Farming and Agriculture Development

Book review by: Joan Baxter

Carey Gillam’s book, “Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science” (Island Press, 2017) is a must-read.

A few weeks ago I found myself sitting beside a retired chemical engineer at a reunion of my husband’s age-mates in Germany. I’m not sure what made the engineer decide to unleash decades worth of remorse about what his profession had done in the 1960s and 1970s, but that’s what he did.

He said that he, his company and colleagues around the world had knowingly produced many, many toxic chemicals that wound up in our homes, our foods, our bodies, and made us sick. Others they produced were so poisonous they would kill instantly, and were almost impossible to dispose of safely. Many are still in storage today.

I listened, amazed at his candour and aghast at what he was saying. I had just written a book about a fifty-year-old pulp mill in my home province of Nova Scotia in eastern Canada, and about successive waves of public protest over the dangerous chemicals it used and emitted, polluting air, water, and politics. The book also shows how the powerful pulp industry has shaped forest policies and practises in much of Canada, with its regime of clearcutting, planting of conifer monocultures, and then spraying these plantations with herbicides to kill off hardwoods that would compete with them.

The active ingredient in those herbicides is glyphosate. This is the weed-killer that the giant agrochemical and biotech company Monsanto put on the market in 1974 with the name “Roundup,” and complemented 20 years later with its genetically modified (GM) “Roundup Ready” crops that could be sprayed with the herbicide because they had been engineered to withstand it. Governments seemed convinced the weed-killer was safe; they had permitted its use around the world on fields of crops that we eat every day, and anywhere else that human beings want to wipe out plants that dare to put down roots where they are not wanted — on lawns, golf courses, gardens, parks, and playgrounds.

But glyphosate had long been controversial and I was curious as to what the chemist thought of it.

So I interrupted his Mea culpa about his own chemical sins and asked, “What about glyphosate? Is it safe?”

“It should be banned,” he said, without hesitating. “It’s poison.”

I wanted to ask him many more questions. Why, for example, did he (and many others) think glyphosate was dangerous, when the agro-chemical industry (and many others) argue that it is safe enough to drink and harmless to the environment? And why, if it really was harmful, did government agencies around the world approve it so that it has become the most widely used agro-chemical in human history?

Unfortunately, time ran out and I didn’t get to pose these questions.

Imagine my pleasure, then, when a couple of weeks later I learned there was a new book about glyphosate that might answer my questions. Entitled “Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science,” it was written by a veteran journalist and researcher, Carey Gillam.

The book does not disappoint. Not only does it answer my initial questions, but it also raises and answers many more, and it does so dispassionately and meticulously. She draws on years of research and investigation, countless scientific studies, court documents, interviews with scientists, farmers and regulators, and her previous experience as a senior reporter with Reuters.

When she first started reporting on agriculture, Gillam — like most citizens in democracies — had a lot of faith in the government agencies whose job it is to protect consumers and ensure the safety of farm products and foods, assuming that they wouldn’t approve herbicides such as Roundup and the GM Roundup Ready seeds that Monsanto produced if they posed any risks. She even became a “fan” of Monsanto’s chief technology officer, and said she enjoyed her chats with “the affable Brett Begemann” who had risen through the ranks to become Monsanto’s president.

But, as time passed, and her research and reports began to expose doubts about GM crops and glyphosate-based herbicides, she discovered that Monsanto could also be far from affable. The company tried to have her editors take her off the beat and their surrogates engaged in smear campaigns.

Eventually, Gillam left Reuters and joined the non-profit, US Right to Know, with its stated goal of “pursuing truth and transparency in America’s food system.” Her book offers readers 251 pages of compelling evidence that there is an urgent need for just such truth and transparency, that glyphosate poses many risks for human health, farms, crops, soils and the environment, and that Monsanto and the agro-chemical industry have gone to extraordinary lengths and expense to hide these from regulators and the public.

We learn that in the mid-1980s, a decade after Monsanto began promoting glyphosate as the safest herbicide ever, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the United States classified the chemical as a “possible human carcinogen.” Then, in 1991, after “extensive input” from Monsanto, the EPA did an about-face, deciding there was “evidence of non-carcinogenicity for humans.”

