Food prices have been increasing sharply. According to the World Bank, global food prices have climbed by 83% over the last three years. The real price of rice rose to a 19-year high in March 2008, an increase of 50% in two weeks alone while the real price of wheat hit a 28-year high, triggering an international crisis.
Food activists, scientists, and representatives from governments and corporations around the world will begin meeting in Johannesburg on Monday, April 7th, to finalize a report on how the world can tackle the deeply interrelated issues of hunger, poverty, power, and global agriculture.
But global agribusinesses Monsanto, Syngenta, and BASF have refused to participate. They complained recently that genetic modification of agriculture was under-valued by the 4,000 scientists and experts working on the report, and that the report should not have stated that biotechnology in agriculture poses risks.
ETC Group, a Grassroots International ally based in Canada, has released a report highlighting the failure of governments to manage their multilateral food and agriculture agencies.
ETC is calling on the United Nations to gather the leaders of such agencies to hammer out a plan for the future. It says the meeting is necessary because of numerous threats facing the world's agricultural systems:
On March 7 several hundred people occupied a research site of the U.S.-based agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, and destroyed the greenhouse and experimental plots of genetically-modified (GM) corn. Participants in the act, members of the international farmers' organization La Vía Campesina, stated in a note that the act was to protest the Brazilian government's decision in February to legalize Monsanto's GM Guardian® corn, which was recently banned in France, Austria, and Hungary due to risks to the environment and human health.
This week Palestinians around the world are commemorating Land Day (begun in 1976) to mark their attachment to, and dispossession from land -- the fundamental issue of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Former Grassroots International Board chair Assaf Kfoury reflects on the re-emergence of the one versus two states debate.
Many of us think we’re doing the climate and the environment a big favor when we consider meeting our liquid fuel needs through biodiesel. I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s time to think again.
Agribusiness is seeing dollar signs as cities and states across the country consider using biodiesel to fuel municipal vehicle fleets and heat homes and businesses. In New York City, over a million households depend on petroleum heating oil to stay warm every winter. Legislation currently wending its way through City Council proposes adding biodiesel to future supplies.
But where does this biodiesel come from and at what environmental cost?
Gaza's humanitarian situation is at its worst since Israel occupied the territory in 1967, say human rights and development groups including Amnesty International, Save the Children, Cafod, Care International and Christian Aid.
In order to highlight the impact of the siege and closure of the Gaza Strip on the civilian population, PCHR is publishing a series of "Narratives Under Siege" on our website. These short articles are based on personal testimonies and experiences of life in the Gaza Strip, and we hope they will highlight the restrictions, and violations, being imposed on the civilians of Gaza.
http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/campaigns/english/gaza_closure/Narratives.html
Please circulate these narratives as widely as you can.
Many thanks from PCHR.
Suddenly everyones talking about local: Local is the new organic, were told. Farmers markets are springing up in food co-operative and church parking lots and on Main Streets throughout the country. More people are joining CSAs (community supported agriculture) and choosing locally grown products in their grocery stores. And as this trend continues, more and more consumers are starting to ask hard questions about where their food comes from and how its grown, who are the people growing it and under what conditions, and equally important of course, whos making the decisions that control our food choices and whos making the profits from those purchases?
A public lecture on “Human rights in Eritrea: why do they matter” was held at the University of Pretoria on the 15th of January 2008. The lecture was organized by Eritrean Movement for Democracy and Human Rights (EMDHR) and the Center for Human Rights of the University of Pretoria. It aimed at raising the awareness of international actors in general and African youth in particular about the growing human rights violations in Eritrea.
The guest speaker was Dan Connell, a lecturer in Journalism and African Politics at Simmons College, Boston, USA [and founder of Grassroots International].
Dear friends,
I want to thank you on behalf of Grassroots International’s board, staff, advisors, and partners for your invaluable support over this past year. Your support has sown the seeds of a just and sustainable world by weaving a web of alliances among progressive movements, providing grants to them, and joining them in advocating for social change.
Your loyal support in 2007 meant that together, we provided $1.3 million in cash grants to our extraordinary partners around the world and, additionally, over $1.4 million in much-needed material aid - in the shape of vital medicines to our partners in Gaza.
