20091215 Foodchat Food Insecurity discussion links

Prediction: Most of the predictions in Forbes' wide-ranging, maddeningly laid out 2020: What Happens Next series will prove to be wrong. I cannot foretell the future, but I am confident that it will continue flummoxing the futurologists.

Driving north from Wichita, Kansas, toward Salina on a warm day last October, I saw an oil-well pump sitting in the middle of a sorghum field. And not just one. As I drove, I saw hundreds more, maybe thousands, all surrounded by amber waves of grain. Like giant, insatiable gulls, they bobbed their heads up and down, up and down, gulping black crude from the earth’s depths. Oil wells in farm fields. Here was a symbol for modern agriculture, dependent on petroleum-based fertilizer to produce high yields.

How can US farmers thru USDA Africa offices be more involved in bringing tech & experience to Africa's farmers?

What role do biotechnology products play in solving hunger issues?

How can farmers use social media to raise awareness about global hunger?

What role do smallholder farmers have to play in improving food insecurity?

Could trade liberalization effect food insecurity in 3rd world countries? If so, what would be the outcomes?

What policy changes can governments enact to improve food security?

What role will fertilizer source, e.g manure, urea & nitrates play in intensification of ag to feed others?

If you could wave a wand and make a new biotech trait in a plant, what would it be? Who would it help?

What can be done on a local level to help with food insecurity?

Hunger has always been around. What are we doing different to really change & what should we be doing differently?

Work Food Day is 10/16. What is the one executable idea you will take from this convo to make a difference & celebrate that?

Politicians love farmers. And fear them. Public officials will take on industrial mills, foundries, factories and sewage-treatment plants that pollute our water, but they shy away from touching farms. It's a fundamental difference in environmental policy that has existed for decades, and it persists with the help of farm-industry groups that persuade lawmakers to limit policy primarily to voluntary programs and cash incentives, say environmental advocates and industry experts. "We implicitly have decided as a society that agriculture has the right to decide how much pollution to emit, and then we ask them voluntarily to cut back," said Catherine Kling, an economist and environmental-policy expert at Iowa State University's Center for Agricultural and Rural Development.

“From our experience, we know that smallholder farmers produce the majority of food that is consumed in the developing world…and that access to inputs and access to markets are essential. And this is where the private sector has a key role to play,” he says.