Food & Water Watch — TPP Text Reveals Broad New Powers to Attack Food Safety, Food Labeling Laws

Today, the Obama administration released the long-secret text of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal that would weaken consumer protections, undermine U.S. food safety standards and prevent commonsense food labeling. The language included in the TPP is more aggressive than previous trade deals and provides broad new powers for other countries and foreign corporations to challenge U.S. food safety and food labeling measures.

“The TPP is a giveaway to big agribusiness and food companies that want to use trade deals to attack sensible food safety rules, weaken the inspection of imported food and block efforts to strengthen U.S. food safety standards,” said Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch executive director. “The food and agribusiness industries inserted language into the text of the TPP that will undermine U.S. food safety oversight and expose consumers to risky imported foods.”…

Common Dreams
TPP Text Reveals Broad New Powers to Attack Food Safety, Food Labeling Laws

Food & Water Watch

John Vidal — Corporations and wealthy elites now control more than 75 percent of the world’s farmland

The world’s food supplies are at risk because farmland is becoming rapidly concentrated in the hands of wealthy elites and corporations, a study has found. 

Small farmers, the UN says, grow 70% of the world’s food but a new analysis of government data suggests the land which they control is shrinking every year as mega-farms and plantations squeeze them onto less than 25% of the world’s available farmland, says international land-use group Grain. These mega-farms are less productive in terms of amount of food they produce per area of land, the report argues.

“Small farms have less than a quarter of the world’s agricultural land – or less than 20% excluding China and India. Such farms are getting smaller all the time, and if this trend persists they might not be able to continue to feed the world,” says the report which draws on government statistics and calls for a stop on land grabbing by corporations.

The Raw Story
Corporations and wealthy elites now control more than 75 percent of the world’s farmland
John Vidal, The Guardian

Capitalism leads to consolidation, and consolidation to monopoly capital.

Reuters — New cookbook seeks to turn tide on insect cuisine (via Reuters TV)

New cookbook seeks to turn tide on insect cuisine (via Reuters TV)

A new Dutch cookbook aims to get foodies thinking about insects as a valuable source of nutrition. Filled with dozens of recipes like grasshopper chap tjoy and cupcakes filled with mealworms, the book contains everything you need to know about cooking…

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Chris Martenson — Rising Resource Costs Escalate Odds of Global Unrest

Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.
- Henry Kissinger [unsourced]

Peak Prosperity
Rising Resource Costs Escalate Odds of Global Unrest
Chris Martenson

Militaries are already warning that as the climate vice tightens, social unrest will grow with food and water shortages becoming rampant.

Expect a push to control supply and supply lines.

Roberto A. Ferdman — The crisis in Ukraine could hit you right in the cereal box

Ukraine is the world’s third largest exporter of corn and fifth largest exporter of wheat, which has caused some havoc in those markets lately.

Quartz
The crisis in Ukraine could hit you right in the cereal box
Roberto A. Ferdman

Lindsay Abrams — The creepy crawly solution to the world’s growing hunger problem: Eat more bugs!

No brainer.

Salon
The creepy crawly solution to the world’s growing hunger problem: Eat more bugs!
Lindsay Abrams

AFP — Germans want UNESCO listing for beer ‘purity’

German brewers say a five-century-old beer purity law deserves a spot on the UNESCO list for “intangible cultural heritage”. 

The law, called the ‘Reinheitsgebot’ in German, was introduced in Bavaria in 1516 and adopted nation-wide in 1906. It dictates that only water, malt, hops and yeast, and no flavourings or preservatives, may be used to make beer.

“If Germany is still regarded as the undisputed beer nation, that is due to the Reinheitsgebot,” said Hans-Georg Eils, president of the German Brewers Federation.

Its acceptance to the world heritage list “would be for German brewers and maltsters a sign of appreciation and an incentive at the same time,” Eils added.

The Federation calls the Reinheitsgebot the oldest still-valid food regulation in the world....

The Raw Story
Germans want UNESCO listing for beer ‘purity’
Agence France-Presse

Ellen Brown — Monsanto, the TPP, and Global Food Dominance

Global food control has nearly been achieved, by reducing seed diversity with GMO (genetically modified) seeds that are distributed by only a few transnational corporations. But this agenda has been implemented at grave cost to our health; and if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) passes, control over not just our food but our health, our environment and our financial system will be in the hands of transnational corporations.

Web of Debt
Monsanto, the TPP, and Global Food Dominance
Ellen Brown

AFP — Chef at ‘The Naked Lunch’ offers ‘insect tapas’ to Paris bar-hoppers

I have been saying for years that insects are the new protein and are going to be really big when the public gets over its squeamishness. Interestingly, among those who have gotten lost in the boonies for a significant time, the difference is survival is determined based on whether one can eat insects and worms. It's all psychological. Insects are considered a delicacy in some parts of the world. Glad to see this chef helping the cause. Meat-eating is not compatible with controlling climate change, but the world's appetite for protein is increasing. Insects to the rescue.

At a tiny bar in Paris’s Montmartre district, chef Elie Daviron is happy to admit his new menu has disgusted some clients while others need two or three drinks before they can face it.

