Posts Tagged ‘government’

Article from The Huffington Post, September 23, 2009

The industrial agriculture complex has been doing back flips for the last few weeks, first because of the ascendance of Blanche Lincoln (ConservaDem-AR) to the high throne of the Senate Agriculture Committee, where she promises to pinch climate legislation (or at the very least shove it aside until next year) and push a southern Big Ag agenda in the Senate for rice and cotton interests. Now, the White House has announced Islam A. Siddiqui, current Vice President for Science and Regulatory Affairs at CropLife America (you will remember the organization as the one that sent the First Lady a letter admonishing her for not using pesticides on the White House garden) as nominee for Chief Agricultural Negotiator, who works through the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to promote our crops and ag products abroad.

Why does it matter if the Vice President from the trade association representing pesticides and other agricultural chemicals takes over the Office of Agricultural Affairs at the USTR? Well, because that office, according to the USTR website “has overall responsibility for negotiations and policy coordination regarding agriculture.”

Read the full article here…

Article from Developments Magazine, September 2009

Africa’s small farms could hold the key to the continent riding out the recession. “An increase in investment in smallholder farms – which represent 95% of agriculture in Africa – can return the continent to a path of high growth,” said Kanayo F Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Cape Town, he told delegates: “Smallholder agriculture is the largest private-sector activity in many African countries. It not only feeds families, it provides jobs and catalyses the growth of rural businesses and broader development.”

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Article from Truth Dig, September 6, 2009:

Our most potent political weapon is food. If we take back our agriculture, if we buy and raise produce locally, we can begin to break the grip of corporations that control a food system as fragile, unsafe and destined for collapse as our financial system. If we continue to allow corporations to determine what we eat, as well as how food is harvested and distributed, then we will become captive to rising prices and shortages and increasingly dependent on cheap, mass-produced food filled with sugar and fat. Food, along with energy, will be the most pressing issue of our age. And if we do not build alternative food networks soon, the social and political ramifications of shortages and hunger will be devastating.

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