unusualmusic_lj_archive | Entries tagged with food and the poor

Via: Andrew Sullivan

Poor obese lids may not be eating enough

Researchers have long blamed childhood obesity and diabetes, especially in poor neighborhoods, on too much food and too little exercise.
But new findings from a San Antonio study point to another explanation: children living in poverty are obese in part because they don’t eat enough to meet the daily nutritional requirements needed for cell function and metabolism.
A 9-year-old should consume 1,400 to 2,200 calories daily to sustain growth, said Dr. Roberto Trevino, director of the nonprofit Social and Health Research Center. But in the study of 1,400 inner-city children, 44 percent were consuming less than 1,400 calories, and 33 percent were obese.
“They were not overeating,” Trevino said. “This study shows these kids were not eating enough, and when they did eat it was all the wrong things.”
Missing from the children’s diets were four key nutrients: calcium, magnesium, potassium and phosphorus. All play important roles, but magnesium is involved in more than 300 enzymatic reactions in the body that help to spur metabolism and cell function.MORE

Via: Shakesville

50 percent more US children went hungry in 2007

Some 691,000 children went hungry in America sometime in 2007, while close to one in eight Americans struggled to feed themselves adequately even before this year's sharp economic downtown, the Agriculture Department reported Monday.

The department's annual report on food security showed that during 2007 the number of children who suffered a substantial disruption in the amount of food they typically eat was more than 50 percent above the 430,000 in 2006 and the largest figure since 716,000 in 1998.

Overall, the 36.2 million adults and children who struggled with hunger during the year was up slightly from 35.5 million in 2006. That was 12.2 percent of Americans who didn't have the money or assistance to get enough food to maintain active, healthy lives.MORE

From GritTV with Laura Flanders

Food or fuel. Does there have to be a trade-off? Not long ago, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food called the conversion of food-grains to fuel a "crime against humanity," but GRITtv's panelists lay out a much more complicated picture.
It's not just the biofuels, it's agribusiness and trade policy, not to mention market speculations that are to blame. Besides, we must be very careful about our language, says Anna Lappe: "it's not a food crisis, it's a food price crisis." The planet grows plenty of food, it's the purchase price that's threatening three billion people -- three billion-- with malnutrition if current trends keep up.
Joel Berg, a former food security expert at the USDA, now heads up the New York City Coalition Against Hunger. Not long ago he lived for a week on food stamps and found just how far the check would take him. Not far. He could only buy the mealy apples (not the organics,) and only the cheapest eggs. This year, he tells GRITtv, he repriced the goods in the imaginary food stamp basket. He wouldn't be able to afford any eggs at all.
The discussion here is rich. It's amazing what can happen when the conversation's not underwritten by Archer Daniels Midland, the ubiquitous agri-business media sponsor. No one trigger that has caused the food crisis, but there are concrete steps governments could take to solve the problem, says Yifat Susskind of MADRE With several sister organizations, MADRE wrote a proposal to the leaders of the G8 countries, to support "real solutions" to the situation that threatens to destablize dozens of countries. But sustainable agriculture requires sustainable economic policies, said Susskind. For more on the MADRE plan go to MADRE.org.

Please. Please. Watch this. These videos will not be up long, as within a few days they are usually taken down.

The World According to Monsanto, Part One "We can't afford to lose 1 dollar of business"

Part Two

Part Three If you don't want to watch the whole of it, please, please, please, please, watch THIS one. Please. Bill Clinton? I take this opportunity to say "FUCK YOU!"

Part Four Health and Environmental safety testing are "bureaucratic hurdles" according to Republicans. So there went regulations cause they slowed the corporations down.

Part Five This gets worse and worse. I feel like vomitting. Please take a great look at the number of former administration officials who later became Monsanto employees, and Monsanto employees who became administration employees. We've even got one on the Supreme Court! Stand up, Clarence Thomas!

Part Six 70% of US food is GM engineered. Genetically Modified Food labeling is forbidden. And Monsanto falsified tests. Tons of them. Dear God. I feel even sicker. Monsanto had dioxin as part of one of its pesticides. What is dioxin? Main ingredient of Agent Orange Oh. My. God. Also, Tony Blair? You Christian person, you? FUCK. YOU.

Part Seven

Part Eight Monopolizing India's cotton farmers, forcing farmers to buy seeds at FOUR times the prices, forcing farmers to borrow from high interest money lenders, leading to bankruptcy and the infamous Indian farmer suicides.

Part Nine More on the Indian farmer suicides 600 suicides from June 2005- June 2006 in 2005, over 680 in next 6 mth period in 2006. Oh! Vandana Shiva!!!