Over the years, study after independent study found that glyphosate was linked with health problems, with cancers such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma, chromosomal damage in blood cells, endocrine disruption, kidney or liver disease, and hormonal changes, among others. The combination of other ingredients with glyphosate in herbicide formulas made it even more dangerous.

“When you spray glyphosate on a plant it’s like giving it AIDS.”

Then there were the giant superweeds that were springing up in fields of Roundup Ready crops, which were resistant to glyphosate. To try to get rid of them, farmers were being forced to go back to deep tilling and every greater use of herbicides, both of which were things Monsanto promised its GM seeds and herbicides would reduce.

Researchers also found that the use of glyphosate around conventional and GM crops weakened their root systems, making them more vulnerable to disease and crop failures, such as that which has devastated Florida’s citrus crops. One independent scientist who determined that glyphosate destroys soil health tells Gillam, “When you spray glyphosate on a plant it’s like giving it AIDS.”

Monsanto and the agro-chemical industry pushed back at every step, publicizing its own studies that did not have to go through a peer review, hiring ghost-writers and providing them with messages, engaging industry-friendly scientists to write industry-friendly papers, and attacking genuinely independent scientists who contradicted them, trying to discredit them. As Gillam documents so diligently, this pattern repeated itself over and over and over again, and continues today.

“So where, one might ask, are the regulators?” asks Gillam at one point. A good question that she answers with ,a litany of rock-solid examples of how regulators have failed the public when it comes to glyphosate-based herbicides, be it the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Agriculture or the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US. Or the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment and Ministry of Food and Agriculture in Germany. And although she doesn’t focus on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), she does note that it did not require annual testing for glyphosate residues until 2017, after the research branch of the World Health Organization categorized glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

Gillam admits that the story of glyphosate, the sacrificing of public safety for corporate profits for agro-chemical giants and the corporate capture of regulatory agencies, is not a “feel-good story.” This is certainly true. Page after page detailing the perfidy of compliant politicians and scientists, and the silencing of honest researchers within regulatory agencies, can be hard on the soul. It challenges head-on the myths that Monsanto (which the German giant Bayer is trying to take over) and others in the business of profiting from pesticides and GM crops have spread so effectively that their mission is to feed the world, something one senior scientist tells Gillam is “a bunch of garbage.”

“…when powerful corporations control the narrative, the truth often gets lost, and it’s up to journalists to find it and bring it home.”

At the same time, this book is hard to put down, as fast-paced and full of intrigue as any thriller, and it does offer glimmers of hope. After the World Health Organization labelled glyphosate a probable carcinogen, and despite the backlash from industry, lapdogs in regulatory agencies and even some media, many people believing their cancer came from exposure to glyphosate decided to take Monsanto to court. This brought to light damming documents that reveal still more of the subterfuge that surrounds glyphosate.

One professor emeritus of plant pathology tells her, “Future historians may well look back on our time and write about us … how willing we were to sacrifice our children and jeopardize future generations based on false promises and flawed science just to benefit the bottom line of a commercial enterprise.”

As Gillam notes, some believe that the chemical may turn out to have been worse than its poisonous predecessors — DDT and Agent Orange.

Her work on glyphosate leads her to conclude that “…when powerful corporations control the narrative, the truth often gets lost, and it’s up to journalists to find it and bring it home.”

This is exactly what Carey Gillam has done masterfully in this must-read book.

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Seven Grains of Paradise-Proof4.oct 25BBC Focus on Africa interviews Joan Baxter, a former correspondent for the program, about her new book, “Seven Grains of Paradise: A Culinary Journey in Africa”, which celebrates Africa’s food, farms, crops and cuisines.

Listen to the interview here: August 17, 2017 BBC Focus on Africa interviews Joan Baxter

The book is available as an e-publication online from Amazon.com and Rakuten Kobo, and in Canada from Amazon.ca. It is available in print from many independent bookstores across Canada.

