411 — Post Script

Blooms of Destruction

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When mautam struck Mizoram last during 1959, the unofficial figure for the death toll was between 10,000 and 15,000A bamboo shoot flowers only once during its lifetime, after which the plant dies. Gregarious flowering – when large clumps of the plant spread over a vast area bloom simultaneously – occurs every 48 years or so, … Read more

Maize Growers Cry Foul Over Food Aid

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Swazi maize farmers are blaming World Food Programme (WFP) aid for their inability to sell their produce, despite evidence that record high maize prices coupled with increased poverty are undermining consumers’ ability to purchase the national staple food. “Local maize millers are now at one-third of normal milling capacity as a result of a sharp … Read more

Losing the battle against hunger

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FOOD security is the sine qua non of human existence. Without food nothing happens, no economic endeavour, no science or engineering, no music or literature, not even, in a year of famine, procreation.Since 1974, the year of the Henry Kissinger-sponsored World Food Conference, called at a time of catastrophic food shortages, there has been immense … Read more

Ain Ebel Agricultural Cooperative

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Women achieve wonders as they turn their hand to carob molasses productionThe creation and development of the Ain Ebel Agricultural Products Manufacturing Cooperative (APMC) in southern Lebanon is an ideal example of hardship and need giving rise to ingenuity and unexpected results. “During the occupation we were cut off from the outside world for two … Read more

Farmers Say Food Must Be Dropped From Gov’ts Deal-Making

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Farmers and peasant groups around the world are pressing the concept of ‘food sovereignty’ as a challenge to the World Trade Organisation’s agriculture policies, which they say push millions of small farmers off their land and lead to food insecurity. Described by the international farmers network Via Campesina as ”the right of peoples to define … Read more