Author Archives: Charles W. Elliott

Seeds of Controversy: The Battle Over Africa’s Agricultural Future

Posted on October 21, 2023 | Comments Off on Seeds of Controversy: The Battle Over Africa’s Agricultural Future

Charles W. Elliott

One would not expect the lowly seed to be the object of international controversy. But converging forces — some malign, others benign – have placed food crop seeds into the center of clashing visions of the future of agriculture and the place of smallholder farming in Africa. At issue is control over how seeds are owned, saved, and planted, with implications for the survival of smallholder farms, food crop biodiversity, and the resilience of global food supply in the face of climate change.

Earlier this year, the African Union adopted a free trade protocol that will dictate how food is cultivated and how the seeds of life are managed and owned across the entire African continent. Under this document, with its dry and innocuous-sounding title, “Protocol to the Agreement Establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area on Intellectual Property Rights”, 1 all 54 African nations will be locked “into a proprietary and punitive model of food cultivation, one that aims to supplant farmer traditions and practices that have endured on the continent for millennia.” Alexander Zaitchik, The New Colonialist Food Economy, The Nation, September 18, 2023, https://www.thenation.com/article/world/new-colonialist-food-economy.

The new protocol, together with other agreements designed to advance the interests of industrial agriculture, biotechnology firms, and large agri-business corporations, creates a system that will pressure African farmers to use genetically-modified seeds protected by intellectual property rights in place of the ancient foundation of human agriculture: the heritage of planting self-replicating seeds from nature’s bounty.2

According to Zaitchik: “A primary target is the farmers’ recognized human right to save, share, and cultivate seeds and crops according to personal and community needs. By allowing corporate property rights to supersede local seed management, the protocol is the latest front in a global battle over the future of food.” Details of the system are to be set forth in an Annex to the Protocol, which has not yet been finalized. However, the protocol will likely reinforce the “plant variety protection” system of the Convention of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), which promotes crop genetic uniformity, fails to recognize farmers’ rights, and prevents peasants from reusing seeds.3

While GMO crops were originally touted as the solution to global hunger, conflicting reports on the quality and yield of genetically modified commodity crops4 and local opposition to the loss of control over seed and food production has led GMO proponents to shift their marketing focus to claims that GMO crops are part of “climate smart agriculture.” Zaitchik argues that “[t]his broad rhetorical phrase conjures a suite of practical, climate-driven upgrades to food production that conceals a vastly more complicated and contentious effort to reengineer global farming for the benefit of biotech and agribusiness—not African farmers or the climate.”

Who has pushed African governments to finalize and adopt this model? The major players are unsurprising. Zaitchik’s article says: “[t]he most direct beneficiary of this plan is the four-company oligopoly that controls half the global seed market and 75 percent of the global agrichemicals market: Bayer (formerly Monsanto), Corteva (formerly DowDuPont), BASF, and Syngenta, a subsidiary of ChemChina.”

One cannot easily reconcile this model with the recognition of traditional seed and agricultural systems enshrined in other multinational treaties and United Nations Declarations, viz., the Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (Art. 9), the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Art. 31), and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (Art. 19). Under Article 19 of the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants, they have the “right to seeds”, including:

(a) The right to the protection of traditional knowledge relevant to plant genetic resources for food and agriculture;
(b) The right to equitably participate in sharing the benefits arising from the utilization of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture;
(c) The right to participate in the making of decisions on matters relating to the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture;
(d) The right to save, use, exchange and sell their farm-saved seed or propagating material.

They also have the “the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their own seeds and traditional knowledge.” Member States must “recognize the rights of peasants to rely either on their own seeds or on other locally available seeds of their choice and to decide on the crops and species that they wish to grow.” Moreover, Member States “shall ensure that seed policies, plant variety protection and other intellectual property laws, certification schemes and seed marketing laws respect and take into account the rights, needs and realities of peasants and other people working in rural areas.”