 

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MM_Flying booksFeb13

On Friday, August 4, 2017, from 7 until 9 PM, Pottersfield Press will be launching the latest book by Joan Baxter, “Seven Grains of Paradise: A Culinary Journey in Africa” at Mabel Murple’s Book Shoppe & Dreamery, which was opened in early July by the renowned Canadian author and children’s poet, Sheree Fitch, and her husband, Gilles Plante.

This is the first book launch to be hosted at Fitch’s immensely popular new bookshop at 286 Allen Road in the village of River John in Pictou County, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Fitch says she is pleased to host this event because Baxter is a “local writer and a friend” and she believes this book has “global significance.”

sheree book shoppeBaxter says she is “thrilled” to be launching this book, her sixth, in rural Nova Scotia, at a location she describes as “beyond magical,” thanks to “the incredible imagination, energy, enthusiasm and efforts that Fitch and Plante invested to create what is sure to become a major literary and tourism destination for the entire province, if not the entire country and beyond.”

She describes her book as a “celebration of African foods, farms, farmers, crops, cooks and cuisines.” And while it may fly in the face of many global media headlines, she says, “Africa has much to teach the world about healthy eating. Of the ten countries with the healthiest diets on earth, nine are African, some of them among the monetarily poorest nations on earth.”

Seven Grains of Paradise-Proof4.oct 25“Seven Grains of Paradise” draws on stories collected over the more than three decades that Baxter worked, lived and learned in Africa. It explores the riddle of a continent that is known more for hunger than for its rich and diverse foods and cuisines, and for having discovered and bred many of the staple foods and drinks consumed daily around the world.

The culinary journey of learning, eating and drinking takes readers from the fabled city of Timbuktu on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, to the diamond fields of Sierra Leone, from the savannah of northern Ghana to the rainforests of Central Africa.

It pays homage to the farmers, cooks and friends who schooled, guided and mentored her along the way.

“This is an eye-opening book that everyone should sturdy carefully to learn how so called advanced cutleries exploited and still exploit this natural rich continent. Highly recommended.” Professor Hrayr Berberoglum, Winesworld Magazine

Baxter says the book doesn’t shy away from the very real problems of food insecurity, hunger or malnutrition brought on by conflict, poverty, unfair trade and climate change, which today plague not just Africa but many other parts of the world.

“While the book focuses on the immense potential of family farming and locally produced food in Africa, it also documents the growing risks they face,” she says.

 

The author visiting the farm of Martin Kamara (right) in Gbematambadu, eastern Sierra Leone. Photo credit: Theophilus Gbenda

About the author: Joan Baxter is a Nova Scotian journalist, science writer, anthropologist and an award-winning author. She has written six books and many research reports on international development and agriculture in Africa. She has reported for the BBC World Service and contributed to many other media, including the CBC, Le Monde Diplomatique, Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, The Chronicle Herald.

 Seven Grains of Paradise: A Culinary Journey in Africa is available at bookstores in Canada, or online at:

Paperback & Kindle Edition:

Chapters Indigo: http://bit.ly/2vFrjES

Amazon (Canada): http://amzn.to/2gZNC4K

Kindle Edition only:

Amazon (International): http://amzn.to/2vWUkuY

Paperback only: Nimbus Publishing (distributor) http://bit.ly/2tWoBIX

 

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BY Joan Baxter

July 14, 2017

(This article is the second of two adapted excerpts from Seven Grains of Paradise: A Culinary Journey in Africa, available in print and Kindle edition at Amazon.ca and as an e-pub from Amazon.com and Kobo, and in print from Nimbus.)

Seven Grains of Paradise-Proof4.oct 25At the beginning of the 1960s, when many African countries were becoming independent nations, freeing themselves one after another from the colonial powers, the continent was more than able to feed itself. Until 1970, it was even exporting food, more than a million tonnes a year.

Today, after more than half a century of foreign development assistance and food aid, as well as decades of economic development doctrines from the World Bank Group, International Monetary Fund, foreign “donors,” and most recently, billionaire philanthropists, the continent imports a quarter of its food.

