#Food Security

[hope-for-the-planet]

As of December 2024, The Cook Islands' Palmerston Atoll was declared entirely rat free. This was after significant eradication efforts and monitoring to confirm the rats were gone, both of which involved the local community. Removing the rats has helped to improve food security and safety for residents, as well as increasing the prevalence and numbers of native wildlife.

Arthur Neale, the atoll’s Executive Officer, says Palmerston’s rat-free status means the world to him and everyone else who lives on the atoll. “Rats infested the atoll for over a century. They ate our crops, invaded our homes and harmed local wildlife. We saw the rat problem becoming worse, with the potential to seriously undermine our resilience in the face of climate change impacts. “Benefits from the rat eradication are already evident. Our food security has improved massively. Fruits like guava, mango and star fruit are now abundant and free from rat damage. Our nu mangaro (a coconut tree variety) are thriving. Vegetables, especially cucumbers, have seen an astonishing increase in yield. “We’re very excited to see more native species now rats are no longer eating them. Seedlings of tamanu and puka are increasing and we’re seeing and hearing more birds. Wood pigeons and red-tailed tropic birds have returned to Home Islet. Crabs and lizards appear to be more abundant.”

Here's a cool video from a few years ago covering the work to remove rats and inclusion with the local community (Just a heads up the video does show dead rats a couple of times).

[ireton]

[cognitivejustice]

Underground greenhouses are helping people to take back control of their nutrition and ease farming amid the climate crisis

[probablyasocialecologist]

To focus almost exclusively on promoting agricultural technologies to ramp up food production would be to repeat the mistakes of the past. The Green Revolution of the 1960s-70s brought impressive advances in crop yields, though at considerable environmental cost. It failed to eliminate hunger, because it didn’t address inequality. Take Iowa, for example — home to some of the most industrialized food production on the planet. Amid its high-tech corn and soy farms, 11 per cent of the state’s population, and one in six of its children, struggle to access food. Even though the world already produces more than enough food to feed everyone, it’s woefully misallocated. Selling food to poor people at affordable prices simply isn’t as profitable for giant food corporations. They make far more by exporting it for animal feed, blending it into biofuels for cars or turning it into industrial products and ultra-processed foods. To make matters worse, a third of all food is simply wasted. Meanwhile, as the laureates remind us, more than 700 million people — nine per cent of the world’s population — remain chronically undernourished. A staggering 2.3 billion people — more than one in four — cannot access an adequate diet.

12 February 2025

[dontforgetukraine]

October 16th marks World Food Day.

It is not the first time Russia has weaponized food as a means of control and aggression (ex: Holodomor). In Ukraine's fight against Russia's war, it has become an unprecedented guarantee of food security for the world through the "Grain from Ukraine" program. This grain is distributed by the UN's World Food Program to recipient countries suffering food shortages. This is all while Russia shells grain terminals, blockades Ukrainian ships, and wages its aggression towards farmers in its war. Remember, much of the agricultural land is contaminated with mines and other unexploded ordnance.

In order to maintain food security, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine has listed what it will take.

Full and safe navigation in the Black and Azov seas.

Restoration of Ukraine's sovereign control over its ports.

Establishment of new ports

Expansion of the assortment of Ukrainian goods transported by seas.

Security guarantees are not just important for Ukraine, but for the entire world. Already Ukraine has delivered 228,960 tons of agricultural products to:

Somalia

Ethiopia

Kenya

Yemen

Mauritania

Nigeria

Sudan

Djibouti

Mozambique

the Democratic Republic of Congo

Palestine

Supporting Ukraine means supporting the world. History has already seen Russia weaponize food. Russia's war shows it is doing so again right now. If we fail to support Ukraine, don't be surprised if Russia chooses to manipulate countries that need Ukrainian grain.

[vox-anglosphere]

As with doctors, British farmers make their daily rounds too.

[reportsofagrandfuture]

[pale-blue-home]

🌾🍚🧬 A new strain of rice offers hope for drought-stricken communities in Chile! Chilean scientists are trialing the “Jaspe” rice strain, described as more environmentally conscious, “less-thirsty,” and “climate-smart.” Trials have also proven the strain to be high-yield with the right growing method, producing nearly ten times more than a conventional rice field!

[nwalthall]

In a bid to save money and restrict benefits, the bill would make a series of changes to scale back the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which provides monthly aid known as food stamps to about 42 million low-income people...

On Thursday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted the consequences could be substantial.

New work requirements, for example, could result in about three million SNAP recipients losing benefits, its analysis found. States could potentially leave the program because of their own budget constraints, further leaving some poor families unable to obtain nutritional assistance. And some proposed changes to the way the government computes benefits could leave some households facing losses in their monthly allowances.

Some Republicans from districts with high concentrations of food stamp recipients have balked in the past at cuts to the program, and insisted on allowing states to relax work requirements, which the bill would limit their ability to do. But so far, there has been no outcry in the G.O.P. against the SNAP cuts. --NY Times 5/23/2025

I don't understand. Why would there be an outcry about depriving children of food so that the wealthy among us can further fatten themselves?

