Outcomes

Some of the (unplanned) outcomes of the workshop:

1. Development aid distorts service provision by state. I would say it distorts the market, but services should not be on the market. Governments have a DUTY to provide services to the citizen. Development aid make states want to get all its services implemented through aid programs. The State stops doing anything to serve its citizen until the services system crumbles and donors step in. Meanwhile the regime pockets all the money it can lay its hands on, or diverts it to private goals.

2. Many young bourgeois technocrats in the Arab World are natural born neo-liberals. I'm not sure why. Is it intellectual laziness, because the doctrine is so simplistic: you're worth what you produce, every man (and woman) for him/herself and Market for all? Is it because most originate from well-off families, have had servants since their childhood and consider this to be a natural state of affairs and do not bulk at inequalities and injustice (except when they cannot afford the latest Bulgari watch)? It must be intellectual laziness: most have not found out about the market debacle yet.

Despair

"So Shankara became one of an estimated 125,000 farmers to take their own life as a result of the ruthless drive to use India as a testing ground for genetically modified crops.
The crisis, branded the 'GM Genocide' by campaigners, was highlighted recently when Prince Charles claimed that the issue of GM had become a 'global moral question' - and the time had come to end its unstoppable march.
...
For official figures from the Indian Ministry of Agriculture do indeed confirm that in a huge humanitarian crisis, more than 1,000 farmers kill themselves here each month." (Thanks Marcy)

Food bank

"A local Gaza Strip organization, the Palestinian civil association for family care, opened the area’s first Food Bank that is being run and supported by Palestinians on Sunday.

The bank will distribute free basic food items to needy families, the elderly and disabled Gazans on a need-basis. The organization’s staff carries out community assessments in order to assure that they have an accurate list of those most in need throughout the area, said executive director of the association Adel Rizq."

Greasy hands

If you can read Arabic, you must absolutely read this investigation by Rasha Abu Zeki concerning a new controversial decision by the council of ministers to allow the sale of non-refined oil in breach of current standards and regulations. The main players in the game according to Rasha: one is a very large importer of refined cooking oil who also happens to be the brother of the prime minister. The other is the owner of a large refining facility and a member of the Hariri Future movement (which supports the prime minister). You wont know whether to laugh or cry.

Time for dung

"I've written about this one before – well fertilized wheat is 14% protein while unfertilized wheat grown on fallow ground is 8%. Farmers in the Dakotas seem to be using about 60% of the normal fertilizer amount and if the relationship is linear protein percentages will drop to about 11% and there will be an attendant yield decrease. Some countries, like Egypt, have people surviving on $2 per day and eating subsidized wheat bread. Cut the protein in it by a quarter, which is what this change in fertilization means, and people that were making it before suddenly aren't any more. Egypt has already seen food riots. This problem is past tense, too – the northern hemisphere winter wheat is already in the ground."

From Daily Kos, sent to me by dear Leila. Read the article, but I need to do some research on this. Its my field, but I've let it lapse recently, too busy with other things.

C'est la lutte finale...

"Britain is taking the lead in pressing the EU to curb imports from Israeli producers in the occupied West Bank as a practical step towards halting the steady increase in the construction of Jewish settlements.

An internal EU note circulated by the UK expresses concern that goods produced from the settlements may be entering Britain after being illegally exempted from tariffs in violation of an Israel-EU trade agreement." (Thanks Marcy)

I still remember when apartheid goods started being boycotted institutionally in Britain: it was in the mid 80's and suddenly, South African goods became "bad" stuff. Even Barclays Bank was boycotted. But before that, who would have thought this would happen? Apartheid apologists were going around explaining that the boycott only harmed the poor black people and that it did not, could not affect the apartheid regime. Yet, we pushed on, with the results we all know. This is what we are witnessing today on Palestine: boycott is becoming increasingly institutionalized, while apoplogists (many of them normalization Arabs, `arab al tatbee`) try to convince the people that boycott does not help. Lets keep the pressure, until the execrable Zionist regime crumbles. And you know who's going to be sorry? Softy liberals who will eventually come round to it, la queue entre les jambes. But I shall point the finger at them and remind them of their wishy washy attitudes.

African rice

""With nearly 40 percent of the total rice consumption of Africa coming from the international market, African national rice economies are more exposed to unpredictable external supply and price shocks than those of other continents," Papa Abdoulaye Seck, director-general of the Africa Rice Center (WARDA), said in a blog article.

Poor uptake of improved higher-yielding rice varieties has also kept production low. "The main bottleneck for their diffusion is a lack of seeds," Moussa Sie, a plant breeder with WARDA, told IRIN. “National seed systems are non-existent or not working. "

Advocacy

He advocates legalisation. ‘‘My experience says that if it is legalised, farmers like me would be able to access the market directly and thus make more profit.’’

Fighting racism?

"Josh Viertel, Slow Food USA's new president, set the tone. He announced that the organization would from now forward pursue two main priorities: youth organizing and social justice. "Our food system disproportionately hurts poor people and people of color, and alternatives aren't accessible to those groups," he said.

