Tuesday, 9 November 2010
Climate Activists to Dairy Summit: ‘Get a real job on a real farm’
Camp for Climate Action Aotearoa invites the corporate farmers of the World Dairy Summit to get a real job on a real farm
In response to yesterday’s Federated Farmer’s press release telling protestors of the World Dairy Summit in Auckland to “Get a real job like farming” Camp for Climate Action Aotearoa suggests that Federated Farmer’s listen to their own advice.
Camp for Climate Action Aotearoa spokesperson Gary Cranston says “we support the actions of small scale farmers all over the world who are already living sustainably, feeding their communities and defending their climate-friendly farming practices from mega-scale agribusinesses.”
“As a stream of greenwash spews from the World Dairy Summit into our rivers small-scale farmer’s livelihoods are not only threatened by climate change, they’re also threatened by industrial agriculture itself and the kind of money-making false solutions that the world’s agribusiness giants are pedalling at the UN climate negotiations and through John Key’s Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases.”
Thursday, 16 September 2010
World Bank: ‘Speculation in food behind price increases’
15 September 2010
A recent World Bank report reveals that speculation was a major cause of the huge increase in food prices during 2007 and 2008. While banks raked in huge profits, hundreds of millions of people, most but by no means all of them in developing countries, suffered hunger as a result of rising prices.
Jean Ziegler, special rapporteur for food rights for the UN, called the food crisis at the time 'silent mass murder', saying that it was entirely attributable to human activity.
As Dutch Socialist Party MP and development spokesman Ewout Irrgang says, “Human activity could also put an end to the hunger casino. Re-regulation of agriculture is therefore vital. Speculators must be banished from the food market. This could be achieved, for example, by a ban on speculative financial instruments in food commodities where there is no over-riding interest, or through limits on the amounts that speculators can gamble on food prices. Also worthy of consideration are the introduction of a tax to put a brake on speculative financial operations, and the regulation of the futures market.”
Saturday, 7 August 2010
New Socialist Restaurants Bring Venezuelans Good Food at Fair Prices
from Correo del Orinoco International
via Venezuela Analysis
Providing the Venezuelan population with good food at fair prices is the principle goal behind the inauguration of seven new socialist arepa restaurants in the country, confirmed Commerce Minister Richard Canan last Saturday.
During a tour of a recently opened government run restaurant in the neighborhood La Rinconada in Caracas, Canan highlighted how these new facilities are breaking with older models of doing business in Venezuela.
“The creation of these socialist arepa restaurants allows us to demonstrate to capitalist businesses that it is possible to have a venue where food can be sold at a fair price and not as a commodity, as it is under capitalist concepts”.
Tuesday, 3 August 2010
Video: Raj Patel on the battle for the world food system
The battle for the world food system: an interview with Raj Patel from Jill Hickson on Vimeo.
The battle for the world food system: an interview with Raj Patel from Jill Hickson on Vimeo.
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
The lessons of climate history: implications for post-carbon agriculture
Post Carbon Institute's Energy Bulletin
17 May 17 2010
“The facts stare us in the face, yet we do not display sufficient humility…In a new climatic era, we would be wise to learn from the climatic lessons of history.”
“All our lives utterly depend on just six inches of topsoil and the fact that it rains.”
SUMMARY: Populous civilizations require agriculture. Agriculture requires climatic stability. Industrial civilization is rapidly eroding climatic stability. This can’t end well. But…there’s some stuff we can do, and we have to try. So shut off your damn computer, get outside, and start building some agricultural resiliency!
AGRICULTURE? HUH? THAT'S ALL YOU GOT?
Every so often, one of my suburban New Jersey high-school students asks me what I think will be the biggest problem associated with climate change. Knowing they’re asking the question from a human-centered perspective, I respond simply, “Agriculture might not work if we change the climate.”
They usually just sort of stare blankly back at me and say, “Hmmmm.”
