Food security

Industrial Agriculture and the Raising Sea: Do We Have to Choose Between the Devil and the Deep Sea?

Earlier this week, The Guardian reported on a study that looked at rising sea levels from a new angle.

G-8 punts on food security-to the private sector

The G-8 met this past the weekend in the United States. Three years earlier the group of the most powerful industrialized nations met in L’Aquila, Italy, just as food-price spikes were sending millions into poverty.

Is your retirement fund a land-grabber?

The global scramble for land and resources has a big new player, and if you’re a teacher or work for a nonprofit, it might be you.

Draft report on food security and climate change falls short

Climate change will have significant impacts on world food security in our lifetimes. Indeed, we have already begun to feel the impacts from extreme events—droughts, heat waves, torrential rains leading to floods, with consequent impacts on crop production in Russia, Texas and the U.S. Midwest, Pakistan, Thailand, to name a few recent high-profile locations.

Defending UNCTAD’s role in agriculture and food security

Letter to the High-level Panel of Experts (HLPE) on Food Security and Nutrition regarding the HLPE draft report on climate change

Dear Members of the HLPE,

Local Foods, Global: Food Aid and the Farm Bill

The U.S. food aid program is hugely important at the global level. At $2.3 billion in 2010, the U.S. provides just over half of emergency food aid deliveries to millions of beneficiaries around the world suffering from famine, natural disaster and conflict.1 There is little doubt that food aid has saved countless lives, but with significant improvements, it could save countless more.

Farmers markets and food support: An idea whose time has come

Some ideas just make sense. One such idea is enabling low-income members of our community to purchase fresh, locally grown foods at the farmers market.

Governments agree on voluntary rules to control land grabs

Three years of negotiations on guidelines to govern the tenure of land, fisheries and forests (commonly referred to as the Voluntary Guidelines, or VG) came to a successful close on Friday, March 9 in Rome.

Learning from the Indirect Land Use Change Debate

For the last few years, environmental advocates and ethanol producers have been mired in a debate over something known as indirect land use change (ILUC), a measure of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by, but not directly associated with, biofuel production. The controversy centers on these questions: Does ethanol demand in the U.S.