Part Ten Mexico banned GM, but signed NAFTA. The corn is heavily subsidized by the US government, and costs about HALF of the local varieties. What happened? The transgenic contamination in the world's most diverse corn varieties.END corn subsidies, NAFTA. Force the FDA to ban transgenic plants.

Part Eleven Monsanto smears the Mexican scientist who discovered that their crops were being contaminated. Deliberate contaminated South American farms. Deforestation. Expulsion of small farmers. The Green Desert.

Part Twelve Poverty, Illness, Death-- the conquest of Paraguay, spraying pesticide on people and their farms, contaminating and destroying them. Poisoning the water. Foreigners taking over the land.

More resources: Economic globalisation has become a war on the poor and nature

Greenpeace's take

Buy DVD here

How World Bank policies led to famine in Haiti.

Food Crises threaten 100 million

Brazil Pres Lula da Silva rejects UN's claims that biofuels are harming food production

Urban Fresh supplies locally-grown fresh food to underserved neighborhoods in Louisville, Kentucky. Founder, Sayheed Asante, pulled together a group of like-minded young people who were focused on transforming their lives and improving their community. With the support of the nonprofit Community Farm Alliance (CFA) and Grasshoppers, a farmer-run distribution center, Urban Fresh now hosts farmer’s markets in low income neighborhoods in Louisville’s West End.
West Louisville, an urban community, is home to 80,000 people including 27,000 children, 38% of whom are living below the poverty line. Statistically, across Jefferson County, there is an average of one grocery store per 6,100 people. In West Louisville, that average is one store per 20,000 people. And many West Louisville residents report poor product variety, low quality, and higher prices. In fact, the Community Farm Alliance conducted a Community Food Assessment in our major urban areas confirming that low-income residents pay 10-40% more for food.
There are many convenience stores in West Louisville, however the Community Food Assessment found that only one-fourth of them sold all five basic food groups and none sold leafy vegetables and very little fresh fruit. Nearly all of the stores sold alcoholic beverages.

And improving their neighborhood in more ways than one -

Prior to the Farmer’s Market, the area was filled with residents too fearful for their safety or the safety of their children to use the park.
In just three weeks, residents were on their front porches, children were in the park and citizens from surrounding neighborhoods were coming for fresh foods and entertainment.

Via: Pharyngula

Study says that using cropland to produce biofuels will be more damaging to the environment than fossil fuels.

The farmers who funded the study stop funding because they don't like the results. To wit:The Minnesota Soybean Growers Association and the Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council decided to stop paying additional research money until they meet with Allen Levine, dean of the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, and other officials."The university hurt the farmers' feelings, OK? That's probably the best way to say it," said Jim Palmer, executive director of the two groups.

*Blink*

*Blink*

*Blink*

How does one even begin?

Vitality of the Sun - Organic Agriculture in Egypt
January 31, 2008 · Filed under Agriculture & Food by Joe Turner

Editor’s Note: Joe Turner, our newest writer, is based in the UK, and has a strong background in soil science, green clothing, fair trade and more. Joe is off to a great start with this interesting profile of a very successful project in Egypt. Welcome Joe!

How does sustainable agriculture look in developing countries? Do local people actually see any benefits or is it all a fad to meet the demand for organic food in western countries?

Last year I went to Egypt to find out. I went to visit Sekem, a 300 hectare farm near Cairo airport.

The story goes that Dr Ibrahim Abouleish, a wealthy Egyptian pharmacologist, spent most of his early life abroad and was visiting Egypt in 1975 having made a successful career in pharmaceutical research. He was amazed at the poverty and saw how problems of education, unemployment and health were entrenched in Egyptian society.

Leaving his profession, he set about building a better world in a little part of Egypt. In 2003 Dr Abouleish was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, sometimes also called the Alternative Nobel Prize.

“SEKEM is establishing the blueprint for the healthy corporation of the 21st century. Taking its name from the hieroglyphic transcription meaning “vitality of the sun”, SEKEM was the first entity to develop biodynamic farming methods in Egypt. These methods are based on the premise that organic cultivation improves agro-biodiversity and does not produce any unusable waste. All products of the system can be either sold or re-used in cultivation, thereby creating a sustainable process.

In collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, SEKEM deployed a new system of plant protection in cotton, which led to a ban of crop dusting throughout Egypt. By 2000, according to UN and FAO reports, pesticide use in Egyptian cotton fields had fallen by over 90%, while prior to the ban 35,000 tons of chemical pesticides were sprayed yearly. Furthermore nearly 80% of Egyptian cotton was being grown organically and average annual yields had increased by nearly 30%.” — Right Livelihood Award 2003

Dr Abouleish founded and continues to provide inspiration and enthusiasm to a movement which attempts to meet all of the needs of the Egyptians that live and work at Sekem. The farm grows soft fruits which are then made into juice and herbs which are used to produce inexpensive herbal remedies. In the middle of the farm is a clothing factory - perhaps the oddest location for a factory anywhere in the world. Clothing is produced using cotton produced by a network of organic and fair trade cotton farmers they have established throughout Egypt.

