CommonDreams.org
by Jim Goodman
As 2009 approaches, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) notes nearly a billion people a day go hungry worldwide. While India supplies Switzerland with 80% of its wheat, 350 million Indians are food-insecure. Rice prices have nearly tripled since early 2007 because, according to The International Rice Research Institute, rice-growing land [...]

Posted in Opinion/Editorial |

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Op-Ed Columnist, New York Times
As Barack Obama ponders whom to pick as agriculture secretary, he should reframe the question. What he needs is actually a bold reformer in a position renamed “secretary of food.”
A Department of Agriculture made sense 100 years ago when 35 percent of Americans engaged in farming. But today, [...]

Posted in Opinion/Editorial |

Western Farm Press
The release of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for October proves what too many Americans already have learned the hard way: input costs for food processors are way down but the prices they charge grocery shoppers continue to climb. Prices for virtually everything consumers buy – gasoline, airline tickets, clothing – dropped in [...]

Posted in Opinion/Editorial |

The New York Times Magazine
By MICHAEL POLLAN
Dear Mr. President-Elect,
It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least [...]

Posted in Opinion/Editorial |

OpEdNews.com
by Jim Goodman
John McCain and Barack Obama need to start talking farm policy. With less than a month before the November elections in a year marked by a world wide food crisis, energy shortages, climate change and an international credit crisis, agriculture should be a prominent issue in every media event.
Current farm [...]

Posted in Opinion/Editorial |