This lands us right in the middle of the kitchen staring into the eyes of the big elephant of a question that is sitting there: Why has Africa become synonymous in many people’s minds with malnutrition, famine and hunger, and not feted for nutritious foods, diverse farms and wonderful cuisines? Continue reading Challenging some myths about Africa’s food, food security and farming

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BY Joan Baxter

July 12, 2017

(This article is the first of two adapted excerpts from the book, Seven Grains of Paradise – A Culinary Journey in Africa, available in print and Kindle edition at Amazon.ca, as an e-pub globally from Amazon.com and Kobo, and in print in Canada from Nimbus.)

Seven Grains of Paradise-Proof4.oct 25Type “Why is Africa” into Google and these are the top four phrases with which it fills in the blank: “so backward,” “such a mess,” “so poor,” and “so underdeveloped.” Change the query to “Why can’t Africa,” and Google finishes that question with: “grow food.”

Depressing stuff, but it’s not Google’s fault that such negative stereotypes abound. They go back many decades, if not centuries, and obviously still persist to shape online searches. And they’re as misleading and wrong now as they’ve always been.

First, Africa is an immense and diverse continent, which is no more “backward” (whatever that really means) or more of a “mess” than many other parts of the world. Many African countries may be monetarily poor, but the continent is enormously rich in culture and resources, and parts of it are catching up, if not surpassing, other more “developed” countries, depending, of course, what exactly we mean by development.

And as for the notion that Africa can’t grow food, that’s so far off the mark that it’s hard to know where to start to debunk it. But I’ll try. In 2015, a landmark study that examined diets in 187 countries around the world in 1990 and again in 2010 found that nine of the ten healthiest were in West African nations. Continue reading Celebrating Africa’s food and farmers

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Press Release: May 19, 2017

In her new book, “Seven Grains of Paradise,” Joan Baxter challenges many myths and explores the wealth of African food cultures and knowledge, foods and crops, and farming know-how.

It flies in the face of many media headlines, but the reality is that Africa has much to teach the world about healthy eating. Of the ten countries with the healthiest diets on earth, nine are African, some of them among the monetarily poorest nations on earth.

In her latest book, Seven Grains of Paradise: A Culinary Journey in Africa, Joan Baxter highlights the wisdom and knowledge of cooks, farmers and friends who act as guides to some of the marvellous, diverse foods and food cultures in several African counties. She explores the riddle of a continent that is known more for hunger than for its rich and diverse foods and cuisines, and for having discovered and bred many of the staple foods and drinks consumed daily around the world – coffee, “cola” extracts, watermelon, palm oil, black-eyed peas, gumbo, sesame, pearl and finger millets.

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Alligator peppers containing the tasty little “grains of paradise” have important spiritual and medicinal uses in Sierra Leone. They are also a popular delicacy in many West African dishes and cuisines. Photo credit: Saskia Marijnissen

Seven Grains of Paradise draws on stories collected over the more than three decades that Baxter worked, lived and learned in Africa. From the fabled city of Timbuktu on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, to the diamond fields of Sierra Leone, from the savannah of northern Ghana to the rainforests of Central Africa, readers are invited on a delectable journey of learning and eating – and some drinking too.

Baxter doesn’t shy away from the very real problems of food insecurity, hunger or malnutrition brought on by conflict, poverty, unfair trade and climate change, which today plague not just Africa but many other parts of the world. While the book focuses on the immense potential of family farming and locally produced food in Africa, it also documents the growing risks they face. And it asks whether there is a need for a rethink about how “development” affects diets – especially within development agencies, international institutions and donors in the (sometimes lucrative and self-serving) business of food aid or improving food security and nutrition in Africa.

About the author: Joan Baxter is a journalist, science writer, anthropologist and an award-winning author who has published five books, several research reports about international development in West Africa, countless media articles and documentaries for a host of media organizations, including the BBC World Service, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Le Monde Diplomatique, the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, The Chronicle Herald. She has worked as a science writer and communications specialist for the World Agroforestry Centre and the International Center for Forestry Research, based in Kenya, served on the Board of USC Canada, and as the Executive Director of the Nova Scotia – Gambia Association. She is a Senior Research Fellow with the Oakland Institute.

