Agribusiness, Small Family Farms, or Both?According to many critics, Western billionaires do not make the best farmers. Perhaps it is their inability (or unwillingness) to downsize grandiose plans from a Western-style agribusiness model to merely helping millions of subsistence farmers that dot the African landscape succeed in providing nutritious diets for their families and communities.That’s the conclusion of a major report from Germany entitled False Promises: The Alliance for a Green … [Read more...]
Food Security in a Post-Covid World
European Conservatives and Reformists Party hosts another ‘Europe Debates’ webinarUS-EU trade talks are already stalled over agriculture issues. And yet the European Union’s new “Farm to Fork” strategy doesn’t just double down on the EU’s contentious agricultural regulations. It promises to use access to European markets to compel the United States and other countries to adopt EU-style organic farming, precautionary and other regulations if they want to remain trading partners with Europe. … [Read more...]
11 Months and Counting—Wrapping our Heads around Florida’s Raging Red Tide
The latest red tide outbreak on Florida’s Gulf Coast, with its awful stench, is in its 11th straight month. The noxious bloom started in November 2017, and the latest reports from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission before Hurricane Michael, whose effects we won’t know for some time, showed that the end was not near. Conditions change daily, even hourly. For example, the map below shows decreased red tide levels for Septemper 21–28 in Collier County. However, the morning of … [Read more...]
Does the San Francisco Jury Verdict against Monsanto Spell Doom for Roundup?
Now that jurors in a San Francisco court have awarded a man $289 million in damages in his lawsuit against Monsanto (and its parent company Bayer) claiming that his exposure to Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller gave him cancer, some people wonder whether the Cornwall Alliance will reverse its view that Roundup (the brand name for the active ingredient glyphosate) is not a carcinogen. The answer: No. The reason: Because the case provides no convincing evidence that glyphosate causes … [Read more...]
Time to End Ethanol Mandate and Subsidies
Seven years ago Indur Goklany, an economist formerly with the U.S. Department of the Interior and associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since its inception in 1988 as an author, expert reviewer, and U.S. delegate to the organization, concluded a thorough analysis of the effect of American biofuels policy on the world's poor with these words: ... the production of biofuels [in the U.S.] may have led to at least 192,000 additional deaths and 6.7 million additional lost … [Read more...]
Does Monsanto’s Roundup (Glyphosate) Cause Disease?
Recently a friend asked me to evaluate an apparently scientifically substantial article that concluded that glyphosate—the active ingredient in Roundup, one of the world’s most widely used artificial pesticides—has caused a dramatic increase in a variety of diseases such as autism, inflammation, immune disorders, gluten intolerance, celiac disease, and cancer. I’ve been shown various “studies” in the past making similar claims but have always seen quickly that they weren’t based on sound … [Read more...]
Whither Global Food Shortage Predictions?
Less than two years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which wants us to trust its prognostications about conditions a century from now enough to bet trillions on them, warned that global warming threatened global food supplies. But last week The New Indian Express reported, “International food prices dipped by 19 percent in the last year, the fourth consecutive annual fall .” Stop and think about that for a moment. In 2014 the IPCC’s Working Group II warned that … [Read more...]
Think Carefully Before Welcoming Humane Society Policies
Humans should only be eating animals raised under humane conditions. Sounds perfectly innocent doesn’t it? After all who wants to think of animals suffering just so that he/she can have a cheap burger or chicken patty? This is essentially the argument cleverly proffered by Pete Letheby in the article “Farmers team up with the Humane Society on behalf of animals” published in the Fall 2015 edition (p. 24) of Ag in Action by the Lewistown News-Argus (Lewistown, MT). The problem with this article … [Read more...]
Sixpence None the Richer
Ever dreamed of living like royalty? Count your blessings: If you can afford this magazine (WORLD, where this article was originally published), you're already much better off economically than most kings ever were. Reginald Labbe, an English farmer better off than most in his time, died in the year 1293. His will listed the following possessions: one cow and one calf two sheep and three lambs three hens a bushel and a half (about 90 pounds) of wheat a seam (about 400 pounds) of barley a … [Read more...]
Remembering an Agricultural Hero Amid Local Food Shortages
This article was originally published on Townhall.com. World Grain just reported that the east African countries of Kenya and Uganda are currently facing severe localized food insecurity. Food “is restricted to specific areas due to various factors including an influx of refugees, a concentration of internally displaced persons, or a combination of crop failure and acute poverty. The situation in Kenya, which has about 1.5 million people mainly in north-eastern pastoral areas staring at severe … [Read more...]