Rest here:Organic Farming in Egypt

Open Letter to Hillary Clinton From a Wellesley College Alumna

February 19, 2008 · Filed under Agriculture & Food, Politics, Industry, Health by Linn Cohen-Cole

by Linn Cohen-Cole

Dear Hillary,

By polling logic, I should be your supporter - Democrat, older woman, white, liberal. I was even in a dorm with you in college. I have pulled for you for years. But something this past summer fundamentally changed my responsibility to my children and grandchildren. In the time I have left in my life to protect them and others, I need to speak out.

I saw a News Hour piece on Maharastra, India, about farmers committing suicide [see here and here]. Monsanto, a US agricultural giant, hired Bollywood actors for ads telling illiterate farmers they could get rich (by their standards) from big yields with Monsanto’s Bt (genetically engineered) cotton seeds. The expensive seeds needed expensive fertilizer and pesticides (Monsanto, again) and irrigation. There is no irrigation there. Crops failed. Farmers had larger debt than they’d ever experienced.

And farmers couldn’t collect seeds from their own fields [see here and here] to try again (true since time immemorial). Monsanto “patents” their DNA-altered seeds as “intellectual property.” They have a $10 million budget and a staff of 75 devoted solely to prosecuting farmers [here]. Since the late 1990s (about when industrial agriculture took hold in India), 166,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide and 8 million have left the land.

Farmers in Europe, Asia, Africa, Indonesia,South America, Central America and here, have protested Monsanto and genetic engineering for years.

What does this have to do with you?

You have connections to Monsanto through the Rose Law Firm where you worked and through Bill who hired Monsanto people for central food-related roles. Your Orwellian-named “Rural Americans for Hillary” was planned withTroutman Sanders, Monsanto’s lobbyists.

Genetic engineering and industrialized food and animal production all come together at the Rose Law Firm, which represents the world’s largest GE corporation (Monsanto), GE’s most controversial project (DP&L’s - now Monsanto’s - terminator genes) [here], the world’s largest meat producer (Tyson), the world’s largest retailer and a dominant food retailer (Wal-Mart) [here].

The inbred-ness of Rose’s legal representation of corporations which own controlling interests in other corporations there and of corporate boards sharing members who are also shareholders of each other’s corporations there, is so thorough that it is hard to capture. Jon Jacoby, senior executive of the Stephens Group - one of the largest institutional shareholders of Tyson Foods, Walmart, DP&L - is also Chairman of the Board of DP&L and arranged the Wal-Mart deal. Jackson Stephens’ Stephens Group staked Sam Walton and financed Tyson Foods. Monsanto bought DP&L. All represented at Rose.

You didn’t just work there, you made friends. That shows in the flow of favors then and since. You were invited onto Walmart’s board, you were helped by a Tyson executive to make commodity trades (3 days before Bill became governor), netting you $100,000, Jackson Stephens strongly backed Bill for Governor, and then for President (donating $100,000).

Food and friends, in Clinton terms: Bill’s appointed friend Mike Espy, Secretary of Agriculture, who immediately significantly weakened federal chicken waste and contamination standards, opening the door to major expansion of Tyson’s chicken factory farms. Espy resigned, indicted for accepting bribes, illegal contributions, money laundering, illegal dispersal of USDA subsidies, …. Tyson Foods was the largest corporate offender.

But what Bill did for Monsanto “genetic engineering” goes beyond inadequate concepts of giving corporate friends influence: He unleashed genetic engineering into the world. And then he helped close off people’s escape from it.

Genetic engineering is many orders of magnitude different from “normal” (even polluting) business in its potential biologic ramifications. The warning myth of Pandora’a Box - letting irretrievable things rush out into nature - has become real. The harrowing change to the world from nuclear fission and fusion is the closest parallel.

What did Bill do?

1. Bill’s put Monsanto people in at the FDA, as US Agricultural Trade Representatives, on International Biotechnology Consultive Forums, and more … (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/072600-03.htm) or http://www.monitor.net/monitor/9904b/monsantofda.html or http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Revolving-Door.htm

2. Bill’s FDA gave Monsanto permission to market rBGH (a GE bovine growth hormone), the first genetically engineered product let loose on us (or did tomatoes with fish DNA get there first?).