Seven Grains of Paradise: A Culinary Journey in Africa is available at bookstores in Canada or online:

https://www.nimbus.ca/store/seven-grains-of-paradise.html?___SID=U

https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-CA/home/search/?keywords=Seven%20Grains%20of%20Paradise

https://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Seven+Grains+of+Paradise&rh=n%3A916520%2Ck%3ASeven+Grains+of+Paradise

An e-pub version of the book will be available soon.

Praise for “Seven Grains of Paradise”

“Joan Baxter has given us a shimmering crystal prism blending Africa’s culinary splendour, practical agronomy, and dirty politics, with laser-like precision. Roaming around Western Africa for several decades, her anecdotes are as scathingly unforgiving of Western bias, corporate greed and agricultural industrialization, as they are of African culpability. The delicious recipes woven seamlessly into her experience of African foods had me frantically scouring the city for ingredients, but alas, she is correct, it is very difficult to find Africa’s ingredients on African shelves. I have long searched for such a book, and am hardly able to put it down.” Ake Mamo, aspiring farmer, educator and devotee of indigenous foods and fruits

“Joan Baxter has written a lyrical yet punchy and political book about food in Africa that will turn your preconceptions on their head and make your mouth water. Probably Canada’s foremost expert on West African cuisine and a hardy journalist to boot, she explores the indigenous crops that make the region’s diet the healthiest in the world. Surprised? Read this book and get woken about the market places, forests, fields and kitchens of Africa.” Cathy WatsonAshoka fellow, correspondent for the BBC and The Guardian, and agroforester

“In Seven Grains of Paradise, Joan Baxter invites us into her life and time in Africa to meet the people, communities, and families in the most down-to-earth and real way. Through the stories she shares, I found the spirit of Africa. I could smell the food in the cooking pots; I could hear the sound of the markets and feel the sun warm my skin. I could just listen to the conversations and transplant myself to the moment, to the kitchen, to the streets described. Seven Grains of Paradise is a book I will keep with me for years to come; and read over and over again.” Dr. Yene Assegid, Author and Leadership Coach/Trainer

“In an unconventional and appealing view of Africa, Joan Baxter describes her gastronomic experiences in Africa in an intriguing mix of social anthropology, ethno-botany, and eating out. The end result is a traveller’s ‘Good Food Guide’ to the restaurants and markets of Africa in the company of local cooks and chefs, providing a Master Class in African cuisine. This book also points to missed opportunities for creating a better life for Africans by promoting their own diverse array of exciting food species to replace the monotonous diet of maize and cassava imposed on many by international agricultural ‘experts’. Joan Baxter goes on to explain how local foods are being promoted by a more appropriate and emerging approach to tropical agriculture – called ‘agroforestry’ aimed at resolving the problems of hunger, malnutrition, poverty, environmental degradation (including the loss of biodiversity and climate change) that have a stranglehold on Africa. The wealth of information about traditional foods in this book thus provides motivation for a paradigm shift to improve the lives of Africans; not to mention the health of our planet. A must-read for ‘foodies,’ Africa-lovers and development workers.” Professor Roger R.B. Leakey (DSc, PhD, BSc, FRGS), International Tree Foundation and author of Living with the Trees of Life – Towards the Transformation of Tropical Agriculture and Multifunctional Agriculture: Achieving Sustainable Development in Africa

“There are so many ways to use this book. It’s great to read in case you’re thinking of travelling to Africa…great to teach people who know nothing about Africa except that it has traumatic bouts with famine and hunger. It’s great preparation for people going to an African restaurant in their own city, be it in North America or Europe…great for being able to understand better and welcome properly newcomers to your country who’ve come from Africa. It’s great to read a writer who combines angst and self-deprecating humor and who has a real way with zany words. It’s great to have another angle on the enormous power of food to bring out what’s good and inspiring in people, and to come away from a book that deals with weighty matters in a weighty way that still leaves room for hope.” Wayne Roberts, author of The No Nonsense Guide to World Food and Food for City Building, former manager of the Toronto Food Policy Council; speaker and consultant on food and cities

 

 

 

 

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BY Joan Baxter

Ma Coulibaly selling fresh okra in the Medina Market in Bamako, Mali (photo by Joan Baxter)

Ma Coulibaly selling fresh okra in the Medina Market in Bamako, Mali (photo by Joan Baxter)

It certainly flies in the face of an awful lot of stereotypes and headlines about hunger and malnutrition, but it turns out that Africa has much to teach the world about healthy eating.

