Category: Policy

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Promoting civil disobedience one seed at a time

Luigi nibbled the World Food Garden a day or two back, but I think it merits a bit more of a chew. ((Admittedly he did also point to the link where he found it, which certainly does go into detail.)) At first sight it looks like a typically busy, typically overburdened site, with a very crowded map of all the gardeners who have already signed up. But if it delivers on what it promises, it could be a great resource. The thing that interests me most is a “Seed swap”. Alas, click on that and all you see is “Coming Soon!”. Well, I hope it is, and I hope it works, and works well.

I’ve been mulling a very similar idea here for a long time, and I even have it all figured out as far as wire-frames and flow diagrams and all that stuff goes. But I don’t speak Ruby ((Hint, hint: if you do, and want to collaborate, let me know.)) and right now I don’t have time to learn.

The need for an exchange mechanism is far, far greater in Europe than anywhere else in the world. To be honest, almost everything World Food Garden offers or is planning to offer already exists, especially in the US. All power to them, though for pulling it all together. Gardeners and small farmers can obtain the seeds of any variety they want, if it is available. European gardeners do not have the luxury of choice. A rational, effective seed swap system would cut the pointless European legislation off at the knees.

Which is exactly what it needs.

In the meantime, if you have or want seeds of something interesting, try Pat ‘n’ Steph.

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Politics of Food Blogged

Having tried my hand at the conference-reporting lark, I have enormous respect for people like Robert Hijmans, who did us proud with his series on Harlan II, and, now, Elanor over at The Ethicurean. She (?) has been at a conference on the Politics of Food held at North Carolina State University. From what looks like a groaning table of dishes, Elanor picked on a panel on the Food Crisis, and manages to be impressed, to gush, and to be self-aware all at the same time. To whit:

It was one “a-ha” moment after another. Even the ag economist’s graphs gave me a rush. (Please don’t tell anyone that I said that, though — it’s embarrassing.)

As is customary here, I’m not going to steal Elanor’s thunder by summarizing what she has to say. Just that I found the report exciting and stimulating, and the policy shifts she mentioned made an awful lot of sense to me too. Not to mention some of the figures about investment in agriculture and growth in GDP; those are definitely going to come in handy, and soon.

Money quote:

News coverage of the food crisis has focused on the global poor as consumers whose lives are thrown out of whack by rising prices. The obvious solution, as they frame it, is to do anything necessary to make food prices low again. But in many cases, the poor are actually farmers or workers in the ag supply chain — or they used to be. If they were farmers still, they’d be making pretty good money right now. Ugarte was asking a profound question: Is the food crisis really about prices? Or is it, at its core, about policy and ownership?

Answers on a postcard, please.