Classic Beirut Spring: Rawsheh in May

Eat the parking

""One group brought the seeds, the other brought the soil. And once a week we'd all get together for a harvest," says Franceschini. "I can't believe we grew all that pak choi, winter squash, lettuce, even tomatoes right across from City Hall," recalls volunteer Johanna Silver, who arrived for the Thursday harvest days. Working there became a social event; Silver remembers conversations she had with the children of 30s sharecroppers and people who had dug their own Victory Gardens 60 years before."

William Shaw on the edible urban gardens movement.

I hear they want to turn the Sanayeh garden in Beirut into a big parking lot.

Aleppo

I went to Aleppo last week end. I love this city. I went to the fruits and vegetables souk and took these pictures:



Olives, cheese, crushed red peppers


Kaak bakery

Strawberries fres from the field

Sheep youghurt and labneh from the back of a pick up truck.

Then I went for a walk in the city and visited the most famous of Aleppo's hotel, the Baron, where TE Lawrence stayed and wrote .

The bar of Le Baron is famous. If you ever go to Aleppo, you must stop there for a drink

Great city!

Islands

The Palestine Archipelago (Thanks Omar, and yes, I love maps)

Black farmers

"Of all people, it was Black farmers that dared to make the first Black president accountable for his campaign promise to them. Obama seemed to be reneging on his own legislation and statements favoring billions in payments to Black farmers methodically discriminated against by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Now, his administration wants to cap the payments at $100 million. “Right is right and it doesn’t matter who is in the White House,” said Black farmers leader John Boyd. "

Monsanto

This will help you understand what really happened:
1. Monsanto is one of the most powerful multi-national corporations in the world. The Global One-World Government New World Order conspiracy, of which Monsanto is a part, is aimed at controlling millions via the food they eat. “Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people,” said Henry Kissinger in 1970.
2. Monsanto uses overt and covert strategies to accomplish their goals. Monsanto is behind both sides of the battle over HR 875. They don’t leave important matters like these to chance.
3. Monsanto’s tentacles reach into every aspect of our society: government, private industry, the military, law enforcement and, of course, agriculture. Large, small, organic and non-organic farmers—and don’t forget libertarian grass roots activists—are all influenced directly and indirectly by Monsanto. The company that rose to power in the 20th century as a leading chemical giant now focuses on agriculture. In Monsanto’s world, there is no room for the family farmer. The company’s well-known corporate bullying tactics have made this clear. Just ask Percy Schmeiser, the brave Canola farmer who dared to take on Monsanto.
4. HR 875’s vague wording was intentional.
5. Family Farmers (organic and non-organic) are under attack, but not by Congresswoman DeLauro, the author of HR 875 whose husband was a political consultant to Monsanto 10 years ago.
6. The timing of HR 875 coincides with the slow food, Locavore, and urban gardening movements in the United States and, for that matter, any slow food movement anywhere in the world.
7. The E-coli and salmonella outbreaks related to spinach, tomatoes and peanuts are the work of Monsanto’s agents: Things don’t happen; they’re made to happen.
8. Healthy Family Farm owner Sharon Palmer was arrested for selling raw goat milk, and the Ohio food co-op raided Gestapo-style was obviously instigated by Monsanto agents in a move designed to intimidate urban gardeners. (Thanks Marcy)

More Monsanto

"The opportune time for Monsanto arrived with the arrival of severe drought in Malawi in 2004. Any predator looks for a vulnerable prey. Malawi, after the drought, was just the kind of prey predator companies like Monsanto look for. According to Grant, Monsanto held “a discussion with relief organizations, non-government organizations, the Malawi government, and some of the relief agencies, particularly an agency called World Vision. We got together and said this is going to keep on happening unless we take a different approach. And that’s what we did.”1 On December 20, 2005 Monsanto announced its intention to donate 700 metric tons of “quality hybrid maize seeds” to farmers in Malawi. This “high quality seed” was “donated” to the farmers through “some of the NGOs and government and relief agencies working on delivery and distribution systems.”1 " (Thanks Marcy)

Workers unite

Courageous article by Nermine el Horr on the rights of sex workers in Lebanon on Worker's Day (Arabic)

Illusion

Food prices in Lebanon continue to increase according to Kamal Hamdan, an economist who has been mapping the cost of living for decades. "It's just an illusion" say the Lebanese merchants.

