African organizations are demanding answers after a recent report found that Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) strategies have failed spectacularly to meet its goals of increasing productivity and incomes for millions of small-scale farming households by 2020 while reducing food insecurity on the continent. The theme for the tenth annual African Green Revolution Forum, a virtual weeklong event hosted by Rwanda that opens September 8, is “Feed the Cities, Grow the Continent.” Based on the findings of a recent report on the host, AGRA, a more appropriate theme would be “Failing Africa’s Farmers, Starving the Continent.”
Read more“Replacing Hunger with Malnutrition:” Former UN official calls out failing African Green Revolution →
It’s been nearly fifty years since Frances Moore Lappé reminded us in her seminal work, Diet for a Small Planet, that hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food, it is caused by a scarcity of power. Economist Amartya Sen won a Nobel Prize more than twenty years ago for showing that famine was rarely caused by a lack of food. Yet here in 2020, with the world well aware of the twin dangers of hunger and malnutrition, there was Agnes Kalibata, the leader of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), telling an online audience that poor, hungry countries can’t think about diet diversity, “it’s a luxury.”
Read moreAfrica's Choice: Africa's Green Revolution has failed, time to change course →
IATP Policy Brief: To the Green Revolution, African farmers say: Time’s up. You’ve had your chance to show what difference you can make. As we face climate change and rising hunger from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is time to take a different path. The future is agroecology. (Also available in French.)
Read moreAfrica’s Farmers: Key to Solving Malnutrition
The U.N.’s focus on nutritious and affordable diets is welcome given the prevalence of diet-related disease and micronutrient deficiencies in the developing world. But the U.N. missed a key opportunity by focusing only on making nutritious food more affordable, ignoring the reality that the biggest segment of the hungry is farmers. What they most need is crop diversity, which improves their diet diversity. A new report from a broad coalition of non-governmental organizations highlights how policymakers are actively undermining that diversity with programs such as the billion-dollar Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).
Read moreFailing Africa’s farmers: New report shows Africa’s Green Revolution is “failing on its own terms”
My blog from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy summarizes the results of the report, “False Promises: The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa,” based on my research paper, “Failing Africa’s Farmers: An Impact Assessment of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.” The results: “We found no evidence that productivity, incomes or food security were increasing significantly for smallholder households.”
Read moreTrue Cost Accounting in Post-Covid Food Policy
I was part of an engaging three-person Zoom panel on all that is undervalued in food and agriculture markets, with Paula Daniels of Good Food Purchasing and Barbara Gemmill-Herren of Prescott College. I cautioned us all to avoid commodifying everything by trying to put prices (costs) on things that are truly priceless, like agricultural biodiversity. You can watch it here, with the panel discussion starting around 16:00 (I come in around 22:00). May 22, 2020
Read moreLearning the Wrong Lessons →
Norman Borlaug, Milk Strikes, and the Green Revolution
Excerpted from Eating Tomorrow, pp. 111–114, New Press, 2019
Read full article.
NAFTA’s Assault on Mexico’s Indigenous Farmers
The Battle for the Future of Food in Africa →
(Originally published by Common Dreams)
Certain policies, strongly promoted by the Gates Foundation, open Africa to the multinational seed companies in the name of modernization, but they undermine climate resilience and food security for Africa’s small-scale farmers.
Read moreRome Summit Takes Bold Step Toward Agroecology →
(Originally published by Common Dreams)
Leaders endorse agroecology as one of the cutting-edge innovations we need to help small-scale farmers adapt to climate change.
Read moreAGRA At 10 Years: Searching For Evidence Of A Green Revolution →
(Originally published by AFSA)
More than a decade after a renewed push for an African Green Revolution began in earnest, and after a decade of program implementation by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), there is an urgent need to examine whether or not there is evidence of a green revolution underway.
Read moreBig Ag Is Sabotaging Progress on Climate Change
(Originally published on Wired)
Climate experts have sounded yet another dire alarm, this time aimed straight at our stomachs. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report, on “Climate Change and Land,” warns that meeting the challenges of our climate crisis requires urgent changes in our food systems.
Read moreDear Democrats: We owe migrants more than “decriminalization”
(Originally published on Medium)
U.S. policies have created the disasters from which they flee…
Read moreThe Gospel According to Agribusiness →
(Originally published by Real Food Media)
From Iowa to the world, Eating Tomorrow author Timothy Wise muses on the genesis of industrial agriculture.
Read moreWorld Hunger Is on the Rise
(Originally published on Heated)
For the third straight year, U.N. agencies have documented rising levels of severe hunger in the world, affecting 820 million people. More than 2 billion suffer “moderate or severe” food insecurity.
Read moreOpinion | Agroecology as Innovation
(Originally published by Food Tank)
On July 3, the High Level Panel of Experts of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released its much-anticipated report on agroecology in Rome. The report signals the continuing shift in emphasis in the UN agency’s approach to agricultural development.
Read moreMonocultures of the Genetically Modified Mind: My surreal encounter with Monsanto in Mexico →
Farming First: A Recipe to Feed a Crowded World →
(Originally published by Heated)
Policymakers from Mexico to Malawi, India to Mozambique, routinely advocated large-scale, capital-intensive agricultural projects as the solution to widespread hunger and low agricultural productivity, oblivious to the reality that such initiatives generally displace more farmers than they employ.
Read moreWill 2020 Democrats address ag-industry concentration? →
(Originally published by Des Moines Register)
From the food on our tables to the medicines in our cabinets, Bayer and Monsanto are behind more products than many people realize.
Read moreGetting Smart About Climate and Agriculture →
(Originally published on Medium)
In southern Africa, there is nothing abstract about climate change.
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