The problem is that the Protocol, its Annexes, and its underlying international agreements will represent legally binding obligations of the African Union countries, while the non-binding United Nations Declarations, by themselves, do not. Thus, the Protocol will inexorably accelerate the ascendancy of the biotechnology-industrial model of agriculture, favoring large corporate interests over traditional, smallholder farming.

Since its founding, Buddhist Global Relief has supported smallholder farming around the world and traditional farming practices. Yet, recognizing the need to provide enough food for a rapidly growing global population, we have also encouraged the use of modern sustainable and yield-enhancing ecological agriculture practices using techniques such as the Grow Biointensive system.5 These practices allow smallholder farmers the ability to avoid dependency on industrialized agriculture, with its chemical inputs and the use of patented seeds that cannot be replanted. These practices are deeply harmonious with natural systems.

We will continue to support smallholder farming in Africa, and to help these communities with sustainable and resilient practices, enabling them to resist this most recent form of corporate colonialism.

  1. The Protocol on Intellectual Property Rights was adopted by the African Union Assembly in February 2023 in Ethiopia. It will enter into force 30 days after 22 countries in the African Continental Free Trade Area ratify it. https://www.tralac.org/resources/infographic/16151-afcfta-protocol-on-intellectual-property-rights-factsheet.html ↩︎
  2. The push to adopt legal structures to lock in this model throughout the African continent could be foreseen years ago. In our blog post More Food or New Colonialism for Africa? posted on July 12, 2013, we said, “We can expect African officials to be targeted by intense pressure and corrupting influences to accept these [GMO] technologies at the expense of traditional, sustainable agriculture.” https://buddhistglobalrelief.me/2013/07/12/more-food-or-new-colonialism-for-africa/#more-855. For more background on this struggle, see, GMOs: Food, Money & Control: Part II, posted on December 21, 2012, https://buddhistglobalrelief.me/2012/12/21/gmos-food-money-control-part-ii/ ↩︎
  3. “What future for seeds under the African Free Trade Area?”, GRAIN, July 2023, https://www.cadtm.org/What-future-for-seeds-under-the-African-Free-Trade-Area ↩︎
  4. Compare: “Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops,” Union of Concerned Scientists, (2009), https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/failure-yield-evaluating-performance-genetically-engineered-crops and “Uncertain Harvest: Doubts About The Promised Bounty Of Genetically Modified Crops”, New York Times, Oct. 29, 2016, with “A Meta-Analysis of the Impacts of Genetically Modified Crops”, PLoS One. 2014; 9(11): e111629, published online 2014 Nov 3. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0111629. The Nation article also describes community complaints about the poor aesthetic and functional qualities of GMO crops. ↩︎
  5. “Grow Biointensive® employs a variety of techniques that work well on smallholder farms, are easily adapted to a variety of climates, are ecologically sound, and can easily be taught to aspiring farmers. These include double digging or deep soil penetration to preserve moisture; use of compost to provide cover and add nutrients; spacing plants close together; growing crops that are high in calories; using open-pollinated seeds (which are native to the area and not genetically modified); and “treating all of the elements as parts of a whole system with a focus on long-term, ‘closed system’ sustainable soil fertility.” David Braughton, “Reducing Malnourishment Through Ecologically Sustainable Agriculture in Malawi”, Buddhist Global Relief Helping Hands Newsletter, March 2023. ↩︎

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BGR Responds to Horn of Africa Drought Crisis With Emergency Aid

Posted on April 25, 2023 | Comments Off on BGR Responds to Horn of Africa Drought Crisis With Emergency Aid

By Charles Elliott

Mumina Afyarow is a 29-year-old widow and mother of three. Because of malnutrition, she has no milk left to breastfeed her infant daughter. The drought killed her beloved donkey and goats, which were her family’s only source of income and food. So, Mumina left her village of Garasweyn and walked eleven miles with her children on her back to a displacement camp. But the camp doesn’t have enough basic supplies to care for everyone, so Mumina sold the only bucket she had for $1.50 to buy food. (Action Against Hunger, February 2023, Proposal to Buddhist Global Relief)

