The Ecologist articles from November 1996

The Ecologist archives from November 1996

Cynicism, food and power.(Editorial)
November 1, 1996... "Within a decade, no man, woman or child will go to bed hungry", vowed Dr. Henry Kissinger as US Secretary of State in 1974 in his keynote speech to the World Food Conference. Yet more than two decades later, at the time of the World Food...

Free trade and farm fallacies: from the Uruguay Round to the World Food Summit. (includes related articles on food deficits, environmental dumping, prices, agriculture in the Philippines and Mexico)
November 1, 1996... Free traders have seldom had it so good. Not since British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston dispatched gunships to open the Chinese market for British opium in the 1840s has theory inspired such certainty, nor trade barriers such opprobrium....

Transnational corporations and food.
November 1, 1996... The food industry has more companies in the world's top 1,000 companies than any other sector. In Britain, food and drink is now the biggest manufacturing sector. Only one of the world's top 60 food and drink companies lost money in 1995. As...

CGIAR: agricultural research for whom? (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research)(includes related articles on farm innovations, green revolution, farmers' rights)
November 1, 1996... For centuries, farmers have experimented with growing different plants, harnessing the amazing versatility of genetic combinations to produce crop varieties that best suited their needs. They have observed where and in what conditions their...

Intensifying agriculture - the organic way.
November 1, 1996... One of the most frequent justifications given for the need to expand industrial agriculture and introduce genetically engineered crops is that sustainable agriculture is less productive. US Secretary for Agriculture Earl Butz reportedly...

From green to gene revolution: the environmentally risks of genetically engineered crops. (includes related articles on genes, risk assessment and agricultural policy)
November 1, 1996... The major application of genetic engineering in agriculture is food crops. Genes believed to determine specific traits -- height, tolerance to frost or drought, and protein or fatty acid composition, for example -- are spliced into plants...

Too many for what? The social generation of food "scarcity" and "overpopulation." (includes related articles on social aspects of scarcity, privatization)
November 1, 1996... Globe, Inc. is "overpopulated". And as long as access to food and other resources is determined by inequitable power relationships, it will remain so. Because no matter how much food is produced, how few babies are born or how dramatically...

Industrial agriculture - driving climate change? (includes related articles on greenhouse gases, emission controls, farmer strategies to cope with climate change)
November 1, 1996... Few people now seriously doubt that the earth's climate is changing and that we are sliding inexorably into a period of climatic instability. Unless drastic action is taken to reduce anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (such as...

Farming the city: the potential of urban agriculture. (includes related articles on UK's allotment system, Green Thumb project, malnutrition, Philadelphia's farms)
November 1, 1996... "And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food." Genesis 2, 8 "And I, John, saw...

Onions Are My Husband: Survival and Accumulation by West African Market Women.
November 1, 1996... ONIONS ARE MY HUSBAND: Survival and Accumulation by West African Market Women, by Garcia Clark, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995, 18.25 [pounds sterling] /$25.50 (pb) ISBN 0-226-10780-9 In the ongoing drama of twentieth-century...

World War III: Population and the Biosphere at the End of the Millenium.
November 1, 1996... WORLD WAR III: Population and the Biosphere at the End of the Millenium, by Michael Tobias, Bear & Co., Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1994, $29.95/ (hb) 649pp. ISBN 1-879181-18-5 An estimated 5.7 billion people live on the earth and give birth to...

Regenerating Agriculture: Policies and Practice for Sustainability and Self-Reliance.
November 1, 1996... REGENERATING AGRICULTURE: Policies and Practice for Sustainability and Self-Reliance, by Jules N. Pretty, Earthscans, London, Joseph Henry Press, PLACE, 1995, 12.95 [pounds sterling]/$14.95 (pb) 320pp. ISBN 1-85383-198-0 Any book opening...

Making Nature, Shaping Culture: Plant Biodiversity in Global Context.
November 1, 1996... MAKING NATURE, SHAPING CULTURE: Plant Biodiversity in Global Context, by Lawrence Busch, William B Lacy, Jeffrey Brukhardt, Douglas Hemken, Jubel Morago-Rojel, Timothy Koponen and Jose de Sousa Silva. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, USA...