In my days as a world-traveler I ate just about anything — after a few beers. I was never disappointed either.

The Raw Story
Chef at ‘The Naked Lunch’ offers ‘insect tapas’ to Paris bar-hoppers
Agence France-Presse

Paromita Pain — India's New Food Security Bill Makes Right to Food a Law

It is for these people that the Indian government recently announced an ambitious $19.5 billion National Food Security Bill. Passed by the legislature in the first week of September, the bill promises heavily subsidized wheat and rice for those who live below the poverty line — about 67 percent of the population.

As reported in the legislation, a total of five kilograms of food grains per month will be provided at a fixed price of Rs 1-3 ($0.02 to $0.05) per kilogram through ration shops across the country. If the food security bill works as planned, it will become one of the world’s largest welfare schemes.

“This bill makes the right to food a law,” says Chintan Kalra, a food security activist from Mumbai. However, Kalra is aware of the many ways the bill can fail, which is why “implementation will play a huge role in what the bill really achieves.”

Truthout | Report
India's New Food Security Bill Makes Right to Food a Law
Paromita Pain, Occupy.com

Fascism Alert — Ranjit Devraj: Delhi bill to criminalize opposition to GM food

India's environmental and food security activists who have so far succeeded in stalling attempts to introduce genetically modified (GM) food crops into this largely farming country now find themselves up against a bill in parliament that could criminalize such opposition. 

The Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) bill, introduced into parliament in April, provides for "single window clearance" for projects by biotechnology and agribusiness companies including those to bring GM food crops into this country, 70% of whose 1.1 billion people are involved in agricultural activities....

"The new bill is not about regulation, but the promotion of the interests of food giants trying to introduce risky technologies into India, ignoring the rights of farmers and consumers," Sahai said. "It is alarming because it gives administrators the power to quell opposition to GM technology and criminalize those who speak up against it." 

Asia Times Online
Delhi bill to criminalize opposition to GM food
Ranjit Devraj

Looks like criminalizing dissent is catching on.

Katherine Paul and Ronnie Cummins — Secret Trade Agreements Threaten to Undo Our Last Shreds of Food Safety

If you think the U.S. government is doing a sub-par job of keeping your food safe, brace yourself. You could soon be eating imported seafood, beef or chicken products that don’t meet even basic U.S. food safety standards. Under two new trade agreements, currently in negotiation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could be powerless to shut down imports of unsafe food or food ingredients. And if it tries, multinational corporations will be able to sue the U.S. government for the loss of anticipated future profits.

More frightening? Negotiations for both agreements are taking place behind closed doors, with input allowed almost exclusively from the corporations and industry trade groups that stand to benefit the most. And the Obama Administration intends to push the agreements through Congress without so much as giving lawmakers access to draft texts, much less the opportunity for debate.

AlterNet
Secret Trade Agreements Threaten to Undo Our Last Shreds of Food Safety
Katherine Paul, Ronnie Cummins

More neoliberalism at work.

The good news is that this is expanding the alternative food supply — the co-op movement and local suppliers. The Iowa City Co-op (founded 1971) is expanding their facilities, already included two stores, and it has over a hundred local suppliers. More people are growing their own produce, too. There is now a strong movement supporting backyard chickens, too, and it looks favorable for it to happen.

Jess Zimmerman — If you don’t feel like cooking your own bugs, opt for an insect energy bar

It's finally here. I've been promoting this for years. It's going to be big.

Grist

If you don’t feel like cooking your own bugs, opt for an insect energy bar
Jess Zimmerman

Michael T. Klare — Entering a Resource-Shock World How Resource Scarcity and Climate Change Could Produce a Global Explosion

Brace yourself. You may not be able to tell yet, but according to global experts and the U.S. intelligence community, the earth is already shifting under you. Whether you know it or not, you’re on a new planet, a resource-shock world of a sort humanity has never before experienced.

Two nightmare scenarios -- a global scarcity of vital resources and the onset of extreme climate change -- are already beginning to converge and in the coming decades are likely to produce a tidal wave of unrest, rebellion, competition, and conflict. Just what this tsunami of disaster will look like may, as yet, be hard to discern, but experts warn of “water wars” over contested river systems, global food riots sparked by soaring prices for life’s basics, mass migrations of climate refugees (with resulting anti-migrant violence), and the breakdown of social order or the collapse of states. At first, such mayhem is likely to arise largely in Africa, Central Asia, and other areas of the underdeveloped South, but in timeall regions of the planet will be affected.
To appreciate the power of this encroaching catastrophe, it’s necessary to examine each of the forces that are combining to produce this future cataclysm.

Tom Dispatch
Entering a Resource-Shock World 
How Resource Scarcity and Climate Change Could Produce a Global Explosion
Michael T. Klare | Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College and author of Resource Wars and The Race For What's Left.

The vise is tightening. When Klare says, "We aren't there yet," the reality of the magnitude of the situation has been largely concealed from a public that is in denial of this anyway and willing to be let off the hook as long as possible, even though that will exacerbate the consequences. Several military establishments, including that of the US, have said that this is the greatest threat to peace and security in the coming years.

