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Showing posts from September, 2011

Self-Sufficient Communities: Rising through Food Sovereignty

Faiz Ahmed Oakland University Food: A Power Struggle The current global economic system is fragile, threating a most basic need: food. Eric Holt Gimenez, author of ‘From Food Crisis to Food Sovereignty’ mentions that in the summer of 2008, there was massive starvation and hunger world over, despite “record harvests and record profits for the world’s major agro-food corporations.” He cites World Bank records of price hikes in food which amounted to “83%” over a period of “three years” and according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN, food price hikes amounted to “45%” in just over a period of nine months. The author mentions that this caused riots. “Protests in Mexico, Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Indonesia, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Yemen, Egypt, Haiti and twenty other countries were sparked by skyrocketing food prices.” The author also mentions that according to the FAO, “There was more than enough food in the word to feed everyone in 2008 – at least 1.5 time