This sorrowful story, like a thousand others, emerges from the Horn of Africa as it faces its worst drought in forty years. In the past three years, this region has suffered five failed rainy seasons, and meteorologists predict a sixth in the coming months. Climate change is likely influencing these conditions. Across the region, more than 36 million people are threatened by the drought, with its predictable catastrophic consequences: the death of 9.5 million livestock, the drying up of the wells upon which human survival depends, the spread of disease, the migration of untold numbers of people desperate for food and water, and the terrible toll of human suffering and death.

In response to this unfolding tragedy, Buddhist Global Relief is partnering with five international organizations to provide emergency relief in the Horn of Africa: Action Against Hunger, CARE, Oxfam, UNICEF, and the U.N. World Food Programme. This assistance is targeted to reach the populations in the region most severely impacted by hunger.

UNICEF proposal to Buddhist Global Relief for Horn of Africa relief funding.

SOMALIA
Action Against Hunger reports that Somalia faces the worst levels of acute food insecurity since the reporting of malnutrition rates began. Approximately half of all Somalis are facing food insecurity and 8.3 million are already at imminent risk. Since last year, there has been a 52 percent increase in nutrition admissions to stabilization centers and 1.8 million children are likely to suffer acute wasting from malnutrition by July 2023. As of the first quarter of 2023, almost 40 percent of Somalis are acutely food insecure, and 320,000 face catastrophic hunger with a risk of famine (IPC5), the most severe and life-threatening classification of hunger. Drought conditions and violent conflict displaced 1.6 million people in Somalia between January and October last year. During the same period, the number of children admitted for treatment for severe wasting increased by 67 percent compared to 2021.

ETHIOPIA
Ethiopia continues to be hard hit by drought. Its population is facing exceptionally high levels of hunger due to the five consecutive failed rainy seasons. The compounding impacts of multiple crises that confront these people include drought, localized floods, and a two-year running armed conflict that exacerbates the causes of malnutrition. In just the past three years, the number of people in Ethiopia needing food assistance has almost tripled, from 8.4 million in 2020 to 24.1 million in 2023. Nearly three-quarters are women and children.

The majority of the population in the Somali, Oromia, Sidama, and Southern Nations, Nationalities & Peoples’ regions rely on pastoralism, one of the most ancient forms of subsistence living. Without water, their animals die, depriving these families of their only source of income. Some four million livestock are believed to have died due to the current drought conditions; millions more are very weak and emaciated with no or little milk production – the primary source of nutrition for children. Meteorologists predict below-average rain for this coming spring rainy season – perhaps no rain at all – shattering all hope of relief.

These conditions also impair education and threaten the future of hundreds of thousands of children. Two thousand schools have closed due to drought, affecting 648,000 students as families are displaced or can no longer afford school fees. It’s estimated that an additional 4,558 schools are at high risk of closure.

KENYA
The failure of the past five rainy seasons has forced Kenya to declare a national disaster. Nearly a million Kenyan children already suffer from acute malnutrition and are in urgent need of life-saving treatment. Across the country, 3.1 million people face acute hunger and the country is suffering a 70 percent drop in crop production.

SOUTH SUDAN

In South Sudan, the promise of a better life following its attainment of independence has disappeared. Ten years after the ostensible end of the civil war, the country has plummeted into an unprecedented hunger emergency. This year almost 8 million people – about 63 percent of the population – will probably face crisis levels of food insecurity. As a result of limited funds and rising costs, three out of four households in crisis are unlikely to receive any food aid. Without a scale-up of food and nutrition assistance, and without unhindered humanitarian access, parts of the country risk famine. Inadequate funding for safe water and sanitation is contributing to outbreaks of cholera and other diseases.

