How @tracingpaper followed the build-up, progress and conclusion of the first ever G8 agriculture summit and examined some of the underlying issues of food security and sustainability:
- “To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish..” President Obama’s inaugural address
Anticipating the first G8 agriculture summit
- “A grave problem”: world leaders to address food security – The Tracing Paper anticipates the first G8 agriculture summit
- Food crunch: 1st G8 agriculture summit meets in Italy, April 18-20, to “draw up concrete proposals on world food security” #
- G8 agriculture summit aims to “restore farm produce to economic policy, counter speculation, enhance production chains, invest..” #
- La Via Campesina, International Peasant Movement: G8 should clean up own mess instead of telling poor countries what to do
Examining food security
- Meanings of food security: nationalism, defence, control, resilience, risks, sovereignty, democracy, capacity – Tim Lang
- Vince Cable: “fascism has disappeared but there are.. subtle voices.. setting out a protectionist programme in the name of food.. security” – Introduction to The Storm: The World Economic Crisis and What it Means
- Vince Cable’s The Storm: The World Economic Crisis and What it Means
, Chapter 4: “The Resurrection of Malthus”. Good concise analysis of current food emergency & historical, economic context
- Talk of national food security may be mask for protectionism or worse; concern for global food security is humanitarianism
- More on (food) security: “Agriculture and Infrastructure: A Global Stimulus to Thwart Terrorism”, speech by Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize Foundation
- The double burden of malnutrition: hunger and obesity coexist in the developed and developing world
The summit gets underway
- G8 agriculture summit: why? – “Issue on the agenda: the world food emergency.”
- The Independent on the G8 agriculture summit: world agriculture ministers meet today to address “a crisis of almost biblical proportions” http://ow.ly/3auH
- G8 agriculture summit working towards final declaration, reports Earth Times. Argument over global cereal stocks, duties, quality standards?
Assessing the outcomes
- Guardian report of G8 agriculture summit conclusions suggests feeble outcome. The “Profound failure” predicted by Oxfam?
- G8 food summit final declaration short on action, big on words: “agriculture & food security at core of international agenda”
- The FT on G8 food & agriculture summit: admits failure to feed poor, asserts importance of food security, but little action
Fundamental issues: land, production, food, prices and sustainability
- Shades of Sustainability on Civil Eats: valuable discussion of what sustainable food really means. (Via @FoodNDrink)
- “sustainable food supply.. produced & consumed in a way that supports the well-being of generations” Sustainability in the Food Industry (Institute of Food Technologists Series)
- Landgrab: how Asian & Middle Eastern countries are buying overseas farmland to secure food supplies. More from agripods.com (registration required)
- World food price watch from BBC World Service: prices down over last year in Brussels and Washington, up in Nairobi
- Land to feed 1 person? Eating only beef 8173 m²; … pork 2592; eggs 2395; milk 2053, fruit 1369; veg 1314; potatoes 275 – reports Tim Lang in lecture, Food Security: are we sleep-walking into a crisis?
