Food Rights Network

Food News You Can Use

October 31, 2011

• “Walmart Can’t Lead Us Out of the Food Desert”: Color Lines (10/27) reminds us that, rather than “expanding large supermarket chains” so that, as Eric Holt-Gimenez wrote in a Huffington Post article highlighted in last week’s news roundup, food dollars are “spirited off to the retail monopoly’s corporate coffers . . . [, grassroots] alternatives could potentially keep it in the community, where it can recirculate as much as five times.” Unfortunately, Color Lines adds, these “ideas aren’t getting nearly as much support from recent state and federal initiatives to eradicate food deserts as are corporations’ plans to tap new markets.”
• Occupy the Pasture: Grist‘s Steph Larsen writes (10/21) of occupying a pasture in Nebraska to show solidarity for “Occupy Wall Street“ and to remind those who can that a “fundamental way to rebel against an unjust economic system is to grow [our] own food. This way, [our] primary means of sustenance is out of the hands of corporations. Most food sold in grocery stores — even organic food — is owned by a few, very consolidated agribusinesses. Growing your own food undercuts their power.”
• “GM Crops Promote Superweeds, Food Insecurity and Pesticides, say NGOs”: The GuardianUK and Common Dreams report (10/19) that “genetic engineering has failed to increase the yield of any food crop but has vastly increased the use of chemicals and the growth of ‘superweeds.’ . . . The so-called miracle crops, which were first sold in the US about 20 years ago and which are now grown in 29 countries on about 1.5bn hectares (3.7bn acres) of land, have been billed as potential solutions to food crises, climate change and soil erosion, but the assessment finds that they have not lived up to their promises.”

Filed under: In the News