CARE has declared a Type 4 crisis in South Sudan – the most severe on its emergency scale – and urgently sought funds for lifesaving food and nutrition assistance. Funds are also needed to address poor water quality and supply, sanitation, and hygiene.

“Eleven-month-old baby Chigoah Gai has just been admitted to the inpatient therapeutic feeding program supported by CARE in Bentiu hospital. He is frail, struggling for breath, with his tiny ribs showing. A clear case of severe acute malnutrition. His grandmother looks worried. Baby Gai has been vomiting and had diarrhea for the past six days. He weighs just 4.6 kg. (10 lb., 2 oz.). Unprecedented flooding forced his family from their home and meant they couldn’t get enough to eat or clean drinking water, causing him to deteriorate. His grandmother says, ‘The baby was used to milk but now all cattle have moved very far away. I sometimes give him goat’s milk but it’s not enough. The baby’s mother left him behind after seeing that we don’t have enough food to eat. She left to look for something, but she never came back. I don’t know where she is.’”

In recent months South Sudan’s precarious humanitarian situation has worsened. Violence and conflict persist; the country faces a sharp increase in food and fuel prices, exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Climate shocks create the worst of both worlds: localized flooding and drought. An estimated 2 million people, including 1.3 million children under the age of 5 and 676,000 pregnant and lactating women, are expected to be at risk of acute malnourishment. Especially in internally-displaced persons camps and settlements, infectious disease outbreaks are contributing to an ongoing rise in morbidity.

Buddhist Global Relief responded to these terrible conditions by inviting its five NGO partners to submit proposals for emergency funding. Each of these organizations – esteemed for their regional expertise, resources, and rapid-response capabilities – provided BGR with proposals that identified the most effective way to utilize our contributions in addressing these interrelated crises:

• $50,000 to Action Against Hunger’s water and food security emergency responses in Somalia, which incorporates the provision of water vouchers, sanitation services, and hygiene kits as well as direct cash assistance, cash for work programs, livelihood inputs, and financial support provided via micro enterprises and Village Savings and Loan Associations.
• $50,000 to CARE’s nutrition emergency response in South Sudan, which includes screening and treatment of children suffering from malnutrition; CARE’s food security emergency response includes food/cash distribution to the most vulnerable households (restricted, unconditional cash) as well as distribution of agricultural and vegetable kits.
• $50,000 to Oxfam America’s crisis response in Ethiopia, which focuses on food security, including in-kind food distributions and unconditional cash transfers so basic needs can be met; distribution of seeds and tools; and rehabilitation of water systems.
• $50,000 to UNICEF’s emergency programs throughout the Horn of Africa. Addressing household water insecurity is the core driver of UNICEF’s regional drought response in 2023. Additionally, UNICEF’s support of critical nutrition activities includes: (1) procurement, prepositioning, and distribution of therapeutic supplies for children; (2) support for the prevention and treatment of acute malnutrition; and (3) promotion of appropriate nutritional support for mothers, infants, and young children.
• $100,000 to the U.N. World Food Programme’s drought response plan in Somalia, which has been providing relief food assistance to 4.4 million beneficiaries each month. WFP has 12 offices in Somalia and works in partnership with over 100 cooperating partners (85 percent local NGOs) and over 1,490 food retailers across the country.

These grants, totaling $300,000, collectively represent the largest emergency donations package for Africa in the history of Buddhist Global Relief. Each of these partners has committed to providing BGR with reporting sufficient for us to be accountable to our donors and to provide our supporters with appropriate information about the efforts these funds are supporting.

We are deeply thankful to each and every person who has supported BGR’s work, and we are grateful for each and every donation. Each supporter and each donation directly contributes to our efforts to reduce suffering. Recalling once again the Buddha’s statement that “hunger is the worst illness,” BGR’s leadership, staff, and volunteers remain grateful for these opportunities to help those in need.

