IFAD’s Cape Town meeting – presenting the Rural Poverty Report 2011

http://on.fb.me/m4TXXJ #rpr2011 #ifad #agchat
IFAD’s Cape Town meeting – presenting the Rural Poverty Report 2011

Biogas makes people not poor! For lights and cooking. These cost $260 to make, the Chinese government pays half.. See biodigestors in action in China.. a new socialist village: environmentally sustainable, socially harmonious. Anything done by small farmers in China makes a huge impact overall.. Over 8 million animals accounted for in that rural sector of the world. The scope of it blows my mind. There are fantastic testimonials and a good name behind it, IFAD (http://www.ifad.org/) OECD development pages. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCRps9Jnwbk #energy @OECDlive

…as long as fiscal tightening is recommended unemployment will hardly stop. The consumerism is sloppy if we don’t back our currency (US$) with real production. Instead of encouraging fiscal tightening, developed countries should thus encourage new routes to develop production markets. Vegetables, for one. Vegetables ship well at 1 and 1/8 bushel crates, can be made plentifully here in the United States, and are in global demand. Organic vegetables are another step that many farmers may want to take that ensures them a local market. Small industry, for another. Many of the parts that support small agriculture are freely available laying around the ruins of a former industrial tower.. Factories are now scrap-yards ready to make a new Economy. The industrial park, and JVS and small workshops, should not be left out of our #economic solution.

Small agriculture is doing much better this year in the United States than large monoculture farms. A wet Spring has most farmers behind already. The price of corn internationally is shown in a chart below:

Please consider what a dependence on cheap corn will mean if corn does badly this year, for the whole world we export grain to. The United States for it’s irresponsibility has left the world open to more food insecurity, even without the oil factor, from a bad season in Northern Ohio and the Central states. #Midwest, #Corn, #Sustainable. Meanwhile, at the organic farm we have 36 crops already and are busy every day. Most monoculture farms are big fields and nothing is planted yet. I find comfort knowing that my job every day provides food for Northern Ohio’s good and neediest families to eat a fresh variety of foods at a dependable price. #agchat

The Future of Food Conference, DC

“… Today, if you are looking for the most immediate cause of farmworkers’ increasing poverty — and the most correctable — your search is best directed to the marketplace. Farmworkers toil at the very bottom of a food supply chain that is every day more and more top-heavy, and this unprecedented consolidation of market power at the top of the retail food industry has created an unrelenting downward pressure on prices — and therefore wages and working conditions — at the bottom. And the bottom of the ‘bottom’ in the food supply chain is the person picking fruit in the fields…”

I found this interesting that the top guys are looking for ways to fix our food system. It doesn’t work to just be laborers, especially in development. Very inequitable growth. My suggestions: start small, market on-farm products, reduce costs and waste of farming.

-Eddie

Feed the Future, launched by President Barack Obama?s administration in 2009, attempts to leverage a $3.5 billion government pledge to lure investment from the private sector. The effort focuses on agricultural technologies of all kinds, including biotechnology.

The Future of Food Conference: http://washingtonpostlive.com/conferences/food/agenda

An important tool we have are former conferences of international stakeholders. These are how laws, treaties, and policies get made; It’s important to link and share them. Here’s one which is the most valuable (ever) for agriculture in the last 8 years.
http://www.afcconference.com/final-roadmap-for-action
http://www.afcconference.com/conference-papers

-Eddie

Coalition of Imokalee Farmworkers: http://www.ciw-online.org/CIW_at_future_of_food.html