File photo of wheat plants in Afghanistan. (PK Ahmad/iStock/Getty Images)

Taliban increase payment in wheat as economic crisis deepens

Kabul | Reuters — Afghanistan’s Taliban administration said on Tuesday it was expanding its ‘food for work’ program, in which it uses donated wheat to pay thousands of public sector employees instead of cash as a financial crisis intensifies. Wheat, largely donated by India to the previous U.S.-backed Kabul government, is being used to pay


People queue up outside a public supermarket’s doors in Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela, in April 2015. (iStock/Getty Images)

World Food Programme starts distributing food in Venezuela

Reuters — The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) said Wednesday it had begun distributing school meals to children in Venezuela, where some seven million people require humanitarian assistance after years of economic collapse in the once-prosperous OPEC nation. The WFP’s first take-home rations were distributed for children under six years old at some 277 schools

The World Trade Organization (WTO) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland on Oct. 28, 2020. (Photo: Reuters/Denis Balibouse)

Ban on food aid restrictions blocked at WTO

WTO says outcome 'disappointing' in difficult year

Geneva | Reuters — World Trade Organization members were at odds on Friday over a proposal that would ban countries from restricting food aid deliveries, potentially complicating the response to a feared COVID-fuelled humanitarian catastrophe next year. The proposal was one of two related to the pandemic that failed to make headway at a three-day



A view of Sanaa, Yemen’s capital. (UGurhan/iStock/Getty Images)

WFP says Yemen food aid being stolen in Houthi-run areas

Geneva | Reuters — Food aid meant for starving Yemenis is being stolen and sold in some areas controlled by the Houthi movement, the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) said on Monday. The Houthis control most towns and cities including the capital Sanaa, from where they ousted Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government in 2014. A Saudi-led

(Dave Bedard photo)

U.S. House clears farm bill, with major food stamps changes

Washington | Reuters — The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved a massive Republican farm bill with changes to the government food stamps program that make it unlikely to become law in this form. The Senate is considering its own farm bill with no major changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) used

New report describes ‘three-tiered’ food system operating in Canada

New report describes ‘three-tiered’ food system operating in Canada

A University of Guelph researcher takes a close look at Canada’s evolving alternative food market

Kelly Hodgins was selling garden produce at a B.C. farmers’ market in 2013 when she began noticing something was different about her customers. There were new faces arriving at the market. The province had introduced a new program making coupons available to lower-income families to shop B.C.’s well-established farmers’ markets. “It was kind of an



Farmer in wheat field

Do we really feed the world?

It’s a moral platitude that papers over a multitude of problems

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is using this harvest season to solidify its reputation as the biggest not-for-profit policy organization American farmers love to hate. The hatred took root in 1995 when EWG published — on something called the Internet — a 10-year, searchable database of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) payments to all American