Diouf appeals for a new world agricultural order

Proposes 2009 Summit to reform present system, find $30 billion

19 November 2008, Rome - FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf today appealed to world leaders to meet together next year to design a new agricultural order and find $30 billion a year to eradicate hunger from the Earth once and for all.

Addressing a special session of the FAO’s 191-member-nation governing Conference, Diouf declared the World Summit was needed because, “After more than 60 years [since FAO’s foundation] it is essential to create a new system of world food security”.

The Director-General continued: “We must correct the present system that generates world food insecurity on account of international market distortions resulting from agricultural subsidies, customs tariffs and technical barriers to trade, but also from skewed distribution of resources of official development assistance and of national budgets of developing countries”.

The Summit, proposed for the first half of 2009, “should lay the ground for a new system of governance of world food security and an agricultural trade that offers farmers, in developed and developing countries alike, the means of earning a decent living,” he said. “We must have the intelligence and imagination to devise agricultural development policies together with rules and mechanisms that will ensure not only free but also fair international trade.”

more thoughts on the future US secretary of agriculture

An interesting blog post on possible, probable, and wish list candidates for the US secretary of agriculture. My favorite from the list -- Mark Ritchie, currently Secretary of State in Minnesota. Mark has a long, amazing history in progressive agriculture politics. That coupled with his current experience in a top government administration position make him a realistic candidate as well. I do greatly admire Michael Pollan but would rather see him continue writing those provocative tomes.

why vilsack is a bad choice for secretary of agriculture

So I knew the Obama honeymoon wouldn't last that long. He's going to appoint centrists like himself. And you don't win the presidency without incurring a few debts. Iowa is a pretty important place for Obama, not least of all because it was where his presidential journey began. But that doesn't mean that the former governor of Iowa is a good choice for the secretary of agriculture. Far from it.

I want an agriculture secretary that's a visionary, or at least capable of some vision -- towards a different agricultural production system for the 21st century. Obama's shown extraordinary vision to reshape presidential politics. Can we have that sort of vision for our agriculture as well? A recognition of how broken agricultural production is: that farmers don't receive cost of production for the crops they produce; that synthetic fertilizers destroy our soil, are creating a massive dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, and are the principal contribution our agriculture makes toward climate change; the list goes on.

Why not Vilsack? In one example: pharmaceutical-producing corn. He's a huge proponent of producing drugs in Iowa cornfields. Never mind the high possibilities of cross-contamination. Never mind that this is a technology that benefits only a handful of farmers and a handful of drug companies. Never mind that the costs of the inevitable contamination will be socialized to all farmers who grown corn in the U.S., when export markets reject our crops.

Maybe he doesn't care, maybe he thinks we can just turn that corn into ethanol and forget the rest of the world. That's not the approach of a 21st century visionary. It's just more of the same American imperialism, shove it down their throats agricultural policy of the last decades. I want change.

Monsanto's missing mice

The Austrian government today released results showing reduced fertility in mice that have been fed a variety of Monsanto's genetically engineered maize: NK603 x MON 810. The variety contains two different genes: one that makes the maize resistant to Monsanto's proprietary weedkilling chemical, Roundup, and the other that makes the maize produce its own pesticide within the plant.

It should come as no surprise that health effects are found long after the variety has been cleared for placing on the market and in the human food supply. Testing of genetically engineered crops is notoriously superficial and long-term studies are done rarely, if ever. A recent review by Jose Domingo presents a strong critique of what passes for safety evaluations.

There is little funding for such studies and little interest on the part of governments to really dig deep into the possible health effects of GMOs. We will see more announcements like these in the future, but unfortunately far fewer than the necessary scientific inquiry to protect public health and the food supply would dictate.

who is profiting from the high price of commodities? Monsanto.

Global commodity prices hit record highs this year. You might think rural America would get some benefit from higher prices for their crops, a respite from years of commodity prices far below a farmer's cost of production, but think again. Agribusiness companies know how to grab their share and more of that extra revenue -- raise prices. Monsanto is bragging to its shareholders that it's going to raise prices of its corn seed 35%. As they control a huge amount of the corn seed market, here and around the world, they can do what they want with corn seed prices.

Read this story from the Organization for Competitive Markets to see how the 35% price increase -- or about $100 a bag -- will fatten Monsanto's bottom line. Clearly genetic engineering isn't about feeding people, it's about feeding your stock price.

why are dead zones so popular these days?

It seems every summer there is more and more media coverage of ocean dead zones, those regions of our seas that become so polluted with algae that grow on fertilizer run-off that there's no oxygen left for other species. This summer the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico was predicted to be the largest one yet, although it didn't quite break the record.

This blog post from the Huffington Post gives a little deeper analysis of why dead zones and why the story won't go away, at least until we put serious effort into changing agricultural production practices.

A new era for agriculture?

The latest backgrounder of Food First! has some excellent analysis of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge for Science, Technology and Development (UN IAASTD). Read it here.