In other words, they don’t get it. “Agriculture? That’s it? That’s all you’ve got? Like farms and stuff? Cows and tractors? But aren’t we in the Information Age now? Isn’t it all about technology these days? Isn’t agriculture so…ummm…last century?”
I think that these kids – like the majority of Americans, really – just don’t understand what is at stake with this whole climate-change thing. I don’t think they understand that we are – that EVERY populous civilization necessarily is – fundamentally an AGRICULTURAL civilization. Agriculture is still now, as it has been for millennia, THE foundation of our species. A population of our density obviously cannot get by on hunting and gathering. So agriculture it is. (Well…for now, at least.)
And despite our fossil-energy-fueled bravado, agriculture is still, as it has always been, a very tenuous endeavor. Even though we’ve ‘progressed’ to having fossil-fuel-powered machines tending the fields instead of humans, we are STILL dependent for our very existence on six inches of topsoil and the somewhat-predictable, relatively-benign climatic regime we’ve enjoyed for the past 10,000 years.
The fact that agriculture in the US has become so thoroughly removed from the everyday thoughts of most of our industrial population does not make its future prospects of any less concern. In fact, quite the contrary. Despite our currently-overflowing supermarket shelves, packed refrigerators, and prodigious waistlines, an honest and thorough look at our coming agricultural challenges is enough to make one literally shake in their boots.
Sunday, 9 May 2010
Global food bubble on the way?
From The Real News network
Dr. Jayati Ghosh is Professor of Economics and currently also Chairperson at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Educated at Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University and the University of Cambridge, England, her research interests include globalization, international trade and finance, employment patterns in developing countries, macroeconomic policy, and issues related to gender and development.
Thursday, 2 July 2009
The Oil Intensity of Food
Thursday, 1 January 2009
The Oil Intensity of Food
Friday, 29 August 2008
Union members flock to sign GST-off-food petition
Wednesday, 27 August 2008
Maori Party call to address food poverty
Wednesday, 30 July 2008
Fastest growing party registered by Electoral Commission
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RAM media release
30 July 2008
Yesterday the Electoral Commission agreed to register RAM - Residents Action Movement. (See EC email below.)
RAM is the fastest growing party in New Zealand. We have gained 3,000 members since late February 2008, when RAM decided to switch from being a Greater Auckland local body coalition to being a countrywide people's movement that contests parliamentary elections.
On average, RAM has gained 150 new members every single week since we decided to go countrywide. Not even the Big Two parties, Labour and National, can claim this recruiting success.
"At our RAM tables, the grassroots are telling us how worried they are about meeting their bills, and also how upset they are that both Labour and National are only looking after the rich people," said Grant Morgan, chair of RAM.
RAM will be fielding a long party list in the 2008 General Election as well as standing in a significant number of electorates.
RAM has issued our Ten Commandments - ten policy priorities - which offer immediate "common sense" improvements in the lives of grassroots people.
Heading the Ten Commandments is our call for GST to be removed from food. RAM's GST-off-food petition has already attracted 20,000 signatures. We will be taking the petition to MP's in a two-week People's Procession to Parliament in late September/early October.
"The People's Procession to Parliament will be a chance for the grassroots to get a fairer taxation system as well as having their voice heard in the election campaign, which is usually dominated by spin from the big political machines," said Grant Morgan.
For more information, contact:
Grant Morgan
Chair of RAM - Residents Action Movement
021 2544 515
grantmorgan@paradise.net.nz
See RAM's TEN COMMANDMENTS
Wednesday, 16 July 2008
Rising Prices Reinforce Need for Food Security Policies
Saturday, 5 July 2008
"Why can't the Government lift the GST on everyday living items, e.g. food and petrol?"
Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis
Tuesday, 24 June 2008
Some commonly asked questions about the GST-off-food petition
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Below are some commonly asked questions about removing GST from food for distribution in union and other social justice networks. Please feel free to copy and paste into an email to send to your own contacts. Or make up a quick leaflet to give to workmates and friends. Copies of RAM's "GST-off-food" petition is avaible from RAM's website.