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Creating a food oasis in an urban food desert: Easton Urban Farm

Posted on November 6, 2022 | Comments Off on Creating a food oasis in an urban food desert: Easton Urban Farm

By Charles Elliott

Supported by BGR grants since 2018, the Easton Urban Farm (EUF) is a remarkable success story, providing fresh produce to low-income urban residents who struggle to afford basic necessities.  Located in the City of Easton, a small historic town nestled within Eastern Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, EUF serves an often marginalized population facing financial pressure from high rent increases, inflated food and gas prices, and reductions in governmental assistance such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP/Food Stamps). Access to fresh fruits and vegetables is limited in Easton’s Southside and West Ward “food desert” neighborhoods, and the EUF helps fill this gap with its food pantry and direct distribution of fresh produce within the community.

The EUF is a program of the Easton Area Neighborhood Center, a non-profit organization serving area residents since 1967, whose mission is advancing social and economic justice and advocating for the rights of residents with limited resources. In addition to its food assistance, the Neighborhood Center offers a transitional housing program for homeless and “near homeless” families, and rental and utility assistance.

With help from BGR grants and the farm’s excellent stewardship of the land, EUF has dramatically increased its yield from 6,500 pounds of fresh produce in 2019 to more than 11,000 pounds (!) in 2021 on its 5/8 acre farm. Fresh and nutritious food is grown with organic practices, without chemical inputs.

The program year starts early in the year, in February, with an annual community “seed swap” that encourages community cohesion and recruitment of new volunteers.  The farm soil is prepared for planting, and seedlings are planted as early as weather permits. The day-to-day farming work is performed by volunteers, guided by a skilled master gardener. The master gardener not only guides the work of the farm but provides training in best practices for residents who want to create their own vegetable gardens to supplement their food supply at low cost. 

The early crops are ready for harvest by late April, and this produce is offered to area residents through the Center’s food pantry. From mid-June to mid-August, the farm’s produce is distributed through multiple outlets: Lafayette College’s Vegetables In the Community (VIC) program, the Salvation Army,  the Easton Area Community Center’s programs for senior citizens and children; and Harlan House (a high-rise senior citizen public housing building). From mid-August to the end of the year, the produce is distributed through the Center’s food pantry. In late fall, the master gardener plants cover crops to restore the nutrients in the soil and reduce the risk of disease.

This past year, the farm assisted 1,479 residents through just its food pantry distribution alone, including 555 children, 796 adults (18-65 years of age) and 128 senior citizens. The demographics of these beneficiaries reflected the wide racial and ethnic diversity of the community, including White, Hispanic, Asian, African-American, Pacific-Islander, and Indigenous People.

Beyond its direct food assistance, EUF is also a force for social good. It provides a place for community socializing and organizing. It has constructed wheelchair-accessible raised beds for the use of residents with limited mobility, and has received a County grant for a handicapped-accessible path to allow expanded access to farm programs. In 2021, the farm started a youth internship program, providing opportunities for five high school students to work on the Farm for eight weeks, developing good work habits and learning about farming. In addition, the program introduces low-income youth to other career opportunities, with a goal of encouraging them to dream beyond the horizons they may have envisioned for themselves.

The personal stories of EUF’s beneficiaries are poignant reminders of the difficulties faced by some in our communities through circumstances beyond their control and the importance of acts of compassion and charity.

Sue, her partner, and newborn son were relatively new arrivals in Easton, who found themselves homeless. The family was admitted in The Neighborhood Center’s transitional housing program. But soon thereafter, it emerged that the relationship between the couple was abusive and unsustainable. After a period of unsuccessful counseling, Sue’s partner was asked to leave.  As a stay-at-home mother with an infant, the departure of her partner left Sue without any income. The Center arranged for food to be delivered to Sue from the food pantry to cover the gaps between SNAP monthly allotments. She was willing to work but was caught in the Catch-22 of not qualifying for subsidized childcare without a job and not being able to work without subsidized childcare. The Center’s staff was able to successfully secure subsidized childcare for Sue, thus breaking this vicious cycle, and soon she was gainfully employed. Fresh produce from EUF enabled Sue and her infant to thrive during this difficult period with nutritious fresh produce she could rely upon.

