Egypt - Masr yamma ya bahiyya

What's going on in Egypt? Here's an article by Hashim Safieddine titled: "The economic stick and Egypt's dependency: The forgotten face of the struggle". The author discusses the replacement of US aid to Egypt with trade agreements, which are pushing the country into the neo-liberal camp, a move that only profits Capital. He also discusses linkages between aid and radical economic reforms (this is very common with US aid). He then indicates that the invisible hand of the market did not benefit Egypt as much as it did the US: US imports into Egypt increased but Egyptian exports to the US did not, which caused further trade imbalances. These are evaluated at $1.5 billions, or one and a half times the total value of aid offered by the US since 1998. The author also makes an interesting observation, which is the change of hands of the regime from the military and bureaucrats (Mubarak the elder) to the businessmen (Mubarak the younger).

Another article on the Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris by Dina Hashmat in which she says: "Of course he loves Egypt, which country could have made him richer?" (he is number 62 in Forbes list of billionaires 2007). Worth reading if you are interested in token "good" gestures of cut-throat capital.

And then there is this Washington Post article on the Egyptian government appropriating farmer's land on the Island of Gold, a small island populated with farmers who feed much of Cairo with grain, dairy and vegetables. The purpose: urban development- investments that benefit a precious few. This is what the farmers think of it:

""We will die to protect this land," said Ashraf Kamal, a 46-year-old farmer.

"We will die, and they will die, too," said Um Khaled, 56, a woman with chapped, round cheeks sitting in a reed hut lit by bars of sunlight. "

And you know what the sad thing is? They probably will...

From the economic page: wages, cartels, cold damages and trade deficit.

Today's economic page in Al Akhbar carried a lot of very interesting articles. I learned that there seems to be some progress towards increasing the minimum monthly wage to $300. Not a moment too soon, especially with the 25% registered increase in cost of living. But I'll believe in the raise when I'll see it. after all, the government believes that no one in Lebanon earns the minimum wager, and then publishes data to show that 30% of the population is below the poverty line. There is also a report to indicate that now that the flour mills cartel seems to have been slightly neutralized, it is the bakeries cartel that is trying to benefit from the flour subsidies. In addition, there are 2 reports on the damages caused by the cold wave to the beekeepers of the North (Akkar and Dinniyeh, with data about their number and their production) and to the vegetable farmers in Bint Jbeil (one of them an organic farmer). And finally three numbers: $9,697 millions- these are the total imports of Lebanon until October 2007; and $2,282 million- these are the total exports from Lebanon during the same period; and $7,415 millions, is the trade deficit. Interestingly (?) metal products were the main imports ($5,175 millions) and...metals were the main exports ($416 millions).

Badael-Alternatives

It's Friday, the day Al-Akhbar publishes the "Alternatives" page: A main article on the water of South Lebanon by Nadim Farajallah, my editorial on destructive chaos in the Lebanese economy, an article on freekeh (smoked wheat, cooked as rice), another on wild chicory, and Rana Hayeck asks: should we eat vegetables frozen of fresh?

Iraqi agriculture

"In the 1950s, Iraq was self-sufficient in agricultural production, according to a 2004 Congressional Research Service report. But by the 1960s it imported 15 percent of its food, by 1980 it imported half, and by 2002 it relied on imports for 80 to 100 percent of many staples, including wheat, rice and vegetable oil, under the United Nations oil-for-food program.

Part of the reason for that slide from self-sufficiency was a rapidly growing population that outpaced production capabilities. Throughout the 1980s the Iraqi government heavily subsidized agricultural production. But by the mid-1990s economic problems related to international sanctions ended much of that support, and lack of resources such as fertilizer, farm machinery and pesticides meant production dropped. Also, water pumps and irrigation canals -- which are essential to most farming in the country and which must be cleaned and repaired each year -- were neglected, leading to problems with soil salinity.

Some U.S. and international organizations are working to help rehabilitate Iraq's agricultural infrastructure.

Since 2006, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service has sent employees to Iraq to serve on Provincial Reconstruction Teams -- groups of civilians that work with military units on reconstruction projects. As of late January, 23 USDA agricultural advisers were working across Iraq." (thanks D.)

Don't you just love how they break everything and then make you pay for fixing it? What did Klein call it again? Disaster capitalism? And now they have "embedded professional development experts" with the army. I blogged about these earlier.

