Bill Gates recently announced a commitment of $200m for assisting smallholder farmers in developing countries to increase their agricultural productivity. A much needed and welcome financial investment to be sure. But what conditions are attached? And what constitutes ‘sustainable agriculture’ according to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation? A look at the website suggests a [...]
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Alternative Lit Review (from an Alternative Person)
(Surely you wouldn’t expect something conventional from me.) *** Lit Review Scholars agree on one point: Food crisis. *** Food systems Unjust, unsustainable; Something’s wrong. *** One billion Underfed, undernourished; There’s enough. *** One billion Badly fed, badly nourished, Unhealthy. *** The verdict: It’s a broken food system … Can be fixed? *** Who’s in [...]
Tastes like fresh milk
This gem of a food(-like?) product passed my camera, but not my lips, during a recent trip. Were someone to indulge my thoughts, the vitriol would be thick and the sardonicism – a work Etymology Online tells me originates in the Greek plant sardonion, which ‘caused facial convulsions resembling those of sardonic laughter, usually [...]
Good technology or bad technology?
I’ve been intrigued for some time by the so many ways that ‘sustainability’ gets conflated. It doesn’t necessarily surprise me that most people don’t find it easy to engage with such a lofty idea, and usually I just agree with whatever people tell me sustainability ‘is’, smile, have another drink, and invite my interlocutor to [...]
The Best of the Internet: Food Resources on the Web
If you’re the type who likes to bandy about town with patched-elbow tweed jacket, newsboy cap, and a homily of postpositivist metatheory, then you’d best get on gettin’ on, because you won’t find much here. But if you’ve come for a few moments of peripheral vision – and I would argue that, to put an [...]
Poetic sociology of the kitchen table
I’m not a poetry connoisseur by any means, but this one resonated with me and I thought I would share… Perhaps the World Ends Here By Joy Harjo The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live. The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the [...]
Territorialization of public policies: the case of Brazil
Policy integration is going to be one of the main themes of the upcoming Contemporary Agrifood Studies course promoted by Wageningen School of Social Sciences. With decentralization, the question is not only about how to have horizontal (intersectoral) integration at the national level, but also vertical integration (of governance levels). If you count the benefits [...]
Solutions for reducing hunger?
Recently I was watching a discussion between a plant pathologist, an agriculture geneticist and current professor and former high-level FAO official at a science fair back in 2010 (see the link at the bottom of the post). As the presentation framed it, the topic was on how to feed the additional 2 billion people on [...]
How can we make people hungry?
I read this piece on the New York Times about a woman whose financial troubles pushed her to ‘go back to the land’ (well, the New York version that is, a raised-bed-in-the-backyard type of situation. Still there was some soil involved so let’s not ruin the magic and call it land …), grow her own [...]
Government and industry to blame for hunger on the UK high street
There is a great piece in this weekend’s Observer newspaper about growing demand for food charity handouts in the UK. FareShare, the charity that channels the redistribution of surplus to the requirements of food supermarkets and manufacturers, reports a rise in recipients from 29,000 to 35,500 this year. It now channels otherwise unwanted food through [...]
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Toni Massanés: Molt bo, Leah!...
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There are still seats availab...
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