He said that in the past, the group had focused its rhetoric on values: commitment to "good, clean, and fair food," for example. From now on, it would emphasize rights. "Access to good, clean, and fair food is not a privilege," he declared. "It's a right, and we have to make that clear." That message, he insisted, was the most important one that delegates could bring back to their communities.

He also vowed that Slow Food USA would work to avoid doing something it has been accused of doing in the past: suck the air out the sustainable-food movement by hoarding resources and media attention at the expense of social-justice activists.
...
Erika Allen wrapped up with a challenge: "How are you fighting racism in your food community?"" (Thanks Rania)

I believe this is excellent rhetoric. Now Slow Food has to take clear political positions against racism. And where better to start than Israel and its apartheid politics? But Slow Food is silent about the plight of Palestinians, food producers or not.

Full disclosure: I am a member of the Slow Food movement and a founder of Slow Food Beirut.

Convergence

"The global food crisis lays bare the workings of our capitalist society: the pursuit of maximum private profit in the short term. Capitalists see food as nothing more than a merchandise to be sold for the highest possible profit. Food, an essential element of survival for human beings, is transformed into an instrument of pure profit. This sinister logic must be brought to its knees.
It is time to abolish the control of capital over large-scale production and marketing and give priority to policies of food sovereignty.
...
The convergence of these three crises shows populations the need to free themselves from capitalist society and its productivist model. The interdependency of capitalist crises highlights the need for an anti-capitalist and revolutionary programme on global scale. Only international and systemic solutions can make for a favorable outcome for the populations and the environment. Humanity cannot be fobbed off with half measures." (Thanks Kirsten)

International and systemic revolutions. I like the sound of that.

Green Intifada

Marcy led me to this great blog, which also includes links to permaculture blogs. I quote from their home page:

"Green Intifada is a community based, grass roots democratic movement aiming to rebuild Palestinian society upon the ethics of sound environmental practice, sustainability and community cohesion. Green Intifada is not an organisation. It is the begginnings of a network of organisations, working together for social transformation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories"

The settled Bedouins

I have recently started a research project aiming to understand how the Bedouins are coping with the changes that have shaken the Arab World since the end of WW2. One of my co-researchers is a young Bedouin woman. When we started to work together, I asked her to write for me a small text reflecting on Bedouin identity in Lebanon. She wrote the most concise and astute analysis of the Bedouins I have ever read. She titled it: The Settled Bedouins (I post with her permission):

"There is, in Lebanon, a social group present in all parts of the country. Its members carry the Lebanese citizenship, but this citizenship does not mean much to them, because of their inherent belief that the whole Arab World is their nation. These people are the Bedouins.

They are nomads who came from the Arabic Peninsula looking for pastures for their camels and their herds. They liked Lebanon's climate with its generous water and greenery. They started spending the summers in Lebanon and traveling back to the Badia (the Arabian Desert) during winter. But after the separation of Syria and Lebanon, Syria closed its borders and those who were in Lebanon stayed there.

In the past, the Bedouins used to be considered as a "well off" class, because they were self sufficient. In the second world war, when food became scarce and people went hungry in Lebanon, the Lebanese villagers sought their help. But after modernity and urbanization and rampant drought took hold of the country, they became impoverished. They turned from a self sufficient people who had its own livelihood, customs and Bedouin traditions into a different community. The Bedouins today are torn between the past and the present. In the past, they see their glorious history, as it was them who made the Great Arab Revolt and fought the colonialist over centuries, and provided the revolutionaries with weapons wherever they were present. In the present, they only see marginalization and dependency.

This situation has created a dichotomous cultural identity. One side of this identity is proud and exalted and sacred. It is located in their minds, where it is linked with their glorious past, rich in Arabism. The other side is reflected in their daily practice, and rich in imported values."

Mqiqa

"On the occasion of my visit with my carob gift, Juma’a waxed nostalgic about “the good old days before the Zionists raped the wilderness with their settlements, barbed-wire fences, and cypress forests.” About his preference for the unripe carob he went on to explain: “The way we used to savor the early sweetness of the carob was to pick a few pods just as their green color faded into brown. The mountains were full of wild carob and we would be desperate for something sweet. Those were not days of toffee and chocolate and we would be hungry by the end of the long summer day. Early in the morning we would pick few unripe but sweet carobs and pound them with a clean stone on the rocks. We would put them in a container and milk a goat directly over the pulp, hide it in the shade of a bush, come back in the late afternoon tired and hungry, strain the milk with the corner of our shouras (gauzelike white head covers) and drink it with a piece of bread. You guys fret over your milk and cornflakes for breakfast. But you can’t imagine the taste of mqiqa with a piece of dry bread to the palate of a hungry shepherd.”"

Beautiful, moving account by Hatem Kanaaneh, writing for the Palestinian Chronicle.

