Dr. Paul Anastas at Minnesota Green Chemistry Forum: “We’re all in the same boat, and we only have one boat”
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“Any defenders of the status quo are not on my team.” Continue Reading
Frozen local: How about it?
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As I look at the snow outside my window, I have to admit it: The summer’s bounty of sweet corn and tomatoes is long gone, but the demand for local food keeps chugging along—particularly among K-12 schools that are eager to keep their Farm to School program going even after the snow flies. Continue Reading
At the intersection of the fiscal cliff, health and the Farm Bill
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It’s no secret that many economists believe the nation’s toxic mix of soon-to-expire tax cuts and automatically triggered, across-the-board federal spending cuts could send the economy off a precipice at the beginning of January and into another recession. If that happens, every American taxpayer and industry will be profoundly affected, and agriculture is no exception. Continue Reading
Thousands call on FDA to stop turning a blind eye to antibiotics squandered in animal feed
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A week ago with most of us still digesting election results—and our turkey—a critical deadline passed in the struggle to convince the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to pull back the cloak of ig Continue Reading
What’s at stake for agriculture in COP 18?
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The biggest threat for agriculture at the 18th Conference of Parties (COP) of the UNFCCC is the certain likelihood (oxymoron intended) of “non-decisions” for setting ambitious emissions reduction targets for the post-2012 period, when the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period expires. Bill McKibben’s widely circulated article Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math tells us in starkly clear terms what we need to do to set things right: Continue Reading
Government’s seat at the dinner table
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The Norman Rockwell painting “Freedom from Want” is a tribute to one of the four freedoms that President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared people ought to enjoy in his 1941 State of the Union speech. For Roosevelt, this freedom meant having “economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world.” His words later influenced the inclusion of the right to an adequate standard of living—which includes a right to food—in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Continue Reading
A global step forward on climate and agriculture
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Last week in Rome, the United Nations’ Committee on World Food Security (CFS) agreed on key principles on how governments must address the massive food security challenge that climate change brings. The big news: Governments at the CFS recognized that policies addressing climate change must also support the Right to Food—an important step forward that if taken seriously by governments could result in a major shift in the way agriculture and land use are considered at the global climate talks. Continue Reading
The myth of Feeding the World exposed in new video
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IATP has long recognized that many of the drivers of the destructive industrial food system are not based on a sound rationale, but instead on a series of corporate marketing myths. IATP Food and Community Fellow Raj Patel, for example, has recently been taking on the false assumptions that contributed to the Green Revolution and the revitalized interest in a new Green Revolution. Continue Reading
Moving ahead on food justice
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The U.S food system has never been just, fair or healthy. This is a shocking statement to some, but to the vast majority of people of color and tribal nations in the United States this has always been a reality. This sentiment was the thread connecting many of the conversations throughout all three days of IATP’s Food + Justice = Democracy conference last month in Minneapolis. Continue Reading
World Food Day: Keep farmers on the land
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World Food Day is an event perhaps best known to those already advocating to end hunger in their own countries and around the globe. Continue Reading