Read the article for the list of projects that are supposed to change the face of food sovereignty in Iraq. Example: A beekeeper association in a town. Those people have no imagination! This is exactly the same kind of projects they set up in Lebanon and elsewhere through over paid and overfed US NGOs and then claim it as a contribution to sustainable livelihoods. This is smaller than a pin prick. And rest assured that in the absence of a strong state that builds infrastructure (destroyed by the war) and supports the establishment of agricultural inputs factories (bombed by the US) and agrofood industries (destroyed by the war too), there can be no salvation. Not to sound conspiratory, but look how beautifully designed: Northern NGOs get multi millions contracts to teach the date growers how to grow dates, everybody celebrates the achievement of the token civil society group (this falls under the general label: "Democracy"), and the millions of Iraqis who have not yet been made refugees continue to consume the products imported from the North paying for it high prices from oil sales. Who said the the oil-for-food program has ended?

And if you don't believe me, read what this Iraqi economist says in the same article: "And he questioned some of the agricultural laws put in place by the coalition provisional authority in 2004, which he said could pave the way for international agribusinesses to enter the Iraqi market in a way that would be detrimental to the average farmer."

honnivores

"We'll try more or less anything: kangaroo, ostrich, monkey's brains, dog, horse, foie gras, larks. And it's all got to be cheap, so the rich and the poor can all have as much as they want, and no one who can afford organic or humanely reared food may criticise nasty production methods, because they are privileged snotters who have no right to tell the poor what to do. So on we go, gorging on anything that moves and takes our fancy, growing the billions of acres of crops to feed the millions of animals that we don't even need to eat."

Arab food security

An article in Al Safir on Arab Food Security, calling for a revival of the (alas anachronistic) idea of a Greater Arab Food Production Strategy and integration of the production capabilities of Arab countries. I remember this was a very fashionable idea during Nasser's time, and it was promoted by Arab Nationalists everywhere. The land of Sudan and Iraq, the waters of the Nile, the Euphrates and the Tigris, the local manpower and the investment capacity of the oil-rich Gulf: these were the central tenets of the concept. This of course never worked, I assume for political reasons (look at the sate of leadership in the Arab World). It would be interesting however to calculate the true potential of food production of the Arab World and see if together they can be net exporters, provided adequate technology and investment. For now, these are the figures presented in the article: In 1985, the value of food exports from the Arab World wa 13% that of the imports, which totaled 20 billion $. Things haven't gotten better since.

I'm not a supporter of the classical food security idea, and some degree of trade is necessary and healthy, but to be that dependent on food imports is just plain stupid. With the increase in demand for grain-fed meat in China and the high demand for cereals in many Arab countries and considering the limited world food supplies, the poorer Arab countries will soon be competing with Chinese livestock for their staple. Way to go.

Trees to firewood

From today's Al-Akhbar, an article on wood harvesting in the Bekaa. With fuel oil prices sky high, and unreliable and expensive electricity supply, many people have gone back to firewood for heating. This article says that 12,000 tons of wood originating from woods but also from orchards which are being abandoned by their owners and turned into cash. Orchards are being cut because the cost of production does not apparently is not justified by the profits: cherry, apricots, grapevines are disappearing; but also oak, juniper and pine.

Good bye pork pie hat

"As a result, Dr. Lynfield said the investigators had begun leaning toward a seemingly bizarre theory: that exposure to the hog brain itself might have touched off an intense reaction by the immune system, something akin to a giant, out-of-control allergic reaction. Some people might be more susceptible than others, perhaps because of their genetic makeup or their past exposures to animal tissue. The aerosolized brain matter might have been inhaled or swallowed, or might have entered through the eyes, the mucous membranes of the nose or mouth, or breaks in the skin.
...
Dr. Lynfield hopes to find the cause. But she said: “I don’t know that we will have the definitive answer. I suspect we will be able to rule some things out, and will have a sense of whether it seems like it may be due to an autoimmune response. I think we’ll learn a lot, but it may take us a while. It’s a great detective story.”"

Workers getting sick from contact with pork brains in meat packing plants: what a great opportunity for a whodunit.

Granos, a new Slow Food project

What is GranOS for?

The objective of GranOS is to describe and protect the genetic, morphological, and physiological characteristics of conservation plant varieties, along with their known food and non-food uses.

