Connexions Resource Centre
Focus on Food

Recent & Selected Articles

This is a small sampling of articles related to education and children in the Connexions Online Library. For more articles, books, films, and other resources, check the Connexions Library Subject Index, especially under topics such as agriculture, agriculture/ecology, farming/farm economy, and food.

Prison Food (April 21, 2022)
"Not for Human Consumption." The author, who saw that label himself when he was incarcerated, calls out a widespread human rights violation being committed in U.S. prisons.
She's Planting the Seeds of Indigenous Food Sovereignty (December 7, 2018)
A look at the efforts of Jessie Housty, an Indigenous woman from British Columbia, who is helping to change the diet of her community that is overwhelmingly dominated by industrial food products.
Why the food movement needs to understand capitalism (July 11, 2018)
To fully appreciate the challenges we face in transforming our food system we need to explore the economic and political context in which food is grown, sold and consumed in the world today.
Via Campesina Declaration of the Forum on Food Sovereignty, Territories of Peace for a Dignified Life 2017 (2017)
The participants of the Forum on Food Sovereignty held in the city of Buenos Aires on December 12th and 13th [2017] want to express our agreements regarding the construction of territories of peace for the people: the peasants of the world and every community struggling to remain in our ancestral territories and to continue feeding humanity, as we have done for the last ten thousand years, while at the same time fighting for a worthy life in the cities with healthy, locally produced food.
Marx as a Food Theorist (December 1, 2016)
Marx developed a detailed and sophisticated critique of the industrial food system in Britain in the mid-nineteenth century, in the period that historians have called "the Second Agricultural Revolution." Not only did he study the production, distribution, and consumption of food; he was the first to conceive of these as constituting a problem of changing food "regimes" -- an idea that has since become central to discussions of the capitalist food system.
Hunger in Venezuela? A Look Beyond the Spin (July 11, 2016)
Venezuala has food shortages when it comes to specific foods, but there have been grassroots and governmental responses.
A Food Renaissance (January 28, 2016)
Colin Tudge reports on The College of Real Farming and Food Culture; a project designed to tackle the current issues in global food production. The current system is not fit for purpose but through a holistic approach and an overhaul of current mainstream agriculture, achieving a balance between feeding the world and conserving the environment is within grasp.
Abundance for everybody (2016)
A group of Bolivian activists engage in 'conscious eating' while resisting capitalism and climate change and valuing everyone's work.
The GMO Dark Act Cannot Survive the Light (December 11, 2015)
An ardent attempt is afoot on Capitol Hill to prevent states from requiring the labeling of genetically engineered foods – made especially urgent by the fact that Vermont’s labeling bill is set to take effect July 1st.
Advancing Food Sovereignty to Transform Economies (December 3, 2015)
Food sovereignty can transform local, national, and regional markets to support countries’ domestic economies and allow us to create wealth, both in production and knowledge.
Top 5 Reasons Eaters should be Worried about Obama's New Trade Deal (October 6, 2015)
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a wide-ranging deal that would expand corporate rights across member states to the detriment of worker rights, the environment, and public health.
Foodies and farmworkers: Allies or enemies? (August 4, 2015)
Fred Magdoff reviews Labor and the Locavore. Can the 'buy local food' movement support both sustainable farming and justice for farmworkers?
How the Great Food War Will Be Won (January 12, 2015)
Thus the necessary shift in perception is to see that, as in most wars, the crucial struggle in the food war is the one inside people's heads. And that the great food war will be won by the side that understands that and uses it best.
The political economy of hunger (November 17, 2014)
The fact there's enough food to feed everyone has slowly been acknowledged amongst the ruling institutions. The intuitive answer to this question is that there must be a lack of food. This explanation comes in two flavours. Chronic hunger is typically explained by the Malthusian argument that population growth perennially outstrips food production. Acute hunger, such as famines, is typically explained in terms of Food Availability Decline, such as crop failures due to drought.
Florida's sugar barons grow fat on subsidies, diabetes and Everglades destruction (September 1, 2014)
Big Sugar is the new Big Tobacco, writes Alan Farago - lethal to human health, wreaking environmental devastation, gouging huge public subsidies, and with the political clout to stop First Lady Michelle Obama from breathing a word against it. Only an alliance of green, health and taxpayer campaigners can kill the beast.
