Cheap Food Versus Expensive Oil

You can’t have cheap food and expensive oil. It just doesn’t work. For hundreds of millions of people who earn only a dollar or two a day, increasing prices for staple foods like grains, pulses, rice and cooking oil is a big deal. Canadians spend only about 11 per cent of their disposable income on

Eco-Farming Can Double Food Output By Poor

Many farmers in developing nat ions can double food production within a decade by shifting to ecological agriculture from use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, a UN report showed March 8. Insect-trapping plants in Kenya and Bangladesh’s use of ducks to eat weeds in rice paddies are among examples of steps taken to increase food


FAO Report Issues Warning

Climate change bringing floods and drought, growing biofuel demand and national policies to protect domestic markets could drive up global food prices and threaten long-term food security, the United Nations said. High and volatile food prices are a growing global concern, partly fuelling the protests that toppled the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt this year.

Mother Hubbard’s Empty CCC Cupboard

On a sunny, sub-zero day 20 or so years ago, the great-grandson of a Kansas homesteader related one of the most important lessons passed on to him by his family’s boom-bust-boom generations of dryland farming. “My grandfather,” he offered, “taught us that it’s not the choices you make in the bad times that usually cause


U.S. Ethanol Incentives Under Scrutiny

Reform of U.S. ethanol incentives could save up to $5.7 billion a year, a congressional watchdog said March 1 as ethanol critics called on Congress to let the tax breaks expire at the end of this year. In an examination of federal spending, the Government Accountability Office said the ethanol tax credit and a federal

U.S. Ethanol Policy Roundly Criticized

If the United States reduced the amount of corn required for its ethanol requirements by just one per cent, it would double Zimbabwe’s entire annual corn consumption and save American taxpayers $50 million a year. Bill Lapp, a U.S. market analyst, tossed those statistics out at the annual GrainWorld conference in Winnipeg last week to


Research And Development Seen As Key To Solving World Food Crisis

World agriculture needs a major research and development initiative to reverse declining crop production and avoid a global food crisis, says an international food policy expert. Agricultural output has slowed in the last 20 years – an alarming trend, given a growing world population and recent riots in various countries sparked by rising food prices,

Rising Food Costs Could Force Eatery Overhaul

Record-high food prices could be the tipping point this year for U.S. restaurants already struggling with high debt loads and tightfisted consumers. The economic downturn and drop in consumer spending has sent a handful of restaurant chains – such as Uno Chicago Grill pizza, Fuddruckers and Charlie Brown’s Steakhouse – into bankruptcy court during the


Worries Aside, U.S. Has “Foot On The Gas” On Ethanol

The United States “can do it all” – turn more corn into ethanol without running short of food, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Feb. 24, as oil prices soared and the government raised its forecast of food price increases this year. “There is no reason for us to take the foot off the gas,” said

Indonesia Links Good Data To Food Security

Indonesia’s Agriculture Ministry and statistics agency have signed an agreement aimed at releasing more agriculture data, to help food-security planning in the world’s fourth-most-populous nation. Like many emerging markets, Indonesia is battling booming global food prices, and has been forced to import various foods as it grapples with inflation. Analysts also say a lack of