Statement

NGO Statement at UN CSD-17

The 17th Session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD-17) is being held in New York from 4-15 May 2009 to discuss the themes of agriculture, land, rural development, land degradation, drought, desertification and Africa. Please find below the NGO Major Group opening statement.

OPENING STATEMENT AT CSD-17

4 May 2009, Monday

NGO Major Group

CSD-17 is happening at a critical juncture in history where several crises are converging - finance and food, climate and environment, governance, and now, a looming threat of a global health pandemic. Agriculture lies at the core of all these crises, and Agriculture is also a key solution to these crises. The world therefore expects no less than A DECISIVE AND URGENT RESPONSE from CSD-17. The Negotiated Outcome from this session must lead to a RADICAL SHIFT in thinking and paradigm in agricultural development. Business-as-usual is definitely NOT AN OPTION. Sustainable development after all is NOT about business-as-usual.

We urge the CSD to adopt the recommendations of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) as basis for international and national policy-making, and planning and investments in agriculture, to attain food security, provide sustainable rural livelihoods, and build the resilience of ecosystems to climate change. Concretely, CSD17 should focus in:

1. Addressing the unsustainability of current agricultural production models that depend on chemical-based inputs and crop and varietal uniformity, supported by neo-liberal trade regime;

2. Mainstreaming agro-ecology and sustainable agricultural practices that are socially-equitable, culturally-appropriate and environmentally-sustainable;

3. Shifting resources and investments to support smallholder farmers;

4. Giving equal importance to indigenous and local agricultural knowledge systems; and

5. Ensuring bottom-up, participatory and multi-sectoral approaches in policy and decision-makingBold actions need to be supported by concrete mechanisms to significantly increase the level of funding, technical support, and assistance for sustainable agriculture [including through extension services, research and capacity building. The means of implementation must be measurable in order to hold governments accountable.

The Right to Food, Right to Water, Right to Land and Food Sovereignty must provide coherence to the Negotiated Outcome of CSD-17. These fundamental rights and principles must not be undermined by the introduction of technological solutions such as biofuels and GMOs, the neo-liberal trade agenda, and by grand agricultural development schemes such as the green revolution in Africa. After centuries of supporting the world, it is now time for the world to support Africa, not grab her land and ravage her agriculture.We dare governments to be bold and radical, to make CSD relevant at this most challenging of times.

Farmed pandemic

"No-one yet knows whether swine flu will become a global pandemic, but it is becoming clear where it came from – most likely a giant pig factory farm run by an American multinational corporation in Veracruz, Mexico.(1)

These factory farms are disgusting and dangerous, and they're rapidly multiplying. Thousands of pigs are brutally crammed into dirty warehouses and sprayed with a cocktail of drugs -- posing a health risk to more than just our food -- they and their manure lagoons create the perfect conditions to breed dangerous new viruses like swine flu. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) must investigate and develop regulations for these farms to protect global health.

Big agrobusiness will try to obstruct and scuttle any attempts at reform, so we need a massive outcry that health authorities can't ignore. Sign the petition below for investigation and regulation of factory farms and tell your friends and family "

From Avaaz

Food security in Palestine

"Food prices in Palestine have been dramatically affected by the increase of the global food prices over the last two years. But while the situation is coming back to normality in most of the other developed countries, in Developing Countries in general, and in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, the food prices of domestic production remain too high as a consequence of the high “transaction costs” resulting from the Occupation and from the policies described above (restriction of movement or waiting at the check points)." (Thanks Marcy)

FRESH is excellent

FRESH
New thinking about what we're eating

Directed by: Ana Sofia Joanes Starring: Michael Pollan, George Naylor, Russ Kremer, David Ball, Prof. John Ikerd, Mr. & Mrs. Fox


FRESH IS AN IMPORTANT MOVIE.
"Pig pig pig... pig pig pig... Come on, pig." The opening words of Fresh sound more like a scene from Deliverance than a documentary about the case for, and the current state of, sustainable farming.
Fresh is the absolutely first-rate documentary from filmmaker Ana Sofia Joanes. It resonates even more loudly following the latest headlines that upwards of 68 (mostly young) people are dead today as a result of swine flu, while New Yorkers and New Zealanders shudder on the brink of what may be one of the scariest pandemics seen in a long while, eclipsing the death toll of the avian flu that sent the media and frequent flyers into a tailspin not too long ago. "

From a recent review of Ana Sofia Joanes documentary Elliot V. Kotek (from the 2009 Newport Beach Film Festival).