I want to highlight just a few of the things that your solidarity enabled this past year.
Grassroots International is pleased to highlight "The Story of Stuff ," a newly-released, highly informative and entertaining Web video that documents the destructive impacts of consumerism and waste. The video features activist Annie Leonard taking viewers through the process of creating a consumer good - from the extraction of materials to the disposal. Check it out but beware: Your trash will never look the same.
Nusa Dua, Bali, 16 Dec (Martin Khor) -- The Bali Climate Change Conference concluded dramatically one day late on Saturday (15 December) afternoon after a dramatic day of events. The day (as the night before) was filled with the tension of deal making and deal breaking.
It saw tempers rising to boiling point, an accusation of mismanagement by the Secretariat that led to its top official taking leave temporarily in tears, a direct intervention of the UN Secretary-General and the Indonesian President to appeal to the countries to make a final deal, a seemingly recalcitrant United States holding the entire meeting to ransom, before several dramatic and angry appeals led finally to its announcement that it would "join the consensus."
Grassroots International has been working with a group of organizations that first met together in Atlanta at the U.S. Social Forum in June 2007 to discuss what to do about biofuels and U.S. food and fuel policies. After much deliberation, these groups. including Grassroots, have formed a national coalition and are calling for an immediate moratorium on U.S. incentives for agrofuels, U.S. agroenergy monocultures and global trade in agrofuels.
The U.S. Senate ignored the wishes of 4 million Peruvian farmers and countless numbers of American family farmers, ranchers, and consumers earlier this month when it voted to create a new Peru Free Trade Agreement (Peru FTA). The agreement, modeled on failed free trade policies such as NAFTA and CAFTA, will allow American agribusinesses to dump tons of below-cost commodities such as corn and soybeans into the Peruvian economy, thereby creating unfair competition for Peruvian farmers. It will also allow Peru to flood the U.S. market with cheap fruits and vegetables at a time when American family farmers are trying to build sustainable food systems by offering affordable local produce to consumers.
Grassroots International colleague Institute for Policy Studies' Phyllis Bennis is a long time scholar of Middle East policy, having written and spoken widely on the politics of the region and U.S. Middle East policy. In a recent article on the talks beginning today in Annapolis, MD, she pointed out that "Besides her [Condoleezza Rice's] urgent need to update her legacy (which is currently that of the person who stood before the world at the United Nations and announced 'we don't want a ceasefire yet' as Israeli jets bombarded Lebanon in summer 2006), Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urgently needs to win flagging Arab government support for the Bush administration's failing war and occupation in Iraq and its escalating mobilization against Iran.
Wisconsin based Family Farm Defenders (FFD) is a leading member of Grassroots International's ally National Family Farm Coalition. FFD was formed in 1994 and works to create a family farmer-controlled and consumer oriented food system, and has been a leading ally of farm workers and minority farmers including indigenous farmers. John Peck, the executive director of FFD recently wrote an article warning against the threat of agrofuels for family farmers in the Global South and here in the U.S.
Amidst talk of "peace-making" at Annapolis, the situation in Gaza grows worse by the day and any lingering hopes Palestinians may have had for a just peace are fading fast.
After declaring the Gaza Strip an "enemy entity" in September, the Israeli Cabinet last week approved the cutoff of fuel supplies and electricity to the Gaza Strip in response to ongoing rocket attacks. Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak gave the order to cut electricity for increasing periods and to reduce fuel shipments.
World Food Day was recently observed around the world with people everywhere taking the opportunity to organize and act on our obligations to ensure "The Right to Food." Here in the United States, the Right to Food is as relevant as anywhere, especially in light of our recent imported food safety crisis that is causing many citizens to question their grocery purchases.
Sin maíz no hay país is the resounding clarion call given by Grassroots International’s Mexican partners, grantees and their allies in rolling out the National Campaign in Defense of Food Sovereignty and the Revitalization of Rural Mexico.
Corn is indigenous to Mexico, and the alliance of peasant, farm worker, indigenous peoples, fisher, consumer, environmental and human rights groups and other organizations that came together to declare sin maíz no hay país are making the point that corn is intrinsically tied to the very idea and identity of Mexico.
