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Obama’s ‘Secretary of Food’?
Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times

As Barack Obama ponders whom to pick as agriculture secretary, he should reframe the question. What he needs is actually a bold reformer in a position renamed “secretary of food.”

A Department of Agriculture made sense 100 years ago when 35 percent of Americans engaged in farming. But today, fewer than 2 percent are farmers. In contrast, 100 percent of Americans eat.

Renaming the department would signal that Mr. Obama seeks to move away from a bankrupt structure of factory farming that squanders energy, exacerbates climate change and makes Americans unhealthy — all while costing taxpayers billions of dollars.
(10 December 2008)

World Bank’s ‘Wrong Advice’ Left Silos Empty in Poor Countries
Alison Fitzgerald and Helen Murphy, Bloomberg
Inside and out, the rusted towers of El Salvador’s biggest grain silo show how the World Bank helped push developing countries into the global food crisis.

Inside, the silo, which once held thousands of tons of beans and cereals, is now empty. It was abandoned in 1991, after the bank told Salvadoran leaders to privatize grain storage, import staples such as corn and rice, and export crops including cocoa, coffee and palm oil.

Outside, where Rosa Maria Chavez’s food stand is propped against a tower wall, price increases for basic grains this year whittled business down to 16 customers a day from 80.

“It’s a monument to the mess we are in now,” says Chavez, 63.

About 40 million people joined the ranks of the undernourished this year, bringing the estimate of the world’s hungry to 963 million of its 6.8 billion people, the Rome-based United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said yesterday. The growth didn’t come just from natural causes. A manmade recipe for famine included corrupt governments and companies that profited on misery. Another ingredient: The World Bank’s free- market policies, which over almost three decades brought poor nations like El Salvador into global grain markets, where prices surged.
(10 December 2008)

Environment minister calls for a 'food Kyoto' as a billion people face starvation
Juliette Jowett, The Guardian
Britain and the world face a "perfect storm" of threats to food security unless world leaders agree a global deal to tackle rising prices and environmental damage, the environment secretary Hilary Benn will warn tonight.

Benn will say there are a range of threats to producing enough food to feed an expected global population of 9 billion people by the middle of this century and will call for an international agreement to tackle global warming.
(11 December 2008)