New research: Each one degree rise in global temperature will increase insect-driven losses to rice, corn and wheat crops by 10 to 25 percent
Climate and hunger
Archive | Food and Farming
Book Review
Degrowth considered
The ecological insights of degrowth theory are undermined by blindspots about renewability, agriculture, unalienated labor, and the power of our enemies
Dry Deniers
Australia: Worst drought ever, but don’t mention climate change!
“At the federal level there is a climate information vacuum of truth and at the state level there is no action.”
Pseudo-Solutions
An engineer, an economist, and an ecomodernist walk into a bar and order a free lunch . . .
Stan Cox says ecomodernists are far better at inventing technological fantasies than at finding ways to solve environmental crises
Book Review
‘Kill All the Gentlemen’ — seven centuries of class struggle in rural England
In his insightful history of rural rebellion, Martin Empson shows how farmers and farm-workers across England have repeatedly risen against the rich and powerful
Ending hunger
To feed the world, support small farms and restore healthy soil
Exposing three myths that hinder the agricultural revolution that can restore degraded soils and feed the world using fewer agrochemicals.
Book Excerpt
Why the food movement needs to understand capitalism
To fully appreciate the challenges we face in transforming our food system we need to explore the economic and political context in which food is grown, sold and consumed in the world today
Not beach books, but ...
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, July 2018
Essential summer reading for green-lefts and left-greens. Ecosocialist essays on metabolic rifts. James Connolly Reader. A Nation Unmade by War. Formerly Known as Food. Nourished Planet.
Book Review
Beginning to end hunger: Belo Horizonte shows the way
A Brazilian city’s food program feeds the hungry and supports local farmers. It succeeds by empowering communities and challenging inequality.
Sustainable farming needs livestock
Why avoiding meat and dairy won’t save the planet
Anti-meat campaigns ignore the essential role that grazing animals play in genuinely sustainable agriculture. Livestock production must be reformed, but eliminating it would do more harm than good.
Agroecology and the fight against deadly capitalist agriculture
Agroecology can free farmers from dependency, manipulated commodity markets, unfair subsidies and inherent food insecurity. It is resisted by giant corporations that profit from the status quo.
Capitalism fouls things up
What the Monsanto Papers tell us about corporate science
Internal documents released in a lawsuit by cancer victims show how the chemical giant actively subverts science to promote its products and profits.
Book Review
Hugo Blanco on the indigenous struggle for land in Peru
“I have taken the term ‘Indian’ as the title of the book. It is the pejorative term used against us. The whip they use to hit our faces. I have picked up the whip. I find it more appropriate than using terms that soften or diminish the oppression.”—Hugo Blanco
Resilience
Project Life: Cuba’s action plan prepares for climate change
As an island nation, Cuba is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Project Life (Tarea Vida), now being implemented across the country, aims to increase the country’s resilience and minimize future damage
Author Focus
Sustainable Food Systems: An interview with Robert Biel
Conventional farming destroys the complex soil ecosystem and ultimately the soil itself, so the risk of not changing it is too great. (Free book available for download)
Reading matters
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, April 2018
Six new books for reds and greens … climate change and disease … capitalist power and the planet’s future … brain, body, and environment … oceanic art and science … essential fungi and life … the political economy of water.
Low-impact fishers demand
Electrical pulse fishing: Switch it off now!
Will the EU ban technology that electro-shocks fish into nets before bottom-dwelling fish in the North Sea are driven to extinction?
Reading, red and green
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, February 2018
Five important books on famines and world hunger, on Ebola and other deadly epidemics that spread from animals to people, and on the pesticide poisons in our food.
Agadir Declaration
ATTAC: For food sovereignty, against ‘free trade’ agreements
“The so called free trade agreements are new colonial agreements that serve the interests of multinationals, favouring the pillage of lands, indigenous peoples’ communal areas, their water resources, their fish and their food”
Food sovereignty
Who will feed a changing world — industrial agriculture or peasant food webs?
Industrial agriculture uses 75% of farm land but delivers only 30% of the world’s food. Peasant farmers feed 70% of the world’s people using just 25% of the land