Eric Holt Gimenez

President Barack Obama wants to convince the world that he is actually a liberal after all.

First he not-so-hastily follows Vice-president Joe Biden's support for gay marriage to assure us he is a social liberal. Then, last week at the G8 meeting, he announces The New Alliance...

"Here, we are learning democracy through farming... by taking back a public good that our public university wants to privatize," said a volunteer at the information booth for "Occupy the Farm," the current protest at the University of California's five-acre Gill Tract research station.

When 200 urban farmers, students...

A new a study from McGill University and the University of Minnesota published in the journal Nature compared organic and conventional yields from 66 studies and over 300 trials. Researchers found that on average, conventional systems out-yielded organic farms by 25 percent -- mostly for grains, and depending...

February 27 is "Occupy the Food Supply" day. It reflects a longstanding call from food activists nationwide to "fix our broken food system." With 50 million food insecure people in the US, an epidemic of diet-related diseases, a "dead zone" the size of New Jersey in the Gulf...

A day doesn't go by that the media, industry or even many scientists don't repeat the eternal mantra: "The world must increase food production by 70% by 2050 or there will be mass starvation." The present food crisis -- in which nearly a billion people are going hungry...

In the past few weeks, the U.S. Food Movement has made its presence felt in Occupy Wall Street. Voices from food justice organizations across the country are connecting the dots between hunger, diet-related diseases and the unchecked power of Wall Street investors and corporations (See Tom Philppot's

Walmart recently created a firestorm of controversy within the 'Good Food Movement' when it donated $1.2 million to Milwaukee-based Growing Power, a national leader in the struggle to get good healthy food to low-income communities. Some food activists have criticized Growing Power for taking the money, saying the...

Recently. First Lady Michelle Obama announced that SUPERVALU, Walgreens and Walmart committed to open or expand 1,500 supermarkets across America's food deserts -- low-income areas without easy access to a supermarket. But while improving food access is a noble goal, the announcement merits a closer look....

Monsanto has an interesting clause in its seed contract. The Monsanto Technology Stewardship Agreement has a waiver that shifts all liability from any incidental, direct, indirect consequences from its seeds from the company to the farmer.

Apparently, Monsanto is so sure that their seeds are problem-free that...

A passage from the late James Michener's historical novel The Source, dramatizes the Fourth Crusade in which Christian armies from Europe invade the Holy Land. One of Michener's protagonists is an ambitious nobleman whose main religious motivation is the acquisition of a fiefdom for himself (It seems there were no...

In his January 10 New York Times blog spot "Beyond the Eternal Food Fight," Andrew Revkin appeals to whom he considers to be the Alpha and Omega of food and disaster experts, Lester Brown and Vaclav Smil. He asks whether the current food prices spikes are "the edge...

Last week the Oakland City Council voted unanimously to amend their laws regarding eminent domain. Now the city may potentially force a commercial property owner in West Oakland to sell his land to the Kroger corporation for a Foods Co discount supermarket/gas station in one of the city's notoriously underserved...

If you had any doubts about where the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is really placing its bets, AGRA Watch's recent announcement of the Foundation's investment of $23.1 million in 500,000 shares of Monsanto stock should put them to rest. Genetic engineering: full speed ahead.

If you are...

This June the City of Chicago approved Walmart's bid to open up dozens of new facilities, beginning with grocery stores in the city's chronically underserved South side. Just a month earlier the company committed $2 billion dollars to fight hunger in the U.S. But behind the high profile donations...

Growing Outside the Box
My (grown) children were in Detroit, making it a family affair. Daughter Evarosa took a tour of Detroit's urban gardens and provided me with this account:

"The cross-streets of Temple Avenue and Rosa Parks Drive in the Upper Cork neighborhood, Detroit is host to a...

From Food Justice to Food Sovereignty

I spent most of my time at the US Social Forum between the huge COBO center where many of the workshops were held and the "tent village" where U.S. Food Justice groups and Food Sovereignty movements from Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Dominican Republic and Nicaragua...

Beyond the din of the World Cup in Johannesburg, and just south of the protests of the ill-fated G-20 Summit in Toronto , the U.S. Social Forum was in full swing. So much so, that I didn't get a chance to blog while at the event!...

With Annie Shattuck

U.S. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack recently declared a "silent" crisis in rural America. Silent? The American farmers testifying at the joint antitrust listening sessions held by the USDA and Department of Justice (DoJ) were loud enough. If their denunciation of the monopolies controlling our food...

With Jennifer Kampe

This year, Silicon Valley Bank, an investment bank whose clientele includes high-tech startups, life-science corporations, and premium vintners, expanded its operations to include a new class of clients: street vendors. Thanks in large part to a one million dollar partnership between SVB and Grameen America, Northern California...

Dublin was unusually sunny and warm last week when the High Level Task Force on the global food security crisis held a consultation at the Malahide resort just north of the city. Dr. David Nabarro, coordinator of the High Level Task Force was looking to elicit comments from civil society...