In this respect it resembles the aims of the CGIAR network, but with one important difference: the varieties are conserved “in vivo” and not “ex-situ” or even “in vitro”. By “ex-situ” conservation we mean conservation outside the exact place of origin in centers of the above network, with periodical sowing of seed material to prevent loss of terminability. With the GranOS project, seeds remain “in situ”, in farms, houses and fields, as well as in existing germplasm banks and collections of seed saver associations, who in recent decades have done fundamentally important, invaluable work. In addition to the other information about a seed which will be placed online, GranOS will also indicate where it can be obtained and who uses it to produce products based on it. In this way GranOS will not only be an instrument for conservation and cataloging, but also an instrument for promoting food products based on the seeds.

Food puritanism

"It's good to get a historical perspective on these matters, though Kaufman is perhaps a little reductive in his approach. Still, he makes some valuable points about how the stomach influences the ways Americans view themselves. "Our understanding of virtue and vice, success and failure, has long been expressed in the language of appetite, consumption, and digestion," he writes. Our appetites may drive us, but so does our need to control them. For a Puritan like Mather, the stomach was an organ that needed to be tamed and purified. "He that would have a Clear Head," Mather proclaimed, "must have a Clean Stomach." He was fanatical on this issue and concocted schemes involving vomiting and fasting to keep stomach and mind in good working order.

Such attitudes aren't just a thing of the past. In fact, Kaufman argues, the views of the organic food movement aren't much different from Mather's. He reports on a "subversive" group of New Yorkers who swear by unpasteurized milk, which is not only "totally forbidden" but just might give you tuberculosis. Such raw-food devotees, he writes, are "postmodern Puritans" intent on "banishing all traces of pollution from their digestive tracts and every last antibiotic from all the world's food supply." Kaufman, however, is suspicious: There's just too much danger lurking in all that so-called purity." (Thanks D.)

A review of Kaufman's book: "A Short History of the American Stomach". I haven't read the book, but there is more than puritanism in the food movement: some would call it fundamentalism.

Helping Gaza Resist and Exist

Seven years ago, the Arab Group for the Protection of Nature started its campaigns for Palestine, with a focus on sustainable development even in its relief efforts. Due to the current circumstances in the Gaza Strip, APN is undertaking the following projects:

"From the Besieged Farmer to the Besieged Family" Campaign - Gaza

• Preparing food baskets consisting of foodstuffs and produce bought from farmers and distributing them among needy families, which have lost their livelihoods due to invasions, closures and the resulting deaths and loss of jobs among family providers.
• The baskets contain locally produced cheese, palm dates, thyme, strawberry juice, tomato, cucumber, potato, cabbage, onion and cauliflower
• Required amount: $200,000 - $70 per basket (2,130 baskets for 2,130 families)

"They Uproot One Tree.We Plant Ten" Campaign - reclamation and planting of destroyed agricultural lands in Gaza

· Today, more than 80% of Gaza's population, the majority of which are farmers, live under the poverty line with unemployment reaching more than 40%. 70,000 farmers and 30,000 agricultural workers were affected by the poor conditions in the agricultural sector.

· The project will contribute to planting more than 20,000 trees in the destroyed lands.

· Required amount for rehabilitation and planting: $100,000

The Arab Group for the Protection of Nature

Tele: 5673331, e-mail: apnature@go.com.jo

Fax: 5699777, P.O.Box 811815 Amman - 11181 Jordan

www.apnature.org

Bank Account for the trees planting campaign JD 0128/258383-6/500

$ 0128/258383-6/510

? 0128/258383-6/598

Swift code: ARABJOAX128
Arab Bank, Gardens Branch/ Amman

This is a message I have received from Gaza.

Lula's great achievement

"After decades of steady obliteration, the tide appeared to have turned against the illegal deforestation that has disfigured the world's largest tropical rainforest. Brazil's president, Lula da Silva, went on the radio in August to trumpet the breakthrough. His environment minister, Marina Silva, hailed "a great achievement for Brazilian society".

Yesterday, however, the good news came to a halt when ministers admitted that after three years on the wane deforestation had once again risen sharply.

Article continues

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Government satellite images show that at least 1,280 sq miles (3,235 sq kilometers) of rainforest were lost between August and December last year, mainly because of soy planting and cattle ranching. Environment ministry officials believe the true figure could be as high as 2,700 sq miles (7,000 sq kilometers).

The Brazilian Amazon has been decimated by a combination of loggers, farmers and ranchers over the last 40 years. Environmentalists say as much as 20% of the rainforest has already been destroyed, mostly since the 70s. A further 40% could be lost by 2050 if that trend is not reversed, they estimate.

