Agriculture/Food

Sushi, Moonies, Whales and $Commerce

Stephen Agriculture/Food, ECOLOGY, Whales

Top U.S. Sushi Company Linked to Whaling
By Stephen Leahy

Blue whale, courtesy IFAW

Apr 11 (IPS) – An investigation has revealed that the U.S. supplier of sushi to more than 6,000 restaurants is associated with a Japanese company that sells millions of tins of whale meat.

Despite a global ban on killing whales, Japan’s Kyokuyo, a multinational seafood conglomerate, sells between 10 and 20 million cans of whale meat a year, according to an Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) report released Tuesday. Continue reading →

Peak Fish: The Beginning of the End of Ocean Seafood

Stephen Agriculture/Food, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, Global Issues and Perspectives, News, OCEAN, WILDLIFE

Ocean Fisheries Maxed OutCopyright 2004 Renate Leahy

By Stephen Leahy

Mar 5 (IPS) – Two-thirds of fish stocks in the world’s high seas are overfished, while most of those closer to shore are failing or fished to the maximum, a new U.N. report said Monday.

More and stronger regional fisheries management organisations are needed to rebuild depleted stocks and prevent the collapse of other stocks, warned the FAO’s latest “State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture” (SOFIA) report.
Continue reading →

Global Food Supply Near the Breaking Point

Stephen Agriculture/Food, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, Global Issues and Perspectives, News

Global Food Supply Near the Breaking Point

By Stephen Leahy

[Written last year, this article continues to be re-published frequently and often illegally (sigh) – remember short quote and link is ok but reposting entire articles violates copyright]

May 17 (IPS) The world is now eating more food than farmers grow, pushing global grain stocks to their lowest level in 30 years.

Rising population, water shortages, climate change, and the growing costs of fossil fuel-based fertilisers point to a calamitous shortfall in the world’s grain supplies in the near future, according to Canada’s National Farmers Union (NFU).

Continue reading →

World’s Poor Depend on Livestock But Little Aid for Vet Services

Stephen Africa, Agriculture/Food, developing world, Global Issues and Perspectives

Saving Farmers’ Four-Legged Bank Accounts Fish and Meat for sale
Stephen Leahy

Jan 19 (IPS) – Most of the world’s poor depend on livestock to survive, but international poverty reduction efforts devote little attention to the health of these animals, experts say.

Animal diseases not only decimate herds and flocks in Africa and Asia, they prevent the sale of animals into the growing markets for meat, milk, eggs and other animal products at home and abroad, according to a policy paper published Friday in the journal Science.
Continue reading →

GM Crops Creating Pest Problems Around World

Stephen Agriculture/Food, ENVIRONMENT, Global Issues and Perspectives, News, Pollution and Toxics

GE Crops Slow to Gain Global Acceptance


 By Stephen Leahy


BROOKLIN, Canada, Jan 9 (IPS) – Widespread use of genetically engineered (GE) crops remains limited worldwide, even as growing weed and pest issues are forcing farmers to use ever greater amounts of pesticides.

More than 70 percent of large-scale GE planting is still limited to the U.S. and Argentina, according to a new report released Tuesday by Friends of the Earth International (FOEI).

“No GM (GE) crop on the market today offers benefits to the consumer in terms of quality or price, and to date these crops have done nothing to alleviate hunger or poverty in Africa or elsewhere,” said Nnimmo Bassey of Friends of the Earth Africa in Nigeria.

“The great majority of GM (GE) crops cultivated today are used as high-priced animal feed to supply rich nations with meat,” Bassey said in a statement.

— See full story on how GM/GMO Crops are causing weed and insect problems.

Questions, story ideas, potential assignments, speaking engagements contact: writersteve AT gmail . com (no spaces)

 

Free Markets Cause Chronic Hunger in Africa — There’s Plenty of Food but No Money

Stephen 1 Must Read, Africa, Agriculture/Food, developing world, Food, Global Issues and Perspectives, News , , , , , , ,

By Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Oct 20, 2006 (IPS)

[World Bank and International Monetary Fund free-market doctrines responsible for much of Africa’s hunger experts say]


It is a world of paradox and plenty:

852 million people are starving while one billion people are overweight, with 300 million of them considered medically obese.

And the numbers of people whose health are at serious risk due to starvation or from obesity is rising rapidly.

While what the World Health Organisation calls a global epidemic of obesity is a health issue of the modern world, hunger and malnutrition are old and bitterly intractable problems.

More than 50 million Africans currently need food assistance, according to the U.N. World Food Programme. More than 120 million Africans are living permanently on the edge of emergency food aid, says the British charity CARE International.

Why is hunger chronic in Africa?

“There is enough food, but people don’t have enough money to buy it,” says Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland Institute, a U.S.-based policy think tank on social, economic and environmental issues.

“Sixty-three percent of people in Niger live on less than a dollar a day,” Mittal told IPS.

Hunger is mainly the result of poverty.

Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reports that th

ere is enough food to give everyone in the world more than 2,700 calories a day, she says. Continue reading →