Agriculture

Can the City Save the Farm?

Articles — Thu, 31 May 2007 06:32:00 -0400

Even if you’re only the slightest bit familiar with California’s $30 billion-plus farm economy, you may have heard the lament: urban development is steamrolling the state’s agricultural belt. Every day, bountiful fields surrender to big-box stores, fast-food restaurants, and residential sprawl. More than 100,000 acres were paved over in the Central Valley alone in the 1990s, and experts estimate that nearly 1 million more could vanish within a generation. Today’s Country Mouse is tomorrow’s City Mouse (or, more likely, a critter skittering across a cookiecutter suburban subdivision).

But while this threat is real and not to be taken lightly, it tends… more

The Cancun Delusion

Articles — Fri, 12 Sep 2003 00:00:00 -0400

The World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun, Mexico, has highlighted a surprising new cause, promoted by a surprising new alliance. The new cause is the campaign to reduce or eliminate agricultural subsidies in the United States, Europe and Japan, to make room for agricultural exports from poor nations. The alliance between idealists of the left, third world producers and traditional conservative promoters of free trade is equally unprecedented.

But the Cancun coalition is unlikely to last. It is bound to fray when it becomes clear that while the free traders are getting what they want out of the partnership -- lower… more

Engineered Food Can Help the World's Poor

Articles — Tue, 03 Sep 2002 00:00:00 -0400

Johannesburg -- The apartheid system is gone, but many here at the World Summit on Sustainable Development seem to want to bring back a form of "separate and unequal" for South Africa and for the rest of the Third World -- in the form of environmental regulation that would stifle economic development.

Politically correct greens, of course, recoil at the thought of any kind of racism, but actions speak louder than words. So, if ecological activists from the developed countries of the North push policies that would retard agriculture in the developing South, consigning billions to permanent poverty,… more

Untangling the Knots of Protectionism

Economic Growth — Sun, 01 Sep 2002 00:00:00 -0400

In the months leading up to the votes on Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), President Bush had to buy off powerful domestic constituencies with tariffs on steel and, more recently, increased subsidies for agriculture. Now that he has TPA, the President has wisely reversed course and proposed a far-reaching plan to use the Doha round of trade talks to eliminate the majority of world-government support for agricultural products by 2010. The agricultural proposal, in conjunction with TPA, will hopefully enable the administration to undo years of European Union and U.S. protectionist policy. This will provide benefits to taxpayers, consumers, and… more

Breaking the Borders

Articles — Thu, 30 May 2002 00:00:00 -0400

Thought at one time to be the likely centrepiece of its foreign policy, the Bush administration's relations with Latin America are in disarray.

Argentina, once Washington's neo-liberal darling, is in the midst of an economic and social meltdown. In Venezuela, the White House is backtracking after having been caught giving its blessing to an aborted coup attempt. US military involvement in Colombia is growing. And Brazil, one of the few bright spots in Latin America, is hammering the US for its recently imposed tariffs on steel. This month, negotiations were supposed to begin on plans to create a Free… more