The preppers may be crazy, but not completely so. Moreover, the "everybody for themselves" approach assures wider disaster than if coordination and cooperation are applied to these emerging challenges.

I wonder about coordination and cooperation though. Today I was driving behind a pickup with a bumper sticker reading, "I'll keep my guns, money and freedom, and you can keep the "change."  A lot of people seem to believe that if they don't change, the world won't either. The sad thing is that there were several young kids in the truck. It's their future that is not being priced in.

John Vidal — Experts: Millions will starve to death as climate change accelerates

Millions of people could become destitute in Africa and Asia as staple foods more than double in price by 2050 as a result of extreme temperatures, floods and droughts that will transform the way the world farms.

As food experts gather at two major conferences to discuss how to feed the nine billion people expected to be alive in 2050, leading scientists have told the Observer that food insecurity risks turning parts of Africa into permanent disaster areas. Rising temperatures will also have a drastic effect on access to basic foodstuffs, with potentially dire consequences for the poor.

Frank Rijsberman, head of the world’s 15 international CGIAR crop research centres, which study food insecurity, said: “Food production will have to rise 60% by 2050 just to keep pace with expected global population increase and changing demand. Climate change comes on top of that. The annual production gains we have come to expect … will be taken away by climate change. We are not so worried about the total amount of food produced so much as the vulnerability of the one billion people who are without food already and who will be hit hardest by climate change. They have no capacity to adapt.”

The Raw Story
Experts: Millions will starve to death as climate change accelerates
John Vidal, The Observer

Humanity may be exhausting its ecological niche, apparently related to fouling the nest, and the result will be a culling. Ironically, many of the culled will not have contributed to the problem.

Is Monsanto a monopolist?

The inside story of how the government let one company squash biotech innovation, and dominate an entire industry.

Alternet
How Monsanto Outfoxed the Obama Administration
Lina Khan | Salon

Food production — Simple is beautiful

Hydroponics at work.

Most of his rooftop is given over to an aquaponic system, which produces food by linking fish tanks of tilapia with gravel-filled planters.

The integrated system feeds the water from the fish tanks into the plant beds, where Abu Ahmed’s crops — lettuce, peppers, broccoli, celery and herbs — are fertilised by waste produced by the tilapia.

As the water trickles through the gravel, the plants absorb nutrients from the fish waste, cleaning the water, which then replenishes the tanks.

“The idea really was to help the poorest people in Gaza be able to grow some of their own food, and healthy food, grown without pesticides,” explains Mohammed El Shatali, the project’s deputy manager.

The Raw Story
Fish and vegetables grow without soil on Gaza rooftops
Agence France-Presse

See also:

Drip Irrigation

The 2012 World Food Prize will be awarded to Dr. Daniel Hillel for his role in conceiving and implementing a radically new mode of bringing water to crops i­­n arid and dry land regions - known as “micro-irrigation.”

Dr. Hillel’s pioneering scientific work in Israel revolutionized food production, first in the Middle East, and then in other regions around the world over the past five decades. His work laid the foundation for maximizing efficient water usage in agriculture, increasing crop yields, and minimizing environmental degradation.

The World Food Prize
2012 Laureate

Frederick Kaufman — How Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis

Don't blame American appetites, rising oil prices, or genetically modified crops for rising food prices. Wall Street's at fault for the spiraling cost of food.

Foreign Policy

How Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis
Frederick Kaufman

(h/t Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism)

Then, in 1999, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission deregulated futures markets. All of a sudden, bankers could take as large a position in grains as they liked, an opportunity that had, since the Great Depression, only been available to those who actually had something to do with the production of our food.

Jeremy Grantham — ‘Welcome to Dystopia’

Summary of the Summary: We are five years into a severe global food crisis that is very unlikely to go away. It will threaten poor countries with increased malnutrition and starvation and even collapse. Resource squabbles and waves of food-induced migration will threaten global stability and global growth. This threat is badly underestimated by almost everybody and all institutions with the possible exception of some military establishments.

Climate Progress
Jeremy Grantham on ‘Welcome to Dystopia’: We Are ‘Entering A Long-Term And Politically Dangerous Food Crisis’
Jeremy Grantham

Michael Klare — The Hunger Wars in Our Future: Heat, Drought, Rising Food Costs and Global Unrest

The Great Drought of 2012 has yet to come to an end, but we already know that its consequences will be severe. With more than one-half of America's countiesdesignated as drought disaster areas, the 2012 harvest of corn, soybeans, and other food staples is guaranteed to fall far short of predictions. This, in turn, will boost food prices domestically and abroad, causing increased misery for farmers and low-income Americans and far greater hardship for poor people in countries that rely on imported U.S. grains.

This, however, is just the beginning of the likely consequences: if history is any guide, rising food prices of this sort will also lead to widespread social unrest and violent conflict.

Food -- affordable food -- is essential to human survival and well-being. Take that away, and people become anxious, desperate, and angry.

Read it at Truthout
The Hunger Wars in Our Future: Heat, Drought, Rising Food Costs and Global Unrest
Michael Klare, TomDispatch | News Analysis
(h/t Kevin Fathi via email)