Marina Silva, the environment minister, yesterday announced a new anti-deforestation drive focusing on 36 areas. One of these is Sao Felix do Xingu, a cattle ranching town in the state of Para, where the mayor recently banned the use of motorcycle helmets because gunmen employed by powerful ranchers had used them to disguise their identities when carrying out killings. Also on the list is Colniza, an agricultural town in Mato Grosso, which has Brazil's highest murder rate."

By Tom phillips for the Guardian. Lula: you cannot trust the "free market" for conserving resources and combating poverty and you knew that. This makes you the main guilty party.

Peace etc...

"And despite our absolute hatred and fear of groups such as the Black Panther party because they refused to espouse non-violence, we have no problem honouring "heroes" such as General Colin Powell, who may have killed as many as 100,000 Iraqis during the Gulf war. Apparently it is evil to take up arms in defence of black people, as the Panthers did, but perfectly Christian behaviour to take up arms in defence of oil companies' profits.

Which brings us to Obama, a black candidate who refuses even to say whether he supports reparations for slavery. One of the worst aspects of the King legacy is that, thanks to him, no African-American today is allowed to bring up racism, even in the most objective fashion, without severe repercussions. You will be instantly labelled a radical, a Black Panther (a bad thing), or a Mau Mau (a very bad thing) who wants to kill the white man. King has eliminated the possibility of other black people speaking out, people with other philosophies, who do not necessarily want to hug racists. Obama can succeed only insofar as he makes it plain that, like the British trade unionist Bill Morris, he is "not the black candidate", that he can be counted on neither to be a champion for, nor to defend the rights of, black people.

Our love for King notwithstanding, if we are honest we will concede that King built nothing, and taught us only how to take a beating. As Gandhi said: "I have admitted my mistake. I thought our struggle was based on non-violence, whereas in reality it was no more than passive resistance, which is essentially a weapon of the weak.""

From a opinion piece in the Guardian by Jonathan Farley, a former professor of Mathematics at MIT. I'm blogging here because of the obvious analogies with the "peace" and "resistance" supporters in Lebanon (and the rest of the Arab countries) today. Read the comments if you have time, some are interesting and present the other side.

Coloring inside the circle by dear Rana Hayek

" لوّن قلب الدائرة"

منذ نعومة أظافرها وهي تعجز عن التلوين،

توبيخ المعلمة لا يزال يرنّ في أذنيها اليوم،

وهي تلطّخ حياتها بكل الألوان

وتعجز عن البقاء ضمن حدود الخط،

فتخسر كل يوم نجمة..

7/ 1/ 2008

As a child, coloring was never her strength

She can still hear the teacher scolding her

As she made a colorful mess of her life

Unable to stay inside the line

She losse a star every day

"Hot water from the tap should never be used for cooking or drinking."

eQuality

"The United States is the largest single donor of food aid in the world, but it doesn’t provide enough of what young children really need. As the farm bill progresses through Congress, there has been much debate on improving the delivery of food aid. But Congress must also address the quality of this aid." (Thanks D.)

"« Le vieux monde se meurt. Le nouveau monde tarde à paraître. Et dans ce clair-obscur les monstres surgissent », écrivait Antonio Gramsci. Cette phrase m’a toujours frappé par sa justesse et sa puissance. On peut dire que l’ancien monde, celui de la première vague de remise en cause du capitalisme, est mort. La seconde vague est en train de naître. Dans ce clair-obscur, les « monstres » prennent la forme de personnages comme Bush, Sarkozy, Berlusconi, d’un côté, comme Ben Laden et ses complices de l’autre."

From a very interesting interview with Samir Amin

How to screw up an opportunity

The cold has taken its toll on crops everywhere in Lebanon, but it is expected to hit the Bekaa very hard, because farming is still very important there. Here's a report on the expected damages to the wheat crop. Many farmers had invested into wheat cropping this year in view of the rise in world grain prices. They rented land at a prohibitive rate ($700-900 per hectare per season for non-irrigated lands , when last year's price was $300). Land rent prices have increased, of course because of supply and demand. But the invisible hand of the market has been heavy on the farmers who did not expect the bad weather: their crops are expected to produce 50% of the average, and with the prices they have paid for land rental, their profit will be reduced to a minimum. The losses are also due to the fact that they planted soft wheat of the tannour variety which is demanded for bread making (this is where the money is) but not tolerant to cold weather.

