Prepared for the meeting of the Global Environment & Trade Study (GETS) at Yale University and the Tokyo-based Global Industrial and Social Progress Research Institute (GISPRI), June 26-27, 1997 in New York City.
In preparation for the 1996 FAO Food Summit, Karen Lehman detailed how food crisis of the mid-90s had come about, identifying the changes in policy that led to the end of food reserves and supply management programs world-wide.
Traces the step by step history from 1991 to 1996 of the impacts on agriculture through policy changes implemented through global agencies and institutions and trade agreements such as the WTO, World Bank and IMF, NAFTA and the FTAA.
A memo from Mark Ritchie summarizing the need for a global campaign for supplay managment and grain reserves. This memo led to the drafting of an Action Plan submitted to the FAO in Rome, November 1996.
The cultivation of diversity has been incorporated as a high art by human cultures through millenia. With the know-how of generations of experience, farmers have learned to provide food crops well-adapted to local soils and water cycles.