Will sellers just lift their prices if GST is removed?
While sellers have a degree of flexibility in regard to managing their profit margins, they are not a law unto themselves. Customers ultimately dictate the course of a business, and New Zealand has a very competitive retail environment. If GST-off-food became a reality, Kiwis would not tolerate retailers or their suppliers not removing the 12.5% tax on their food items. There would be a mass exodus to sellers who didn't hike their prices, forcing the others to retreat. And remember, removing GST from food provides a PERMANENT benefit. Prices will always be cheaper by the amount of the GST than it would otherwise be if this 12.5% tax remained. In fact, as food prices rose over time in line with general inflationary trends, the amount of the benefit of removing GST would grow in value.
What about the loss in tax revenue?
The income tax cuts promised by Labour and National (which benefit the wealthy more than the rest) are significantly greater in terms of lost revenue than would be the removal of GST from food. And there is greatly increased GST revenue being generated as a result of record fuel prices and the rise in the cost of other goods and services. These rises will tend to offset the removal of GST from food. Anyway, New Zealand needs to move away from the GST flat tax, since it is so unfair to low-to-modest income Kiwis. The poorest person in the land pays exactly the same amount of GST on a litre of milk as the richest person. GST is the product of Rogernomics and the whole Business Roundtable agenda. We need to return to progressive tax systems where the rich pay a fairer share, possibly including a financial transactions tax which would capture greedy speculators in the tax net which they now escape under GST.
Should tax reform be part of a union's strategy?
Each union is working hard to improve the living conditions of its own members by campaigning for better collective agreements. And by campaigning for upwards adjustments to the politically legislated minimum wage, the union movement as a whole is trying to improve the well-being of every worker in the land. This combination of industrial and political campaigning has always been a feature of the NZ union movement, and long may it continue. The GST-off-food petition fits right into this union strategy. It is a political campaign supported by some unions and many union members that aims to improve the lives of low-to-modest income families struggling to pay the bills. Many are now simply unable to afford good food no matter how well they budget. This is a social justice issue. As one Maori woman worker said when signing the GST-off-food petition in Mangere: "Taxing food is like taxing the air we breathe." By supporting the GST-off-food petition, your union will earn the gratitude of all Kiwi battlers, which will pay off in terms of cross-solidarity in the future.
Monday, 16 June 2008
GM will make global food crisis worse
Lecture by Dr. Mae-Wan Ho at the conference, TRADITIONAL SEEDS OUR NATIONAL TREASURE AND HERITAGE, 17 May 2008, Warsaw, Poland.
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho is the co-founder of The Institute of Science In Society The Brave New World of GM Science In 1994, I met some of the most remarkable leaders in the Third World: Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher (Institute of Sustainable Development, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia), Martin Khor (Third World Network, Penang, Malaysia), and Vandana Shiva (Navdanya, New Delhi, India), who persuaded me to look into genetically modified organisms (GMOs), especially GM crops, which they rightly saw as a special threat to small family farmers. The biotech industry was promising miracle GM crops that would boost yield to feed the world, improve nutrition, and clean up and protect the environment. Monsanto's Flavr Savr tomato, the first GM crop, had just been commercialised, though it turned out to be a complete flop, and was withdrawn several years later.
Saturday, 14 June 2008
A Hunger for Justice
So it’s happening already. Rising food prices in this country are “making people more prone to sickness”. That’s what food specialists say in a recent Dominion Post article Families' health hit as food costs soar.