A 2015 study published by The Lancet Global Health journal looked at the consumption of food (both healthy and unhealthy items) and nutrients in 187 countries in 1990 and then again in 2010. The aim was to determine which countries had the world’s healthiest diets.

It found that none of the healthiest ten diets is in a wealthy Western nation, nor are any in Asia. Most were found in Africa, which is so often portrayed as a continent of constant famine in need of foreign know-how and advice on how to eat and to grow food.

And yet, of the ten countries with the healthiest diets on earth, nine of them are African.

What’s more, the three countries with the very best diets are some the world’s poorest. Chad, ranked as having “very low human development”, 185th of 188 nations on the United Nations 2015 Human Development Index, has the world’s healthiest diet. After that come Sierra Leone and Mali, 181st and 179th on the same Index. Continue reading Looking for healthy eating? Go to Africa!

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BY Joan Baxter

Bill Gates hobnobs with elected leaders at COP21 in Paris. Copyright DW/ N. Pontes

Bill Gates hobnobs with elected leaders at COP21 in Paris. Copyright DW/ N. Pontes

In many places and among many people, he’s revered, a man whose charitable giving accords him selfless, almost saint-like status. But it’s not as if Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, is actually shedding any of his vast wealth, no matter how much noise is made about his generosity.

This year, for the sixteeth time in just 21 years, Bill Gates tops the Forbes list of the richest people in the world. With 1,826 billionaires on that list in 2015, worth a total of US$ 7.05 trillion, it’s no small feat to be Number One.

Gates (unlike genuine saints) is very good at making money from money; according to Forbes in the past six years he has almost doubled his fortune and is now worth nearly $80 billion. That’s a good deal more than the Gross Domestic Product of 46 of the 49 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

This despite his reputation as the world’s number one giver-of-money and “philanthropist”, determined to “help thousands and millions” out of poverty. Continue reading Philanthrocapitalism – all the power that billions can buy

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BY: Joan Baxter

About 10 million people — opg-34-king-leopold-_403867s-267x300r more — perished in Belgian King Leopold’s Congo during the late 1800s and early 1900s.[i] In addition to the horrific human toll, another shocking thing about Leopold’s plundering of his huge African colony is that he managed to convince so many in Europe and the United States that his apparatus of exploitation and wealth collection was humanitarian and philanthropic, that his intention was to benefit the “natives”, help end the slave trade and bring “civilization”, and to further scientific endeavour.

Back then, there weren’t legions of communications and public relations specialists for hire to transform bad into good, to spin sin into virtue, and tailors who convinced naked emperors they were clad in robes of gold existed only in fairy tales. So the campaign of deception about Leopold’s actual intent in Africa probably started with the good king himself. He may genuinely have believed himself a noble fellow, and his right to conquer and pillage a chunk of Africa about 77 times the size of his own nation something that God granted his royal self.

Thankfully, times have changed.

Or have they? Continue reading King Leopold’s Ghost and the 21st century scramble for Africa’s farms and foods

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Mali

By: Joan Baxter

Despite all the problems there are with Band Aid 30’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas, few would take issue with the noble sentiment of the stirring chorus line near the end of the song that exhorts us to “feed the world”.

Just as I’m left wondering where, exactly, the funds raised by Bob Geldof’s charitable efforts will go “to fight the Ebola crisis” in West Africa, I am also curious about what, exactly, they are thinking the world should be fed with.

I’m not just being ornery; this is an important question.

We live on a planet that is plagued by hunger and periodic famine, caused increasingly by climate change, conflict, politics, perverse policies and poverty. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), close to a tenth of the world’s population does not have enough food to lead a healthy active life.

At the same time, there is also a good deal of excessive consumption of calories that has led to another kind of global health crisis. Continue reading Yes, let’s feed the world – but with healthy food from healthy farms

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