Cross-posted with Advocacy
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Showing posts with label Food equality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Food equality. Show all posts
Tuesday, 19 May 2015
Part 4: 'Slaving Away' outfall and fall-out : Woolworths admits moral responsibiity at Senate Inquiry : still refusing to meet workers and the National Union of Workers
Tuesday, 5 May 2015
Part 3: The conscious consumer becomes the aware and ethical shopper. Destroy the slavers from the checkouts of Australia!
PLEASE NOTE THERE IS A PETITION TO SIGN
AFTER LAST NIGHT'S SLAVING AWAY ON FOUR CORNERS.
PLEASE SIGN IT. GET IT AROUND.
YOU WILL FIND IT HERE.
Hopefully, this post, Part 3 on the Four Corners program, Slaving Away, is the last ... but who knows?
Please remember the words at left:
Every time you spend money,
you're casting a vote
for the kind of world you want.
One thing Slaving Away makes clear is there is room for the conscientious, ethical shopper. If you are someone who has breezed through your shopping only focusing on personal needs or needs of your household; if you are someone who has never considered the term 'ethics' in relation to visits to Coles, Aldi, Woolworths, then now is the time to step up.
First of all, let me introduce you to Shop Ethical!
Shop Ethical! still continues as it started - a booklet you can keep with your wallet for your shopping trips. Then it became a website. And now, for your smart phone, there is an app. Shop Ethical can tell you about sustainable fishing, fair trade, human and animal rights abuses... and more.
However, it is best if you can keep up for yourself because quite often the naughties make the headlines.
Take Baiada, the poultry people. Their brands are well-known: Lilydale (a major supplier to Coles and even the cooked chooks at Coles are Lilydale) and Steggles.
However, it is not only chooks that Baiada kill. They kill people too. And racism has been an issue within its migrant workforce. Hardly the employer of your choice - that's if you really had a choice, which many migrant workers do not have.
I steer clear of Baiada products since all that came to my notice. I am predominantly vegetarian but another household member is a carnivore - so chook is bought once a week for that person. However, since the slavery accusations, I have declared to the household that chicken is DEFINITELY off the menu until I can find a really ethical source. I don't rank my chances highly!
Akers Farms (turn to Part 2) apparently provides most of the sweet potatoes up and down the east coast. I'm going to go back to local farmers markets and see what I can find in the way of an ethical source.
As you, the ethical consumer will realise, fruit and veg in the major suppliers comes either on a plastic wrapped tray or loose. I've never paid much attention - but I did happen to note that I bought some packaged celery and zucchini from Aldi and one gave information about the supplier. I think we, as ethical shoppers, have to be able to check the source of a product if we wish. So I am going to be writing to the Big 3 asking for the source of the product to be supplied on the loose fruit and veg.
It is noteworthy that Slaving Away did not deal with Metcash, the suppliers of IGAs. Not enough hours in the day? Brands the same and if dealt with once in the Big 3, no need to go there again?
So what will the ethical shopper be looking out for:
- Fair Trade -v- Unfair Trade
- Animal cruelty
- Human cruelty - as in Slaving Away
- Fair pay and safe working conditions
- Union membership
- Local product and produce to support local jobs and firms
- Ethical corporate conduct
- Pricing - fair, too high, too low. Watch out for too low. How? Why? What shortcuts?
- Quality
If you think of a few other necessary things to add to the above list, please let me know.
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Tuesday, 20 August 2013
Talking about food: where it comes from, where the left-overs end up. Waste not - Want not!
Dear Networkers,
Sometimes it would be great to have a jet aircraft or time machine at one's beck and call. And if I had some marvellous free transport near at hand, I would be off to New York City for this event. Food, food waste, composting etc are topics of great interest to me.
It appears that a star-studded cast has been assembled for this foodtank event.
I live in Ballarat - and I would love to have such an event with speakers of this calibre speaking here. Locally, if such an event were to take place in Ballarat, we might have some speakers to touch on the topics of the waste associated with the destruction of fruit trees because the processor won't give producers contracts; the waste if low supermarket prices drive dairy farmers from their farms or into other forms of food production.
There are three things that keeps us alive - clean air, clean water, fresh food. While we are working to alert the world to Climate Change and renewable energy, we ignore at our peril this trinity of basics. Included in this short list are the background issues - good, sound, productive soil; regulation of any interference or possible interference with the cleanliness and freshness of our air, water and food; the maintenance of fair livelihoods.
So can we have a big think and discussion about this?
Blessings from Miss Eagle ~~~
A very special evening discussion bringing together the New York City food movement for food waste awareness week. Hosted by Food Tank: The Food Think Tank
Sept 19th 5:30PM to 7:30PM EST
The Snapple Theater, 1627 Broadway, New York, NY, 10019
Musical Guest:
Speakers:
and many more to be announced soon!