[thoughtlessarse]

More than 60% of the EU’s agricultural soils are degraded due to intensive agriculture, with similar damage to about 40% of British soils, a report has found. Experts from the Save Soil initiative said nourishing and restoring agricultural soils could reduce the impact of the climate crisis and provide protection against the worsening extremes of weather, as well as the food shortages and price rises likely to accompany them. This degradation of soil is changing the land’s water cycle and exacerbating the impact of the climate crisis in a vicious circle. Impoverished soils, lacking their natural structure, are incapable of holding water in any quantity, so that when it rains, the water tends to run off them, worsening flooding; but in times of drought, when healthy soils would act as a sponge, poor soils have little resilience. Save Soil, which advocates regenerative farming practices, called for soil restoration to be made a key priority of climate programmes, and for changes in agricultural policies and subsidies to reward it. “Europe and the UK are experiencing extremes – parched fields one month, flooded towns the next. What this report makes clear is that our soils are no longer buffering us,” said a spokesperson for the group. “We are losing the natural infrastructure that manages water.” In 2022, a third of the EU population and 40% of the bloc’s land were affected by water scarcity, while Spain, Italy and Germany have also seen disastrous floods in 2023-2024, the report noted. Groundwater levels have dropped by a third in France, and the UK is likely to see drought this year despite record rain last year.

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[hope-for-the-planet]

Good News for Sustainable Rice Cultivation

As you might imagine, rice is a very water-hungry crop and currently uses about a third of global freshwater--the cultivation of rice also produces 12% of global methane emissions.

New breakthroughs from researchers in Chile, Chine, and Sweden have developed one variety of rice that uses 50% less water and another that can reduce methane emissions by 70%.

For a staple crop that is produced in such massive numbers, this is a really huge deal both for preserving resources and for food security.

Source--Fix the News

[ireton]

The 4 Big Meat Packers In America Are Making A Move To Bankrupt Small Farms In America Starting In August

“This is a way that they're gonna be trying to force us out”

“The big 4 packers are killing the American cattle industry right now. Projected by August, each cattle rancher that is selling their animal is gonna be making $30 less per 100 pounds on that market ready animal.

- The American cattle rancher makes about 30% of every dollar earned on that animal - With this gonna be set in place, this is gonna take us down into the twenties.

This is gonna be a real scary place for the American cattle rancher. ‌ ‌If they can't make a profit or make a living off of what they're selling, their ranches are gonna be put up for sale.

This is a way that they're gonna be trying to force us out.

- And not only that, the corrupt thing is they're gonna be marking everything up $30 to every 100 pounds that they're making in return.

So with that being said, guys, we need to get back to buying local, supporting our local people. And as always, buy American and buy local.”

[probablyasocialecologist]

In international development circles, most people are familiar with the World Bank’s data showing that extreme poverty has declined dramatically over the past several decades, from 43 per cent of the world’s population in 1981 to less than 10 per cent today. This narrative is based on the World Bank’s method of calculating the share of people who live on less than $1.90 per day (in 2011 “PPP” terms). But a growing body of literature argues that the World Bank’s PPP-based method suffers from a major empirical limitation, in that it does not account for the cost of meeting basic needs in any given context (see here, here and here). Having more than $1.90 PPP does not guarantee that a person can afford the specific goods and services that are necessary for survival. In recent years, scholars have developed a more accurate method for measuring extreme poverty, by comparing people’s incomes to the prices of essential goods in each country (specifically food, shelter, clothing and fuel). This approach is known as the “basic needs poverty line” (BNPL), and it more closely approximates what the original concept of “extreme poverty” was intended to measure. 

[...]

Extreme poverty is not a natural condition, but a sign of severe dislocation. Historical data on real wages since the 15th century indicates that under normal conditions, across different societies and eras, people are generally able to meet their subsistence needs except during periods of severe social displacement, such as famines, wars, and institutionalised dispossession, particularly under European colonialism. What is more, BNPL data shows that many countries have managed to keep extreme poverty very close to zero, even with low levels of GDP per capita, by using strategies such as public provisioning and price controls for basic essentials. In other words, extreme poverty can be prevented much more easily than most people assume. Indeed, it need not exist at all. The fact that it persists at such high levels today indicates that severe dislocation is institutionalised in the world economy – and that markets have failed to meet the basic needs of much of humanity. To address this problem, and to end extreme poverty – the first objective of the Sustainable Development Goals – will require public planning to prioritise the production of, and guarantee access to, the specific goods and services that people need to live decent lives.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) will be issuing the long-promised "grocery rebate" payments to eligible Canadians on July 5.

Months after Parliament passed the one-time benefit first unveiled as part of the 2023 federal budget, the payments will be hitting Canadians' bank accounts on Wednesday.

The food-inflation focused affordability measure is set to roll out to approximately 11 million low- and modest-income Canadians.

Essentially a re-branded GST rebate boost, the payment will be issued through Canada's GST/HST tax credit system, alongside the regular quarterly GST/HST payments. [...]

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Tagging: @politicsofcanada