Bob is a regular participant in the food pantry. He lives alone in a small apartment and receives a very modest monthly Social Security disability benefit. He is limited in his ability to work by significant intellectual impairments. Recently, his rent was increased from $600 to $650, and his landlord announced his intent to increase the rent even further to $900 a month as of January 2023. Bob was facing hugely increased housing costs caused by Easton’s overheated rental market, and the proposed monthly rent was more than Bob’s disability benefit. While a staff member was able to get the future rent increase reduced to $700 a month, Bob’s financial situation remains difficult and underscores the importance of the fresh produce supplied by EUF to prevent hunger and malnutrition.

The BGR grants provided to EUF have helped to offer a lifeline to disadvantaged Easton-area residents, securing healthy food for children and elderly alike, and changing their lives for the better.

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Winning the Peace: Hunger and Instability

Posted on February 11, 2018 | Comments Off on Winning the Peace: Hunger and Instability

By Charles W. Elliott

An increasingly hungry world is increasingly unstable. A new report issued by the World Food Program USA—Winning the Peace: Hunger and Instability—presents an unprecedented view into the dynamics of the relationship between hunger and social instability.[1]

Based on exhaustive interdisciplinary queries of a database of 90,000,000 peer-reviewed journal articles, the report explores the underpinnings and drivers of humanitarian crises involving food insecurity and conflict. Continue reading →

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The World Reverses Progress on Global Hunger

Posted on November 2, 2017 | 1 comment

By Charles W. Elliott

The newest U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (“FAO”) Annual Report on food security sends a “clear warning signal” of a troubling trend that reverses a long period of progress combating world hunger.

After A Prolonged Decline, World Hunger and Food Insecurity Worsen

FAO 2017 Food Security Report Cover

The 132-page data-rich report, The State of Food Security And Nutrition In The World 2017: Building Resilience For Peace And Food Security [1] notes that for the first time in many years the number of chronically malnourished people across the globe—as well as those suffering from acute hunger—has increased from the prior year, reversing a prolonged historic decline in world hunger. The number of undernourished people jumped from 777 million in 2015 to 815 million in 2016. Every continent except Europe and North America has suffered an increase in prevalence of malnutrition. The report identifies a variety of causes for this reversal and highlights the interrelationships between global hunger, armed conflict, and climate change.

Emerging from the data is a stark picture of 44,000,000 more people now suffering from severe food insecurity than there were just two years ago. In fact, nearly one in ten people around the world, about 689 million people, now suffers from severe food insecurity. (see Report, Table 2). The people of Africa suffer the highest levels of severe food insecurity—27.4 percent of the population, four times that of any other continent.
Continue reading →

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Climate Change and Food System Shocks: Threats of Cascading Catastrophe

Posted on October 17, 2015 | Comments Off on Climate Change and Food System Shocks: Threats of Cascading Catastrophe

Charles W. Elliott

Food System Shocks
A global pre-eminent insurance market is waving red flags about the risk of climate-change shocks to our world food system that could quadruple the price of basic food commodities, cause widespread famine and social instability, and  bring down governments. Are world capitals paying attention?