Screening in May in several locations on the US East coast. Check here.

Bedouin designs

When you say "Bedouins", most people automatically think of camels and sheep and strong, bitter coffee. But bedouin women also make beautiful pillows decorated with ancient designs. But these pillows (and the traditional designs) are disappearing as they get replaced with cheap manufactured stuff. I'm helping a group of Bedouin women from the Bekaa set up their little pillow-making and sale operation. Look at these beauties (and these are photos taken with the phone camera).

UAE celebrates worker's day with gifts to workers

"Mohammad, an Egyptian worker who was filing a complaint against his employer, told Bin Deemas after being notified about the reason for the gift: "I am happy with this surprise but I hope you can help me solve the problem with my sponsor who has been exploiting me. I am here today to complain about him."" (Thanks Toufic)

Yes but do they have a soul?

"Cutting public services, making the poor poorer, putting cash crops and trade before welfare was the old IMF way. It was the IMF that insisted on meters for Ghana's water supply, demanding full cash recovery for the service, steeply raising costs for the poorest. The World Bank insisted on a private insurance model for Ghana's health service that has been administratively expensive and wasteful. The new government rejects it, promising free healthcare for children. The IMF wants subsidies for electricity removed, again hitting the poorest hardest. A market policy of making individuals pay full cost for vital services instead of general taxation has made the IMF hated; Ghana has now voted for more social democratic solutions. Freedom from the IMF feels like a second freedom from colonialism to many countries. "

Polly Toynbee on the new IMF which is...like the old IMF. I especially like this:

"IMF economic thought often enters the soul of finance ministers"

Flies in the face

"In the 18 months since the Katine project began, a common thread has emerged from those involved in the international aid debate: transformative change is not going to be achieved by the slow underpinning of livelihoods envisaged at the outset of the project.
...
An economist like Paul Collier is convinced that radical steps have to be taken. "African peasant agriculture has fallen further and further behind the advancing commercial productivity frontier," he wrote at the end of last year in the journal Foreign Affairs. "Based on present trends, the region's food imports are projected to double over the next quarter century." Only large scale farms, he argues, are capable of providing the investment and market access that is essential to produce the surge in food production necessary to keep up with demand.
Rubbish, says development expert Steve Wiggins. "Yes, he is correct to emphasise the need for commercial farming. But no, he is wrong to imagine that this requires doing so on a large scale. His solution is unnecessary, flies in the face of history and carries important dangers."

Anne Perkins on the future of farming in Africa

I keep forgetting...

"Let's just recap on how we arrived at this juncture. Globalisation has led to the development of two groups of countries – those running big trade surpluses and those running big trade deficits. Germany and Japan provided the machines and high-grade capital goods that allowed China to become the source of low-cost manufactured goods. Countries where the industrial sectors had been hollowed out over the decades – such as the United States and Britain – were ready buyers for cheap imports. Inflation fell, allowing interest rates to fall.

But manufacturing was not the only sector to be globalised. Banks became bigger and bigger, expanding their business across frontiers to the extent that national regulators found it harder to supervise them properly. With low inflation making traditionally safe investments less attractive, there was a global search for yield. As we now know, this led to speculative money flooding into places such as Iceland and into complex derivative products that nobody really understood. The banks became so big and had so many different functions that it was beyond the capacity of any chief executive – no matter how brilliant – to manage them properly."

Larry Elliott in the Guardian

Badael-Alternatives

In Badael this week: My editorial: From slavery to colonialism on the state of food. Laila Abu Saba on cancer and Lebanese food, and Hamra Goes Green, a good neighborhood initiative by AUB.

Swine flu and capitalism...in Arabic

An excellen Arabic article on capitalism and the swine flu by Fadl Shalak in Assafir today. Shalak was the head of the Council for Development and Reconstruction of Lebanon.