3. Despite reports of bovine illness and death, Bill’s FDA did not recall it or put warnings on it. Even “a very angry, very vocal nationwide consumer base” had no impact.

4. Bill’s FDA wouldn’t even label rBGH as “present” in milk.

5. When dairy farmers tried to label their own milk rBGH-free so the public could choose [more on rBGH and labelling here], Bill’s USDA threatened all dairies that their products could be confiscated from stores. Michael Taylor, USFDA Deputy Commissioner, was formerly Monsanto’s counsel.

6. How were consumers to protect their family, given Bill’s FDA enforced public blindness, except to buy only organic? But Bill’s FDA tried to close off that last escape, proposing to include in “organic” standards, “the dirty three” a: genetic engineering of plants and animals, use of irradiation in food processing and use of municipal sewage sludge as a fertilizer. The FDA backed down.

Had this gone through, Monsanto could have finally labeled rBGH milk … as “organic.” And animal waste from factory farms, a pollution nightmare for Tyson and others, could have been sold as fertilizer.

USDA head Dan Glickman: “This is probably the largest public response to an [Agriculture Department] rule in modern history.” In fact the response was 20 times greater than anything ever before proposed by the USDA.

Personally, I resent years of effort to protect my children and now grandchildren, from that crap.

Politically, Bill sided against small farmers and against the public’s right to know, and with Monsanto.

Rest here:How Bill Clinton fucked up the food supply

This well-worded rant by

hematopoetic was the impetus for the posting of the Growing Power article, found here for refresher purposes (if needed) http://unusualmusic.livejournal.com/49241.html

Ranting in defense of our inalienable right to eat and live

I've been having a lot of discussions about food lately & there's an element (or several) that irritates me. Raw foodies, food combiners, gluten-free goddesses, fruitarians-- "health" for some is simply a one-size-fits-all replacement for "religion" with all the accompanying zealotry and judgments.

I do believe that health is important. I mean, I am dedicating my life to public health and social justice & I see health as a powerful platform from and around which to promote human rights. But health looks different to different people. I can't abide when self-righteous food nuts treat food as a boot-strap path to health aka their version of holiness: "if you just tried harder or devoted ten more hours per week to acquiring and preparing the right food, you could be healthy like me and would never get heart disease, cancer, or broken bones! If you are unhealthy, it's your own damn fault, and if you don't eat like me, there's no way you could be healthy!" These attitudes ignore the many factors that cause food insecurity and poor health, as well as the many aspects of food that feed people beyond simple nutrition.

( Read more... )

From Colorlines Magazine, the print edition Jan/Feb 2008

Article by Tram Nguyen

Expanding food justice:

Will Allen, a former professional basketball player turned farmer, educator and activist, means it when he says that his goal is to make sure "everybody in the world has access to the same healthy, safe and affordable food."

Does he really mean everybody in the world, and is such a thing even possible?

"Everybody," Allen says firmly. "of course it's possible, but people have to take responsibility to make sure that happens. It's going to take a huge grassroots revolution to make that happen. It's starting to happen, but it's gonna take a long time. We gotta be patient, but we gotta keep moving forward."

From their base in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Allen and his daughter Erika have been pioneering this work toward food justice through Growing Power, a unique organization that models how to grow and distribute ecologically and culturally appropriate food, as well as training communities locally and worldwide in sustainable food production.

Growing Power consists of an urban farm, along with a store that sells organic and affordable Black southern foodstuff, food from the local Hmong and Oneida Indian communities, a "Market Basket" programme that delivers $12 bags of organic produce and has become a national model for linking inner-city consumers with organic farmers, youth training programmes, and ongoing innovations for urban agriculture.

For instance, they developed an "aquaponics" system to raise tilapia fish in simply constructed tanks where vegetable both filter the water and get fertilized by fish waste. One low-tech, cheaply produced system yields a complete source of protein and fresh produce.

"It's about reinventing the way food is grown, showing people that we can do it in urban areas too." Erika Allen says. "We're working to provide the fertility and systems so that you can grow anywhere from rooftops to parking lots and containers, so that people can be self-sufficient in their food needs."

In a world where millions are being displaced and living in overcrowded, expanding cities, the need for year round, sustainable urban food production goes beyond America's inner cities. At the time of this interview, the Allens were giving a tour to a group of farmers from Macedonia and were getting ready to travel to Kenya and Ghana to help establish aquaponic projects.

Next for Growing Power is to launch a "Growing Food and Justice Initiative" that will bring together a network of social justice groups to explicitly address a "food system that is very unjust and very racist," explains Erika. "We just see food as a really powerful organizing tool. It deals with land, housing transportation, economics, everything. for us, it's really a tool of transformation."