Obama food aid ravages Third World farmers (July 27, 2014)
The US taxpayers who finance foreign food aid surely believe they are feeding starving people. But the truth is the reverse - it is undermining indigenous agriculture in recipient countries - creating famine and chronic malnutrition, while sabotaging self-sufficiency.
Forget The Propaganda From Big Agritech, The Key To Reducing Poverty And Ensuring Food Security Lies With Small Farmers (May 30, 2014)
A new review carried out by the organization GRAIN reveals that small farms produce most of the world’s food. However, they are currently squeezed onto less than a quarter of the world’s farmland. The world is fast losing farms and farmers through the concentration of land into the hands of the rich and powerful. If we do nothing to reverse this trend, the world will lose its capacity to feed itself.
Follow the Money, Part 6 - Obesity: A new role for second-hand-smoke-causes-cancer deniers (May 21, 2014)
The tobacco industry has shifted its doubt-manufacturing operations to countries like Russia, Indonesia and China, where the incidence of smoking — and cancer — continues to rise. But other industries with deep pockets need to manufacture doubt about the health risks of their products.
The Real Cost of a Hamburger (May 9, 2014)
Do you know what a Big Mac costs? If you say $2.50 or whatever the current price posted at the McDonald’s restaurant may be, you are vastly under-estimating the real price. That’s because $2.50 does not reflect the genuine cost of production. Every hamburger price tag should include a calculation of animal suffering, human health costs, economic and ecological subsidies. None of these bona fide costs is included in the price one pays for a hamburger (or other meats eaten by consumers for that matter).
The Politics of Food and Poverty (May 8, 2014)
The global food crisis is tightly connected to global poverty, climate change, ecological destruction, migrant workers, imperialism, health and the super-exploitation of workers.
How "Extreme Levels" of Roundup in Food Became the Industry Norm (March 27, 2014)
Surprisingly, almost no data exist in the scientific literature on herbicide residues in herbicide tolerant genetically modified (GM) plants, even after nearly 20 years on the market. The authors' research, however, demonstrates that roundup Ready GM-soy accumulates herbicide ingredient residues and also differs markedly in nutritional composition compared to soybeans from other agricultural practices, while organic soybean samples show a more healthy nutritional profile than both industrial conventional and GM soybeans.
GMOs show 'substantial non-equivalence' (March 4, 2014)
New studies document substantial differences of GM maize and GM soybean from their non-GM counterparts, writes Dr Eva Sirinathsinghji - exposing a permissive regulatory regime that has failed miserably in protecting public health and safety.
Golden Rice ignores the risks, the people and the real solutions (December 28, 2013)
'Golden Rice' is being promoted by GM advocates as a solution to malnutrition. But Daniel Ocampo says it is for the 'target populations' in the Philippines and elsewhere to decide whether to accept the technology - and they don't want it!
In Home Gardens, Income and Food for Urban Poor (December 13, 2013)
A slowly but steadily growing phenomenon in Jordan, urban agriculture has vast potential for reducing poverty and improving food security, and it has the added benefit of greening and cleaning up more rundown sections of cities.
Monsanto, the TPP and Global Food Dominance (November 26, 2013)
Global food control has nearly been achieved, by reducing seed diversity with GMO (genetically modified) seeds that are distributed by only a few transnational corporations. But this agenda has been implemented at grave cost to our health; and if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) passes, control over not just our food but our health, our environment and our financial system will be in the hands of transnational corporations.
Class Struggle at the Waistline (October 23, 2013)
The obesity rate has soared not because lower income earners lack the knowledge to eat wisely, but because they have lost power over the economic conditions of their lives.
The Drug Store in American Meat (November 28, 2012)
Food consumers seldom hear about the drugs oestradiol-17, zeranol, trenbolone acetate and melengestrol acetate and the names are certainly not on meat labels. But those synthetic growth hormones are central to U.S. meat production, especially beef, and the reason Europe has banned a lot of U.S. meat since 1989.
Corporations profiting out of food crisis (October 21, 2012)
The small group of food multinationals that monopolise the world food market are positioning themselves to take full advantage of the crisis: the latest food price hikes threaten to drive more people back into hunger.
Deconstructing The Locavore's Dilemma (July 8, 2012)
The book 'The Locavore's Dilemma' constructs a straw man argument while ignoring what the locavore movement really has to say.
The false solutions of Rio+20 (June 28, 2012)
