Issue 280: Food Sovereignty and Autonomy

Food Sovereignty and Autonomy

#280, April 2011

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  Table of Contents

Food Sovereignty and Autonomy: 

Contrast between the call for agro-ecology as the key to realization of the right to food from Olivier de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and the agenda unveiled in the Davos New Vision for Agriculture, with special focus on the plans for Tanzania
Market and Subsistence: Actually, the price of rice is relatively stable -- because most rice is eaten where it is grown
Autonomy in Practice: Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture is building soil health and feeding the people in Andhra Pradesh state, India
And now, the bad news: TechnoServe is partnering with an impressive list of transnational food corporations to 'help' Haiti by developing a 'sustainable' mango export industry
Leaves a bad taste: A NAFTA ruling gives Cargill a large chunk of cash ($77 million plus court costs) and permission to continue selling subsidized US-produced HFCS tax-free in Mexico 
An Energy Drink: Coke introduces a 'green' plastic bottle in Canada
More Sweetness: Toronto (and Paris France) are better places to keep bees than Guelph, possibly because of their pesticide bans
Naked Oats: Campbell's develops a super-nutritional product (designed for food banks) with a new version of oats developed in Canada's public labs 
Biotech Puffery and Propaganda: The Internaional Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotech Applications, usually referred to as ISAAA, and its writer Clive James, once more prove that their propaganda has no factual foundation
More Reliable Data on Biotech Crops: Actual facts (with references) are available from Friends of the Earth International
Editors' Note: We resent being forced to vote for a party we do not support in order to try to unseat a vicious right-wing MP.