The Wellington managing director of Foodstuffs (Pak’N’Save, New World and 4 Square supermarkets) rattles off the usual suspects behind the price rises. Poor harvests, high fuel costs, higher demand from Asia, biofuels. You have to dig a little deeper to get the full picture, which corporate managing directors can’t, and won’t tell you. Poor harvests are linked to climate change, which rolls on unabated thanks to corporate opposition to measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Oil prices are rising for the same reason. High oil prices, in turn, make it profitable for corporate agribusinesses to grow crops for biofuels instead of food. “Higher demand” from Asia is actually driven by the growth of a small, wealthy middle class, mainly in China, which has a taste for meat. Grain is now being diverted to animal feed, to produce meat for this lucrative new market. The corporate elite behind the food crisis, which is now growing here in New Zealand as the Dominion Post reports, have no answers. Neither do all the mainstream political parties which serve them. It’s an absolute disgrace that National, ACT, Labour and the Greens all reject such a simple, immediate step as scrapping GST on food. Ultimately, there is no global food shortage. There’s only a shortage of politicians willing to stand up to the corporate agenda. RAM (Residents Action Movement) has the answers that the corporate elite and all the mainstream politicians lack. RAM is building a grassroots movement that puts people and the environment before the almighty dollar – starting by scrapping GST tax on all our food.
Saturday, 7 June 2008
Pakistan: Thousands demonstrate against price rises
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
Sky-rocketing oil and food prices - the latest investment bubble?
Gambling with the Futures from US Socialist Worker.
DiLeo writes: "Futures are [...] traded by individual investors and financial institutions, based on a gamble as to whether the price of the goods will rise or fall. Today, traders of exchange-traded funds, hedge funds and other speculators far outstrip the actual buyers and sellers of commodities. As a result, these speculators have generated a big demand for futures contracts, therefore helping send the prices of underlying commodities upward." Mike Whitney in a recent article titled
The Great Oil Swindle: How much did the Fed really know? also argues that it's unregulated futures trading that's sending the price of oil (and food) upwards. And that a lot of this investment is coming from US banks who've been bailed out to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars by the US Federal Reserve after the collapse of the housing and sub-prime mortgage markets. These big banks, argues Whitney, are trying to speculate their way out of the financial crisis through investing in oil and food futures. Not only are these banks the recipients of corporate welfare of truly historic proportions, but what they're doing with that money is inflicting pain and suffering on the majority of the world's population. Whitney claims the rising cost of oil "is a hoax cooked up by the investment banks and hedge funds who are trying to dig their way out of the trillion dollar mortgage-backed securities (MBS) mess that they created by turning garbage loans into securities." He quotes another financial analyst who calculates that at least 60% of the current price of oil comes from futures speculation by hedge funds, banks and financial groups, who are using unregulated futures exchanges to avoid public scrutiny. While perhaps overly dismissive of the current and future impact of Peak Oil, Whitney's analysis is compelling. The bigger picture is that trillions of dollars circulate the globe daily looking to be invested in shares, property, currency, commodities, and phony markets created to gamble on price or interest rate fluctuations, which points to the fact that the real economy - the one where goods or services are produced and purchased for actual use - is not delivering the profitable returns the capitalists want. This underlying economic crisis could not be avoided forever, and is now impacting on the global economy in a big way. What's important for us to realise is that this economic crisis is rapidly intensifying a global political struggle, where the naked self-preservation of the rich elites comes up against the rising anger of grassroots people. Like any war - which is what this indeed will be - it will be decided by superior organisation, strategy and will. Our side needs to build the political structures within individual countries and internationally to mobilise the world's grassroots majority in this historic struggle.
UNITYblog directs readers to articles presented on the right-hand sidebar under the heading 'Building a broad left party' as a contribution to how we can organise.
Wednesday, 28 May 2008
John Minto - Plenty of food for all
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- MARXIST FORUM: The Global Food Crisis - Fact or Fiction?
- Ticker Tape Ain’t Spaghetti
- FOOD CRISIS: "The greatest demonstration of the historical failure of the capitalist model"
- FOOD CRISIS (Part Two): Capitalism, Agribusiness, and the Food Sovereignty Alternative
- Solutions to the food crisis: immediate demands and longer term goals