Farmer Suicides

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) there were at least 16,196 farmers' suicides in India in 2008, bringing the total since 1997 to 199,132.

[Connections to food crisis, corporate farming, GMO seeds, etc.]

US $50 million farm programme launched

A major new partnership has been launched to provide smallholder farmers and small agricultural enterprises with the financing they need to break out of poverty and build viable businesses. The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), in partnership with Equity Bank Limited, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Kenya Ministry of Agriculture signed an agreement for a loan facility of US$50 million (3 billion Kenyan shillings) to accelerate access to affordable financing for 2.5 million farmers and 15,000 agricultural value chain members such as rural input shops, fertilizers and seed wholesalers and importers, grain traders and food processors.

2008-05-12
http://www.agra-alliance.org/news/pr050608.html

How to Manufacture a Global Food Crisis: Lessons from the World Bank, IMF, and WTO

When tens of thousands of people staged demonstrations in Mexico last year to protest a 60 percent increase in the price of tortillas, many analysts pointed to biofuel as the culprit. Because of US government subsidies, American farmers were devoting more and more acreage to corn for ethanol than for food, which sparked a steep rise in corn prices, says Walden Bello.

Bush food aid package promotes genetically-modified crops

The Bush administration has slipped a controversial ingredient into the $770 million aid package it recently proposed to ease the world food crisis, adding language that would promote the use of genetically modified crops in food-deprived countries. The value or detriment of genetically modified, or bio-engineered, food is an intensely disputed issue in the U.S. and in Europe, where many countries have banned foods made from genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.

2008-05-14

http://tinyurl.com/4dja7j

Call for FAO to be scrapped

An African leader has dismissed the UN's food agency as a "waste of money" and called for it to be scrapped. President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal spoke out days after the UN announced an emergency plan to bring soaring world food prices under control.

2008-05-12

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7383628.stm

SOMALIA: MORE THAN 2.6 MILLION PEOPLE ARE IN CRISIS

2008-05-01

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/MUMA-7E84HT?OpenDocument

The Food Security Analysis Unit for Somalia deteriorating at an accelerated pace due to sky rocketing food prices, a deepening drought due to an abnormally harsh dry season and a delayed and poor start to the seasonal rains (mid-April to June).
As result the number of people in need of assistance has increased to 2.6 millionpeople in Somalia (35% of the total population), which is an increase of more than 40% since January '08.

THE ROLE OF THE USA IN HAITI HUNGER RIOTS

In the same way that US cotton farm subsidies hurt African cotton farmers by depressing the world market, Bill Quigley argues that by subsidizing its rice farmers, the US has gravely hurt Haitian rice farmers. Riots in Haiti over explosive rises in food costs have claimed the lives of six people. There have also been food riots world-wide in Burkina Faso, Cameroon,Cote d'Ivoire, Egypt, Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

The Economist, which calls the current crisis the silent tsunami, reports that last year wheat prices rose 77% and rice 16%, but since January rice prices have risen 141%. The reasons include rising fuel costs, weather problems, increased demand in China and India, as well as the push to create biofuels from cereal crops.

EGYPT: NEW STRIKE TO GREET MUBARAK

2008-05-02

Hundreds remain in detention following a nationwide protest Apr. 6 against rising food prices and political stagnation. But this has not deterred activists from calling for a second general strike on May 4, timed to coincide with President Hosni Mubarak's birthday.

April 10th edition of the New York Times: editorial entitled The World Food Crisis

Critical look at world bank’s genetically-engineered Green Revolution as “a political strategy designed to gain and keep control over the Global South’s food systems firmly in the hands of northern corporations and institutions.”

*Raj Patel is the author of "Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World
Food System" and Eric Holt-Gimenez is the Executive Director of Food First (www.foodfirst.org).

*Henry Saragih is the International Coordinator for La Via Campesina.

Food security

The Global Food Crisis

Riots in Haiti , Burkina Faso, Cameroon,Cote d'Ivorie, Egypt, Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Yemen and more. Massive crisis in Somalia

Sky rocketing prices due to rising fuel costs, weather problems as well as the push to create biofuels from cereal crops.

World bank’s genetically-engineered Green Revolution

US farm subsidies

Robert Berold > an alternative take on farming (see Drive Out Hunger: The story of J.J.Machobane of Lesotho by Robert Berold & J.J. Machobane and People's Workbook a manual of rural practical skills by Robert Berold et. al.)

Comparison to Cuba’s response to the food crisis created by the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in 1989?

“Nongqawuse pattern” - Achille Mbembe