JOHN VIDAL, - The Guardian (U.K.)/The Raw Story
Stephan: It is becoming increasingly clear that the industrial agriculture model that dominates the world is less productive more toxic, and more socially disruptive than available alternatives. But the owners of the industrial system now control 75 per cent of the world's farmland. Think about that.
The world’s food supplies are at risk because farmland is becoming rapidly concentrated in the hands of wealthy elites and corporations, a study has found.
Small farmers, the UN says, grow 70% of the world’s food but a new analysis of government data suggests the land which they control is shrinking every year as mega-farms and plantations squeeze them onto less than 25% of the world’s available farmland, says international land-use group Grain. These mega-farms are less productive in terms of amount of food they produce per area of land, the report argues.
‘Small farms have less than a quarter of the world’s agricultural land – or less than 20% excluding China and India. Such farms are getting smaller all the time, and if this trend persists they might not be able to continue to feed the world,” says the report which draws on government statistics and calls for a stop on land grabbing by corporations.
The report suggests that the single most important factor in the drive to push small farmers onto ever smaller parcels of land is the worldwide expansion of industrial commodity crop farms. ‘The powerful demands of food and energy industries are shifting farmland and water away from direct […]
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Stephan: It is beginning to dawn on the very richest that from inequity social instability arises. They remember the guillotine. I actually think this is good news. On the other hand consider the concentration of wealth this meeting represents.
Talk of economic mobility and the wealth gap is hardly new. From the Occupy movement to President Obama’s re-election campaign, income inequality has been in the spotlight for years.
Even so, the in London on Tuesday broke new ground. Not because of the conversation, but because of the people having it.
The 250 people from around the world invited to attend this one-day conference do not represent “the 99 percent,” or even the 1 percent. It’s more like a tiny fraction of the 1 percent.
“We have $30 trillion of assets under management in the room,” says conference organizer Lynn Forester de Rothschild, who runs , a major investment firm she and her husband, of the storied Rothschild banking family, founded in 2003.
That amount – $30 trillion – is roughly one-third of the total investable wealth in the world. If money is power, then this is the most powerful group of people ever to focus on income inequality.
“If this bulk of capital decides that they are going to invest in companies that aren’t only thinking about the short-term profit,” says Rothschild, “then we will see corporate behavior change.”
The titans of commerce and finance didn’t necessarily fly to this meeting in London out of […]
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BHARAT KUMAR, MD, - ABC News
Stephan: More on the American child and youth trend. Except for a privileged few, American children are fatter, less physically fit, less able to read, poorer in math, English, and science then their peers in other countries. What kind of American future do you think that portends?
You’ve probably heard the complaints since you were a kid yourself – children aren’t getting enough exercise. Now there are numbers behind this notion.
According to a new report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than half of adolescents aged 12 to 15 are considered physically unfit.
The authors of the report tested more than 600 young teenagers on treadmills to measure cardiorespiratory fitness, a measure of how well the heart and lungs can move blood to supply muscles during exercise.
They found that just half of all boys and only a third of all girls in the study met the bare minimum threshold of being called ‘fit.” Taken as a whole, this meant that only 42 percent of kids were fit. In 2000, by comparison, this figure was 52 percent – lackluster for sure, but still a majority.
Not surprisingly, overweight and obese children were less fit than those who had a healthy weight; only 30 percent of overweight children and 20 percent of obese passed the minimum standards to be called fit. But even so, only 54 percent of children with normal weight – barely half – had adequate levels of cardiorespiratory fitness.
Dr. Jaime Gahche, the lead author […]
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MICHAEL TOMASKY, - The Daily Beast
Stephan: Another example that Theocratic Rightist social policies produce inferior outcomes. And this is going to significantly power the Red Blue Great Schism Trend.
Is it really cost that’s driving the House GOP to fight Michelle Obama on school lunches? Of course not-it’s the culture wars, the sugar lobby, and plain old hatred of her husband.
Some days you have to wonder where the Republicans would draw the ‘if Obama’s for it, we’re against it” line. I can’t think of a single instance these past five years when Barack Obama endorsed something and Republicans said, ‘Hey, that’s actually a good idea!” The comic nadir, you’ll remember, was when Obama was for lower taxes (of the payroll variety), and they even contrived a way to be against that, at least for a while.
So it should not come as a surprise to us that now Republicans want more fat kids. And the reason Republicans want more fat kids is straightforward and predictable: Michelle Obama wants fewer of them. And that’s all they need to know. If she’s fer it, they’re agin’ it.
I’m talking of course about the school lunch program food fight going on now between the first lady and the GOP House. At Mrs. Obama’s behest, the school lunch program was overhauled in 2010 to include more fresh fruits and vegetables, fewer overall calories, somewhat smaller […]
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CONNOR ADAMS SHEETS, - International Business Times
Stephan: More on the corruption of the American food system. This story ought to be a full-time scandal being discussed in all media. It's worth asking why this isn't happening.
Do you know what you’re eating? The number of American food products containing nanomaterials has increased tenfold since 2008, said a report released this week, reviving concerns about the miniscule particles and their place on our plates.
The Friends of the Earth environmental group, which conducted the study, reports that its researchers found unregulated, ‘unlabeled nano-ingredients” in dozens of popular food products ranging from Oreos and Twinkies to Kraft American Singles and Betty Crocker Mashed Potatoes.
Titled ‘Tiny Ingredients, Big Risks,” the report suggests that the prevalence of nanoparticles in food products presents serious dangers to human health. Some nanomaterials ‘have been found to be highly toxic to cells in test tube and animal studies,” and a number of individual nanoparticles have been identified as carcinogenic, the report said. But there is little evidence on the impact of humans’ ingestion of nanomaterials.
Nanomaterials, also referred to as nanoparticles or nanofoods, are loosely defined as any material with a dimension — length or width — of less than 100 nanometers. In food, they’re used mainly for aesthetic purposes such as making powdered toppings whiter and frostings shinier. They are often intentionally added during the manufacturing process as industrially produced powders but are also […]
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