Drinks and light snacks included!
$25 donation. Limited tickets available, purchase now.
If you have any questions, please call 202-590-1037 or email danielle@foodtank.org.
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Feeding the 7 billion ... what are we feeding ourselves?
Wonder how we feed 7 billion people? Not graphic, just sad, but really worth watching. Looks at our relationships with the animals we consume. We need to be accountable for how our food is produced and we need to appreciate the repercussions of our decisions.
If you don't see anything wrong with this....maybe watch it again.
I shall pass through this world but once, any good thing therefore I can do or any kindness I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now, let me not defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again.Stephen Grellet
The animals you eat are not those who devour others; you do not eat the carnivorous beasts, you take them as your pattern. You only hunger after sweet and gentle creatures who harm no one, which follow you, serve you, and are devoured by you as the reward of their service. John Jacques Rousseau
God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages. Jacques Deval, Afin de vivre bel et bien
The history of cancer research has been a history of curing cancer in the mouse. We have cured mice of cancer for decades, and it simply didn’t work in humans.Dr Richard Klausner, Director, National Cancer Institute, LA Times, May 6. 1998
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Friday, 24 May 2013
One to keep! Food Tank's list of 40 organisations who care about the way food is eaten, grown, bought & sold
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Wednesday, 6 March 2013
Swiss company evicts farmers for biofuel
From CorpWatch:
Sierra Leone Farmers Evicted
for Sugarcane Biofuel Plantations
by Jennifer Kennedy, CorpWatch Blog
March 5th, 2013
Sierra Leone Farmers Evicted
for Sugarcane Biofuel Plantations
by Jennifer Kennedy, CorpWatch Blog
March 5th, 2013
The Makeni project in the Bombali and Tonkolili districts of western Sierra Leone was initiated in 2008 on land acquired by Addax, a subsidiary of Oryx, an energy corporation founded by Swiss billionaire Jean Claude Gandur. Sugarcane grown on 10,000 hectares of land will be processed in a neighboring ethanol refinery and a biomass power plant to deliver a total of 100,000 megawatt hours of power for export to Europe once all the infrastructure has been completed later this year. Addax has planted the fast growing sugar cane on large areas of productive land known as the bolilands even though it promised not to, alleges SiLNoRF’s in its 2012 annual monitoring report. “[Addax] has taken away most of the bolilands and the people, they are saying that they have been stolen from them,” Abass J. Kamara, programmes coordinator for SiLNoRF, told CorpWatch. (The company has a 50 year lease for a total of 57,000 hectares of land in Sierra Leone. "Now I don’t have a farm. Starvation is killing people. We have to buy rice to survive because we don't grow our own now," one community member told Canadian journalist, Joan Baxter at an April 2012 farmers' conference organized by SiLNoRF and Green Scenery, another Sierra Leonean civil society organization. For Sierra Leone, a small West African nation that ranks as one of the poorest countries in the world, which is slowly emerging from a brutal civil from war that displaced about half of its population from 1991-2002, this issue of food security is a major national problem, according to the Oakland Institute, a U.S. based think tank. The current government headed by President Ernest Bai Koroma has favored the introduction of industrial farming as a way to meet this challenge. For example, in 2009, the government created the National Sustainable Agriculture Development Plan (NSADP), to “increase the agriculture sector’s contribution to the national economy by increasing productivity through commercialization and private sector participation.” The Makeni project, which has been touted as the country’s ‘flagship investment’ for agricultural development, has received €142 million in loans from several European development banks such as the Netherlands Development Finance Company (FMO) and the German Development Finance Institution (DEG – Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH). Included in the list is the UK’s Department of International Development (DFID) sponsored Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund (EAIF). In order to resolve the conflict with local farmers who have relied on the land for generations, Addax ‘lured’ community members into signing away their land to Addax with‘juicy’ but non-binding promises to build schools, medical facilities, and community centers, alleges Bread for All. Kamara noted that the communities’ right to “free, prior and informed consent” had been violated because Addax had only talked about positive changes, neglecting to mention any of the project’s possible negative impacts. Addax also set up an alternative farming mitigation project called the Farmer Development Program (FDP) but this has failed to provide adequate long-term food security for impacted farmers so far, according to a joint report by SiLNoRF and Bread for All published in September 2012. A key stumbling block is the fact that farmers have to pay the full cost of seeds, harrowing, and ploughing on this new land after just three years which SiLNoRF says will be hard. For example Kamara told CorpWatch that “farmers are confined to smaller portions of land and they are being encourage by Addax to use mechanized methods of farming like fertilizers and other pesticides and these people cannot afford to pay for them.” Although Addax pays