The battle for the world food system: an interview with Raj Patel
The battle for the world food system: an interview with Raj Patel from Jill Hickson on Vimeo.
June 3, 2010 -- Raj Patel, author of The Value of Nothing and Stuffed and Starved, interviewed by Jill Hickson and Simon Cunich for Green Left Weekly and Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal. Patel discusses corporate dominance of global food production and battles to create democratic and sustainable food systems.
Chapters:
0:00 Stuffed and Starved
3:02 Who benefits from high food prices?
3:44 Another global food crisis?
6:27 Australia's role in the world food system
9:19 Is sustainable agriculture viable?
10:44 Food sovereignty and La Via Campesina
13:39 Land reform
16:46 Sustainable agriculture in Cuba
19:15 Supermarket organics
20:50 Slow food
22:25 The local food movement.
Raj Patel
Excellent elucidation of the key issues - no great surprises but very eloquently and sucinctly summarised. I shall recommend it widely.
Farmers should stop accepting fiat currency
Farmers are like the elephant that does not know it's own power. The problem in the world is how the currency is issued, the oligarchy is simply printing fiat currency and cornering the wealth of nations.
All that the farmers have to do is stop accepting the fiat currency that the oligarchy prints and issues and issue their own food/fuel backed currency redeemable in food/fuel.
The farmer co-operatives around the world can issue their own food/fuel based currency redeemable in food/fuel, then the oligarchy fiat currency will become worthless. The world will become a better place to live.
Impact of Food Crisis
Here are my thoughts. I think the situation with food crisis is only going to worsen. The developing and developed countries will increasingly protect their agricultural outputs for their own citizens, and rightfully so. With that I think that there is a potential for major unrest in places like Africa that heavily depend on foreign aid for survival. Oxfam not so long ago appealed to the world to bring awareness to this increasing crisis in Africa. Research has also shown that when ever there is less arable land or lack of food (due to even lack of rain) it resulted in civil unrest.