The Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First shapes how people think by analyzing the root causes of global hunger, poverty, and ecological degradation and developing solutions in partnership with movements working for social change.
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In the spotlight
President-elect Obama presented with urgent “Call to Action” to end food crisis
Experts advise that economic reform must include sound farm and food policy
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 | 12-15-08 Food Crisis Call to Action w sign-ons.pdf | 16.87 KB |
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| Open Letter to President-elect 12-15-08 .pdf | 13.66 KB |
For immediate release
December 15, 2008
Contact: Christina Schiavoni, (212) 629-9788
Christina@whyhunger.org
Kathy Ozer, (202) 543-5675, kozer@nffc.net
As food banks scramble to respond to a dramatic increase in demand this holiday season, while unemployment surges and farmers face plummeting crop prices, a broad sector of groups are calling on the incoming Obama administration to put hunger and the global food crisis front and center on its list of top priorities.
When Fast Food Fights
by Eric Holt-Gimenez, PhD. and Annie Shattuck
Burger King’s newest ad campaign, a pseudo-scientific documentary featuring the world's last “hamburger virgins” as they compare the taste of Big Macs to Whoppers, has drawn media fire—perhaps because the whole idea is so silly, embarrassingly extravagant, and blandly devious. For readers who haven't seen the ad, it features villagers in Northern Thailand, Greenland and Romania graciously receiving their first taste of that icon of American food—the hamburger.
Territorial restructuring and the grounding of agrarian reform: Indigenous communities, gold mining and the World Bank
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| landpolicy2 TNI 11-08.pdf | 328.37 KB |
Eric Holt-Giménez
24 November 2008
While indigenous and agrarian movements do discursive battle with the World Bank’s market-led land reform programmes, Bank- -driven projects favouring foreign mining interests have unleashed a much more thorough destruction of indigenous lands. In this study of the World Bank ́s role in Guatemala, Eric Holt-Giménez shows how its programme for market-led land reform there complements its strategy for opening the Western Highlands to extractive industries.
Food First Fellow Raj Patel's radio interview on the global food industry
The book delves deep into the industrial evolution of food and its consequences, including farmer suicides, the dangers of the bio-fuel industry, and the ubiquitous nature of soy.
Social and Environmental Groups Urge No Further Agrofuel Expansion, as Brazil hosts the International Biofuels Conference, Nov 17-21, 2008
November 24,2008, São Paulo, Brazil
FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf Appeals for a New World Agriculture Order
19 November 2008, Rome--
Addressing a special session of the FAO’s 191-member-nation governing Conference, Diouf declared that a 2009 World Summit was needed because, “After more than 60 years [since FAO’s foundation] it is essential to create a new system of world food security.”
Saving humankind from hunger
There never was a better time to end hunger--equitably, sustainably, and permanently.
On November 4th, a groundswell of enthusiasm and goodwill opened a door toward a brighter future for our nation and the world. President-elect Barack Obama put it succinctly in his acceptance speech when he said, "This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change."
UN Report on organic agriculture in Africa
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| UN_Organic Agriculture_Africa_2008.pdf | 1.91 MB |
Putting Food First in the Constitution of Ecuador
by Karla Pena
Unprecedented!
Ecuador established Food Sovereignty in their Constitution approved by a referendum vote of 64% of the population on September 28, 2008. The people of Ecuador have the right to "Good Living," a healthy environment ecologically harmonized to guarantee the right to food. The State will enforce the established rights to aid in recent food price increase and localize their food systems by supporting their small and medium farmers in sustainable development (Agroecology).
Is this new constitution a prototype that other countries can look to?
Food First News & Views Fall 2008, Vol. 30 #110
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| N+V_102708final.pdf | 582.07 KB |
TWIN TSUNAMIS?
The World Food Program described the global food crisis as a “silent tsunami” surging over an unaware populace, helpless in the face of massive destruction. The financial crisis—rapidly going global—now threatens to increase everyone’s vulnerability to hunger. The compound
effect of the twin crises seems overwhelming.
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- 12/15/08
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Newsletter for the African Agroecological Alternatives to the Green Revolution
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- 12/10/08