compensation of $12 per hectare per year to many of the community members, an “Independent study report of the Addax Bioenergy sugarcane-to-ethanol project in the Makeni region in Sierra Leone” published by SiLNoRF says that this is not a “fair and adequate amount’” as it would not be enough to purchase a single meal in the province’s regional capital of Makeni.Responding to the publication of the SiLNoRF study, Addax said that it “vigorously contests the allegations contained in the strongly biased report which neither reflects the reality on the ground nor takes any notice of the unprecedented efforts deployed on the ground to engage with local communities and improve their daily lives.” NGOs blame the development agencies for having created this conflict. A report titled ‘The Hunger Games' published by War on Want, a UK NGO, alleges that DFID has used taxpayers’ money to support “land grabbing” in Africa by supporting big agribusinesses over millions of subsistence farmers, condemning the latter to poverty. War on Want points out that DFID helped finance the creation of the Sierra Leone Investment and Export Promotion Agency (SLIEPA) in 2008, which has been aggressively promoting foreign investment” that has resulted in some 500,000 hectares of land being acquired by foreign corporations, according to SiLNoRF. Addax is not the only company which has been accused of land grabbing in Sierra Leone. In the southern district of Pujehun, land disputes are also simmering between local famers and Socfin Agricultural Company Sierra Leone Limited, a subsidiary of Socfin Group which is majority owned by the French investment and holding conglomerate, Bolloré Group. Despite promised benefits, many families are vehemently opposed to the leasing of their farmland for rubber and oil plantations, according to Green Scenery, a Sierra Leonian NGO. |
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Monday, 18 February 2013
Think before you buy - act before you toss - the cost of food waste in Australia
The following extract is from the National Food Waste Assessment - Final Report prepared last year for the Australian Government by the Institute of Sustainable Futers and the University of Technology Sydney.
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The increased generation of food waste is a global and
national problem. It has several facets, all of which can benefit from a clear
understanding of the size and nature of food waste generated across all phases
of the food production and consumption cycle. Of most concern to many
stakeholders is the impact food waste has on the generation of greenhouse gas
emissions such as methane and carbon dioxide. However, there are also growing
concerns about the economic and environmental viability of existing food waste
disposal systems, as well as interest in food waste as a resource input to
agriculture.
Many studies have been undertaken to assess food waste in
Australia. This data assessment project has collated and reviewed the quality
and nature of 1262 such studies, ranging from regional waste management
authority reporting and research papers to national studies, and presented the
results in the form of an extensive spreadsheet database and this report. While
many of these studies may be of sufficient quality and relevance for their
intended purpose (e.g. a physical waste audit of a specific company undertaken
to inform a waste management strategy for that company), it is not possible to
aggregate the data from all such studies to make sufficiently accurate
conclusions about food waste data at the national (or even state) level. This
view has been formed on the basis that the available data is extremely variable
in terms of what is being studied (packaging, food waste, ‘green waste’,
non-specified or ‘other’ waste), geographical coverage, methodology and
sampling approaches.
When considered together, existing studies related to food waste
data (e.g. proportion of putrescible waste in residential solid waste streams)
indicate that Australian data on food waste generation and fate (e.g. landfill,
recovered, collected for charitable redistribution) is on the whole scarce,
fragmented and disaggregated. This research has confirmed that for most phases
of the food production cycle this characterisation is accurate.
Although the absence of rigorously measured and verifiable
data presents an uncomfortable degree of uncertainty for policy development
processes, the implications of different approaches can be explored on a
theoretical basis using existing estimates. For example, preliminary
evaluations of several studies by federal and state government indicate that
existing food waste management practices are contributing to Australia’s
greenhouse gas burden and creating opportunity costs from lost productivity.
Policy developed to respond to these and other challenges
will require a much larger and more consistent base of data if confident progress
in these areas is to be achieved.
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Thursday, 18 October 2012
Now it's all about Peak Food. Come to the People's Food Plan Public Forum
Links relating to Peak Food
Peak Food - famine in The West by 2025?
Peak Food is near
The World Bank:
Severe droughts drive food prices higher, threatening the poor
Resource crunch: why many things cost much more
Responding to Peak Oil, Peak Food, and Peak Population
Peak Oil=Peak Food=Peak People
Peak Food and Urban Agriculture
Peak Food is near
The World Bank:
Severe droughts drive food prices higher, threatening the poor
Resource crunch: why many things cost much more
Responding to Peak Oil, Peak Food, and Peak Population
Peak Oil=Peak Food=Peak People
Peak Food and Urban Agriculture
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