My student Jeanne introduced me to mqiqa last year. She is from a small village in the Shuf mountains and her uncle told her about it. They still ate regularly it until they were displaced from the Shuf in 1983.

Conclusion

"Conclusion: In spite of the overall low prevalence of overweight and obesity in the studied sample, results indicate that university students would possibly benefit from a nutrition and health promotion program to reduce the tendency of overweight and obesity, especially among male students, and to improve students' eating habits."

I don't get it: They're OK but they still need to get on a diet?

Badael/alternatives

In Al Akhbar today, I wrote about the sorry state of revolutions in the Arab World. Rana Hayeck reminded us that the rich countries too were affected by the food crisis and Muhammad muhsin wrote about the Ardi exposition of produits du terroir organized in the southern suburbs by none other than your favorite party of God. A truly mega event!

“I think it’s kind of a middle-age thing, counting calories,” she said.

The limits of social business

I will be talking about Social Business in Cairo later in November. I post this as areminder to myself. (Thanks Muna)

Social business enterprises - maximising social benefits or maximising profits? The case of Grameen-Danone Foods Limited

Authors: Ghalib,A.K.; Hossain,F.
Produced by: Brooks World Poverty Institute, University of Manchester (2008)

In a deeply unequal and increasingly fragile world, some people are calling for a more socially responsive form of capitalism. Others are already exploring ways of operatationalising such a concept. One such experiment has just taken off in Bangladesh involving the local Grameen Bank and Groupe Danone, a leading French multinational. A new paper brought out by the Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester examines how this initiative is different from traditional joint ventures and what its future plans are.

While delivering the Nobel Peace Prize Lecture in 2006, Muhammed Yunus defined a social business enterprise (SBE) as a business with primarily social objectives, whose surpluses are principally reinvested in the business or in the community rather than just accumulated as profits.

The basic features of a SBE are that it:

* adopts the principle of benefit maximization rather than profit maximisation
* operates without incurring losses while serving disadvantaged people and the planet
* is nonetheless serious about investing in expansion, innovation and increasing productivity
* competes with profit maximising enterprises as well as other SBEs for market efficiency
* generates enough surplus to pay back the invested capital to the investors as early as possible

In April 2007, Grameen-Danone Foods Limited (GDFL), a milk-processing SBE that produces fortified yoghurt, began operating out of Betgari, an area 220 km northwest of Dhaka. GDFL is currently:

* providing nutrition at affordable prices to the rural population
* helping to create independent businesses and several hundred local jobs in farming, food processing, sales, marketing and distribution
* using environmentally clean technology

At the same time, some of the challenges faced include the fact that:

* profit margins are low
* yoghurt is difficult to distribute and market due to its perishable nature
* customer outreach is still narrow
* trained local human resources to run operations are scarce
* the yoghurt's exact health benefits still need to be verified

Some of the challenges are likely to be addressed by GDFL's future plans. These include:

* breaking into the urban market
* setting up two more facilities by the end of 2008 and at least 50 more in the next 10 years

In the meantime, the Grameen Bank has also just launched two SBEs outside Bangladesh: Grameen Capital India in partnership with Citibank and the ICICI Bank and Grameen-Jameel Pan Arab Microfinance in partnership with the Abdul Jameel Latif Jameel Group of Saudi Arabia.

Available online at: http://www.eldis.org/cf/rdr/?doc=40094&em=291008⊂=pov

Oufff...for now

I am finally resurfacing, out of Berlin for a couple of days before going to Cairo. I have never had such poor access to the internet as during the last week! But will now resume blogging as usual. I trust the Cairo hotel will have a connection in the room.

The past few days have been very intense. Terra Madre was interesting but a bit too similar to last time, in 2006. Except that this time, I gave a presentation, and then chaired a session, and had an article in the Slow Food almanac that came out at the same time.

In Berlin I gave a paper on food security and conflict with special focus on the Arab Middle East to a small group of German development experts from GTZ, the Green Party, the World Food Program, etc... I have a powerpoint presentation but to cut a long story short, the outcomes of the discussions were that while conflicts cause food insecurity, the reverse is not necessarily true. To rebell in a sustained way groups must have the capacity to organise and the necessary minimal political freedom to do so. Yes riots may emerge spontaneously, but they will be quickly put down: the Arab regimes have created a repressive military apparatus uniquely for this purpose. I will write about this in my forthcoming Badael editorial.

Slow

"The movement has grown worldwide - slowly, obviously - and has become a huge, complex organization - 85,000 members in 132 countries according to their website - but even though it very much represents the interests of the new generation of quality farmers and producers, it hasn't caught on so well in the UK.

Is it seen as too specialist or elitist? Is it because of the growth in farmers markets; because we have so many food based TV programmes that there is already plenty of exposure for artisan producers without Slow Food? Many of the suppliers we use at Boxwood Café are small producers who hand-grow everything but aren't members of Slow Food: others are members and attend the event in Turin." (Thanks Rania)

Free minds for a free Palestine

Check this site http://palestinethinktank.com/