This is exactly how, in the absence of appropriate policies, the opportunity to improve the livelihood of farmers can be screwed up. This is how increase in world food prices can turn into a disaster for farmers and make them even poorer, and make the country even more reliant on imports. There are at least 3 big policy issues here:

1. The absence of control on agricultural land rental and other forms of tenure. In this country there are many sects but only one religion: fundamentalist capitalism. No Lebanese government (and certainly not Siniora's) will ever dare put a bridle on the free market. No government will dare address the issue of large land ownerships in one of the most land unequal countries in the world, because it is the politicians and the influential notables who own this land. That's why the price of farmland in sky high, and that's what drives land rents up, and cost of production too.

2. The absence of proper farm extension and technology transfer to farmers. The situation is unbelievably bad: private companies go around unchecked, prescribing seeds and chemicals to farmers who do not know better. The state of agricultural technology and knowledge in Lebanon is unbelievably poor, especially where it concerns small producers. And I know what I'm talking about, I've been in this business for 15 years and I run an agricultural clinics program. This is the responsibility of the Lebanese Agriculture Research Institute to produce a cold tolerant wheat variety and that of the Ministry of Agriculture to inform the farmers about it. But with no funds, they cannot do much, and it all falls back onto civil society, which is too small, too ignorant of farming issues, too unconcerned by rural areas, too subservient to foreign donors and too conceited to be effective.

3. The absence of crop insurance programs, or of any other form of safety net for farmers. It has to be understood that farming in general, but especially in the drylands (such as Lebanon) is a RISKY enterprise. But then again, so is travel and transport (especially in Lebanon). If we want farming to continue, and there are tons of reasons why we should, there should be a system of insurance in place that can offer farmers some compensation for what they lose due to weather and wars. And the state should support this. Here, farmers are still waiting for some form of compensation for the losses of the July 2006 Israeli aggression. Money from the Paris-3 donors conference has been received by the government, but not yet disbursed, in spite of damage surveys undertaken by the FAO. Could it be because these areas are not sympathetic to the current government?

I'm still hoping for some positive sign from anyone in the political realm towards these issues. We speak of a free, sovereign and independent country without even an inkling of what these words mean. We need a state that is not afraid of supporting farming. After all, as the head of the farmers syndicate in the Bekaa puts it: Lebanon's wheat production is 60,000 tons, and it costs the government $5-7 million per year in subsidies. Today the government is paying $30 millions in subsidies to the purchase of 60,000 tons of wheat from foreign sources. Which one makes more sense?

I don't necessarily approve of price subsidies, but lets use these $5-7 millions per year in addressing these policy issues.

Cold

It is still very cold in Beirut and the rest of Lebanon, and there was snow in my village which is just at 250 m altitude. My friend who is from Berlin tells me that Beirut is a very cold place, although the external temperature is around 10 degrees celcius most days (but much lower at night). The problem is that it is about the same temperature in the houses too. There is practically no central heating in Lebanon, and most people are too poor to purchase fuel for heating, so they rely on electrical heating. But in the poor areas (all of them, not just the Southern Suburbs and South Lebanon as the government would want us to believe. Read here for more) electricity is not affordable, and people just steal it. This puts pressure on the neighborhood converters which get damaged and electricity is then gone from the whole neighborhood, and it stays off until the repair team comes and fixes it, which can take several days (read here how there has been no electricity in 3300 households in the poor Ramel al Ali area for more than 2 weeks). I wouldn't be surprised if the riots of last Sunday were linked one way or another to this vicious cycle. This is what the government should address: poverty and inequality, if it wants to curtail the stealing of electricity.

Badael-alternatives

The new issue of Badael-Alternatives from Al Akhbar: The main article by Hassan Duhainy on the hazards posed by asbestos residues in the areas destroyed by the Israelis in July 2006. The same reasoning applies of course to Nahr el Bared. The guest editorial by my friend and colleague Iman Nuwayhid: "Who shall I complain to?" about the double standards in...standards or how Northern corporations establish factories in Developing nations in order to evade the strict standards of their own countries. An article on safflower by Mariana Yazbeck, another by Nicolas Abou Rjeily on the use of hummaid (حميض), a wild plant that grows in the winter, in traditional dishes in Lebanon, and a nice one on Soda drinks by Rana Hayeck who is the editorial coordinator of this page. By the way, if you read Arabic, you will notice how witty and clever the titles of the articles always are: It's all Rana's doing. She is also a great poet and will be publishing her first book in the next few months. I will post a small poem by her soon.