Food production and people's sovereignty in Africa could be seriously compromised by carbon capture projects and the so-called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Plus (REDD+) mechanism.
Without Women, No Food Security (March 1, 2012)
In the countries of the Global South, women are the primary producers of food: the ones in charge of working the earth, maintaining seed stores, harvesting fruit, obtaining water and safeguarding the harvest.
The food rush (November 1, 2011)
Commodity speculators have moved into food - with dire consequences for the world’s poorest.
Connexions Archive Case Statement (September 24, 2011)
Working together to secure a future for the past
Local Harvest for an Urban Landscape (February 11, 2011)
How do you create a locally harvested food system for a city of 100,000?
Death in a New York Food Sweatshop (February 3, 2011)
For thousands of recent immigrants, the eastern section of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is where you go to find work in food processing and distribution factories that service many of New York City's markets and restaurants. If you've ever eaten a meal in New York, you can be assured that you've consumed food that has been produced and distributed through one of these food companies and those in a few adjacent neighborhoods.
Organic and Beyond (2011)
Organic is not enough. Organic will be an effective proposal for change only to the extent that it is integrated into the local and global movements that carry on the fight for food sovereignty, climate justice, ecological debt, women's rights and labor organizing; and against enclosures of common goods.
The FDA and Frankenfoods (September 24, 2010)
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has sent enforcement letters warning food makers that they cannot label their products as free of genetically modified or genetically engineered ingredients.
Connexions Archive seeks a new home (November 18, 2009)
The Connexions Archive, a Toronto-based library dedicated to preserving the history of grassroots movements for social change, needs a new home.
Argentina: Disappearing Farmers, Disappearing Food (October 29, 2009)
Food sovereignty as defined by Via Campesina is the peoples' right to define their agricultural and food policy, and the right of farmers and peasants to produce food. Worldwide communities are seeking an alternative to a model controlled by Cargill, Monsanto, General Foods, Nestle and Kraft foods. Starved by industrialization and concentration, citizens are now hungry for traditional production methods and diversity in the food system.
The Humble Tuna (October 19, 2009)
The humble tuna, "the chicken of the sea", is an unfortunate metaphor for all that is dysfunctional about our contemporary, western, capitalist world. The story of the Tuna is the story of our triumphant world, and provides a unified theory of its runaway excess
Dwindling Fish Catch Could Leave a Billion Hungry (October 9, 2009)
Fish catches are expected to decline dramatically in the world's tropical regions because of climate change, but may increase in the north, said a new study published Thursday. This mega-shift in ocean productivity from south to north over the next three to four decades will leave those most reliant on fish for both food and income high and dry.
Feedlots and E. Coli (October 9, 2009)
Improving processing plant inspections is a good idea, but it is only part of the solution. The real solution is minimizing the potential contaminant. Secondly, slow down the processing line so the workers can do their jobs. CDC tells people to wash their hands, their cutting boards and to cook meat thoroughly. Good sound suggestions, but why is the burden of safety inordinately placed on the consumer? Why are the processors allowed to hide behind the 'safe handling instructions' and maximize their profits with impunity?
Food Among the Ruins (August 1, 2009)
Detroit, the country's most depressed metropolis, has zero produce-carrying grocery chains. It also has open land, fertile soil, ample water, and the ingredients to reinvent itself from Motor City to urban farm.
Urban Honey (2009)
In the winter of 2003, three Chicago beekeepers joined forces to create a bee farm on the former Sears-Roebuck property right in the heart of our city. We abut an old railroad embankment wall with both prairie remnant and concrete in equal amounts.
Global Justice, What We Eat, Who We Are (May 1, 2001)
Sara Abraham interviews Harriet Friedmann, who has devoted more than two decades to understanding the international politics of food and agriculture and to building local food systems that can be sustainable, polycultural in all senses, and enhancing of democratic, participatory communities.
Via Campesina Declaration on Food Sovereignty 1996 (1996)
Food is a basic human right. This right can only be realized in a system where food sovereignty is guaranteed.

Selected Websites and Organizations

This is a small sampling of organizations and websites concerned with education and children in the Connexions Directory. For more organizations and websites, check the Connexions Directory Subject Index, especially under topics such as agriculture, agriculture/ecology, farming/farm economy, and food.

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