Food prices to rise by up to 40% over next decade, UN report warns
Growing demand from emerging markets and for biofuel production will send prices soaring, according to the OECD and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.
Food prices are set to rise as much as 40% over the coming decade amid growing demand from emerging markets and for biofuel production, according to a United Nations report today which warns of rising hunger and food insecurity.
Farm commodity prices have fallen from their record peaks of two years ago but are set to pick up again and are unlikely to drop back to their average levels of the past decade, according to the annual joint report from Paris-based thinktank the OECD and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
How Making a Difference Can Make You Happy
A series of studies find that activism brings pleasant emotions, greater life satisfaction, and more experiences of freedom, competence, and connection to others.
YES! Magazine
By Tim Kasser
May 7, 2010
Democracy depends on the time, energy, and engagement of ordinary people. But it remains quite difficult to motivate average citizens even to vote, much less to engage in the more intensive forms of political activism needed to counteract powerful forces that work against rule by the people.
That’s why Malte Klar and I set out to determine whether people’s engagement in political activity might be associated with the motivator of personal well-being. In other words, despite the struggles inherent in political activism, does being politically active brings its own rewards in terms of happiness and life satisfaction? Such a relationship seemed plausible to us, given past studies illustrating the well-being benefits of volunteering and of having pro-social attitudes and values.
To test this possibility, Klar and I surveyed one group of 344 college students, and then a larger group of 718 adults (all United States residents, half of whom were recruited from an online activism registry, and the other half of whom were community members recruited to match the activists on several demographic variables). Subjects’ political activism was assessed via measures like their commitment to activism (e.g., “I take the time I need to engage in activism”) and their sense of identity as an activist (e.g., “Being an activist is central to who I am”). Subjects were also asked how often they planned to or had participated in activist behaviors—ranging from sending “a letter or email about a political issue to a public official” to higher-risk activities like engaging “in a political activity in which you knew you will be arrested.”
Child Obesity in America: “Mommy, Mommy! Why Am I Fat?”
by David Kendall
Global Research
March 26, 2010
Malnutrition comes in a delightful assortment of colorful flavors nowadays. But poverty and obesity are a correlation that Americans find hard to swallow.
“Genetics and family history can predict whether you will become obese but then so can your ZIP code,” says Adam Drewnowski, world-renowned leader in innovative research approaches for the prevention and treatment of obesity, and Director of the Nutritional Sciences Program at the University of Washington in Seattle. In December of 2003, Drewnowski said, “If poverty and obesity are truly linked, it will be a major challenge to stay poor and thin.” [1]
In a more recent interview regarding her new “Let’s Move” campaign to combat childhood obesity, First Lady Michelle Obama argues: “A recent study put the health care cost of obesity-related diseases at $147 billion a year. This epidemic also impacts the nation’s security, as obesity is now one of the most common disqualifiers for military service.” [2]
It seems morbid that national security is Michelle Obama’s primary concern regarding obesity in American children. After all, raising healthy American children to become dead American soldiers doesn’t seem like a viable health care objective. But aside from that, poverty is directly correlated with obesity in Americans of all ages. So isn’t American poverty an even worse security threat than American obesity?
FDA Regulation of Local Food Processors Is Unnecessary and Burdensome
by Brandon Friemel
Monday, March 15, 2010
Currently the US Senate is considering a bill, S.510, to reform the food safety system. Although reform of the industrial food supply is clearly needed, this bill threatens to create more problems than it will solve. S.510 would undermine the rapidly growing local foods movement by imposing unnecessary, burdensome regulations on small farms and food processors-everyone from your local CSA to the small bakers, jam makers, and people making fermented vegetables to sell at the local farmer’s market.
This bill is going to the floor for a vote sometime in April or May, so everyone needs to contact their local Senators and let them know that this bill undermines small farms and food processors, another sector of SMALL BUSINESS in this country that doesn’t need any further regulation. SMALL BUSINESS is the backbone of this country, and we must fight to keep SMALL BUSINESS thriving, especially in these economic times.
Call your Senators and tell them to EXEMPT farmers selling directly to consumers and small-scale processors from all of the provisions of the food safety bill, S.510. For contact information, visit www.congress.org or call the switchboard: 202-224-3121.
Below is the information from the flyer we were given. This is a little long, but very good information.
An Open Letter From A Haiti Rescuer
by (Name Withheld)
To All,
I just returned from Haiti with Hebler. We flew in at 3 AM Sunday to the scene of such incredible destruction on one side, and enormous ineptitude and criminal neglect on the other.
Port of Prince is in ruins. The rest of the country is fairly intact. Ours was a rescue team and we carried special equipment that locates people buried under the rubble. There are easily 200,000 dead, the city smells like a charnal house. The bloody UN was there for 5 years doing apparently nothing but wasting US Taxpayers money. The ones I ran into were either incompetent or outright anti-American. Most are French or French speakers, worthless every d*mn one of them. While 18oo rescuers were ready willing and able to leave the airport and go do our jobs, the UN and USAID (another organization full of little Obamites and communists that openly speak against America) These two organizations exemplared their parochialism by:
- USAID, when in control of all inbound flights, had food and water flights stacked up all the way to Miami, yet allowed Geraldo Rivera, Anderson Cooper and a host of other left wing news puppies to land.
- Pulled all the security off the rescue teams so that Bill Clinton and His wife could have the grand tour, whilst we sat unable to get to people trapped in the rubble.
- Stacked enough food and water for the relief over at the side of the airfield then put a guard on it while we dehydrated and wouldn’t release a drop of it to the rescuers.
- No shower facilities to decontaminate after digging or moving corpses all day, except for the FEMA teams who brought their own shower and Decon equipment, as well as air-conditioned tents.
Monsanto – Public Enemy No. 1
By Siv O’Neall
hat tip: dandelionsalad
The War of the Empire has many faces
The ‘war on terror’ has become nameless since our administration changed. But it is the same war, it has the same goals and it is as unwinnable as it always was. But certainly there are other ways of conquering the planet, says Washington. And so they impose the huge industries with their humongous profits on the entire world, corporations like Monsanto, Cargill, Dow, Bunge and others, giants that impose their own laws on world-wide agriculture and their goal is to make us eat only what they profit from.
Through lies and total lack of concern for the final outcome, they insert their hired crooks, their representatives, in top positions everywhere, make deals with corrupt governments all over the world, deals that make farmers the innocent victims of a world-wide scam. The result is disaster for the farmers and the poor people all over the world and enormous power for the Biotech Companies that suck the blood out of the earth and out of the people who used to cultivate it with their own millennia-old and environmentally safe methods.
Monsanto is just about the most callous, the most harmful, the most insidious of the whole gang of predators who are out to get on top of the world – and who are ruining it savagely in the process. They are busy ruining the environment irredeemably and the health of the inhabitants of this threatened world. Global warming doesn’t even have to play out its role, the biotech industry will play the part of the Grim Reaper, mowing down everything that does not add to their profits, ruining people’s health, playing hell with the earth’s ecosystems and biodiversity that has served the planet for millennia in a world that was mostly safe from predators, the kind of sharks that devour their prey without any afterthoughts.
