December - could lead to many smallholder farmers losing their land. 'We have launched a major appeal to the government to modify the law,' Paluku Mivimba, president of FOPAC, the Congo Federation of Smallholder Farmer Organisations, told IPS. 'Several articles of this law create insecurity of tenure for peasant farmers because they eliminate the possibility of peasant farmers becoming owners of land they have been cultivating for many years,' said Mivimba, who is also the head of the federation’s lobbying unit.
Cameroon: Drought in Sahel affects urban Cameroonians
2012-02-29, Issue 572
Sala Aminata, a housewife from Logone and Shari Division in Cameroon’s Far North Region, looks at her six kids with apprehension as she tries to figure out how to feed them with her meagre salary. Rising food prices come after a drought late last year destroyed the majority of the harvest in the Sahel – the arid zone between the Sahara desert in North Africa and Sudan’s Savannas in the south. Rural populations throughout the region have started to run out of food since early February, six months before the next harvest is expected. And all governments in the Sahel, except for Senegal, have appealed for international assistance as 12 million people in the region are threatened by hunger.
Global: Monsanto found guilty of chemical poisoning in France
2012-02-20, Issue 570
A French court has declared the US biotech giant Monsanto guilty of chemical poisoning of a French farmer, a judgment that could lend weight to other health claims against pesticides. In the first such case heard in court in France, the grain grower Paul Francois, 47, said he suffered neurological problems including memory loss, headaches and stammering after inhaling Monsanto's Lasso weedkiller in 2004. He blames Monsanto for not providing adequate warnings on the product label.
Tanzania: Minister backs GMOs
2012-02-07, Issue 569
The government is contemplating to open doors for Genetically Modified Crops (GMOs) in a decision expected to attract more international partners in the bio-technology industry. Addressing an international conference in Dar es Salaam, Minister for Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives Prof Jumanne Maghembe said the country had no other option but to welcome the new technology. The national discussion on whether to allow GMOs is currently between the ministry of Agriculture and the Vice President's Office with a debate on safety legislation protecting farmers and consumers and whether to remove a contestable clause (strict liability clause) in the bio safety regulatory framework.
Southern Africa: Food price pressures weigh heavily on the region
2012-01-09, Issue 565
A tight grain supply outlook after several bumper harvests is set to fan food price pressures in southern Africa, fuelling salary demands and threatening to knock the region's fragile economies out of kilter. Erratic rains have delayed the planting o...
South Africa: Western Cape farm workers and dwellers speak out
2012-01-16, Issue 565
The Commercial, Stevedoring, Agricultural and Allied Workers Union (CSAAWU), the Mawubuye Land Rights Forum, the Trust for Community Outreach and Education, and the Democratic Left Front (DLF) launched the Speak-Out Campaign on the 27th of November 2...
Kenya: Cash transfers and coping with poverty
2012-01-16, Issue 565
This report from the Hunger Safety Net Programme Secretariat (HNSP) defines the behavior of HNSP beneficiaries receiving cash transfers in coping with and overcoming the challenges of extreme poverty magnified by shocks of environmental extremities ...
Africa: Carbon markets will be a disaster for Africa
2011-12-08, Issue 562
South African president Jacob Zuma has declared his intention to have a decision on Agriculture at the UN COP17 climate negotiations in Durban last week; while the World Bank is promoting so-called 'Climate Smart Agriculture' and carbon offsets as th...
Africa: Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) launches at COP17
2011-12-12, Issue 562
African farmer and civil society groups in Africa are celebrating the launch of a 'network of African networks', called the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA). They have released a report emphasising that Food Sovereignty can cool the pla...
Kenya: Food security concern as farmers switch from maize to coffee
2011-11-24, Issue 559
The switch by many farmers in Kenya's Rift Valley province from staple cereals to more profitable coffee is likely to increase the country's dependence on grain imports and possibly affect food security, agricultural experts have warned. 'It is unsaf...
Horn of Africa: Understanding the politics of the famine
2011-11-27, Issue 559
While it is known the famine is in the five countries of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti and Sudan in the Horn of Africa, the epicenter is Southern Somalia. The story of Somalia is not a simple one and cannot be told in the framework of famine a...
Global: The WTO and the food crisis agenda
2011-11-21, Issue 558
This briefing note offers a preliminary assessment of the compatibility between the WTO and efforts to protect the human right to adequate food as part of the post-crisis food security agenda. Existing WTO rules do include certain flexibilities for S...
Global: Clooney coffee ad gets spoofed
2011-11-08, Issue 557
George Clooney gets clobbered in an activist takedown of his advertisements for Nescafe’s Nespresso brand, reports www.afronline.org 'The advertisement – featuring a Clooney lookalike – is aimed at getting Nescafe ...
Malawi: Agriculture running on the smell of an oil rag
2011-10-25, Issue 554
Malawi's fertiliser subsidy scheme, credited for transforming famine-prone Malawi into an exporter of maize, is in danger. The executive director of the Malawi Economic Justice Network, Dalitso Kubalasa, explained the government's woes in précis.'Fue...
Africa: Rumpus over GM food aid
2011-10-18, Issue 553
Genetically modified (GM) food aid bound for Africa has long been a bone of contention among governments, scientists, activists, consumers and aid workers. On 18 August a drought-affected Kenyan government fired the head of its National Biosafety Aut...
Global: 450 economists call on G20 finance ministers to stop speculation fuelling hunger
2011-10-19, Issue 553
More than 450 economists from over 40 countries have called on the G20 finance ministers, who met in Paris recently, to take urgent action to stop financial speculation in commodity markets driving up food prices and fuelling hunger. 'Excessive finan...
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