Adding to the chorus of voices warning of threats to the global food system caused by climate change is global insurer Lloyds, which recently issued its report, “Food System Shock: The insurance impacts of acute disruption to global food supply“.  Food System Shock is one in a series of Lloyd “emerging risk” reports that address risks that are “perceived to be potentially significant but which may not be fully understood or allowed for in insurance terms and conditions, pricing, reserving or capital setting.”  This is not the first risk report on climate change issued by Lloyds (see, Lloyds’ Catastrophe Modelling and Climate Change (2014)), nor the first to address global food security (see, Lloyds’ Feast or Famine (2013)).  But it is the first by Lloyds to connect these two, explicitly addressing the impacts of climate change on food production and follow-on effects to society in a globalized economy.
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Food, Dignity, and the Commons: Frances Moore Lappé

Posted on August 15, 2015 | 1 comment

Charles W. Elliott

Common Dreams has published an insightful interview with activist and author Frances Moore Lappé that illuminates the foundations of the struggle for a just global food economy: democracy and human dignity. Ms. Lappé is perhaps best known for her ground-breaking work on global hunger, recognizing that world hunger is not the result of insufficient food supplies but rather our industrial model of food production and the inability of the poor to access the available abundance of food or its means of production. In short, the problem of global hunger is the problem of poverty, the mal-distribution of political and economic power, and inequality. Acting upon this recognition, rather than a myth of scarcity, undermines multinational corporate attempts to more deeply entrench industrialized control over the global food supply.

Lappé argues that a solution to this inequality-driven hunger is the expansion of “living democracy”, exercised individually and collectively by each person’s daily choices of how we live, thus “infusing the power of citizens’ voices and values throughout our public lives.”  Continue reading →

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Posted in Agriculture, Ending global poverty, Global Hunger, Politics & food justice, Social justice

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New Report: Feeding the World Without GMOs

Posted on April 12, 2015 | 1 comment

Charles W. Elliott

Feeding the World Without GMOsA new report, Feeding The World Without GMOs , by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) refutes the corporate biotech/industrial narrative that genetically modified organism (GMO) foods offer real solutions to global hunger and food insecurity.

Despite significant progress over the past 30 years, the world still faces an ongoing crisis of hunger and food insecurity. 805 million people continue to go hungry, according to estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.[1] The world also faces a “hidden hunger” problem —micronutrient deficiency—which affects some two billion people, causing long-term, irreversible health effects and significantly impairing economic productivity. We face stark challenges posed by population growth: by 2050 the demand for food will be twice what it was in 2005.[2]

Feeding the World Without GMOs takes a hard look at ways to address this problem and concludes that GMO food is a non-solution. In nine pages of tight synthesis, it analyzes: (1) why GE crops don’t contribute to food security; (2) what would work to boost the global food supply; and (3) the unfulfilled promise of genetic engineering.
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Marching Toward A New Climate Future

Posted on September 26, 2014 | 1 comment

Charles W. Elliott

BGR at Peoples Climate March

 

This past Sunday, Buddhist Global Relief joined 400,000 others at the People’s Climate March in New York to demand swift action to halt the threat of global climate change. The streets were filled with marchers as far as the eye could see with young and old, rich and poor, of all races and religions, joined by their common humanity.

Buddhist Global Relief was part of an Interfaith contingent of thousands that packed 58th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues so tightly there was barely room to breathe. Joining us were more than twenty other Buddhist groups in the common cause of compassion and concern for the world.

BGR Peoples Climate March
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Posted in Agriculture, Climate change, Engaged Buddhism, Food insecurity, Global Hunger

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There’s No Debate about Climate Change Denial

Posted on February 22, 2014 | 1 comment

Charles W. Elliott

Originally published at DeSmogBlog

 

Fact and fantasy took the stage at this past Sunday’s CBS “Meet the Press”. Bill Nye and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R. Tenn.) appeared for a so-called “debate” on climate change. Bill Nye is best known for his educational science program “Bill Nye the Science Guy”.  Climate change-denier Blackburn is known, among other things, for echoing Sarah Palin’s claims that the Affordable Care Act included “death panels.” Somewhat less known is Blackburn’s role as vice-chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, responsible for legislative oversight on matters of public health, air quality and environmental health, and energy.

One would think that a person in such an important role would have a clear, if not advanced, understanding of the science of energy and climate change in order to guide policy to further the public interest and protect our children’s future.

Sadly, one would be wrong.
Continue reading →

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