Raj Patel: “How to Feed Ourselves Tomorrow”

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

RAJ PATEL: “HOW TO FEED OURSELVES TOMORROW”. The Food Systems Centre at the Sustainability Institute and the Southern Africa Food Lab are proud to present internationally acclaimed academic, author and activist, Raj Patel. Raj is unquestionably one of the world’s leading thinkers on the future of the food system and a prolific global activist. ‘How We Can Feed Ourselves TUESDAY FOR Tomorrow’ will address the 6 6.30PM following: Something’s wrong 6PM ARRIVAL AND SNACKS 6.30PM – 8PM when nearly 800 million people are 21 TALK BY RAJ, FOLLOWED malnourished and nearly 2 billion JUNE 2016 BY Q&A SESSION overweight, when we’d need several planets’ worth of resources to eat the Guest House The Sustainability Institute, Lynedoch Ecovillage, Off Baden Powell Drive, Stellenbosch way that the average American does, and when 40% of the world’s food is COST PLEASE RSVP wasted. There are, however, some FREE [email protected] promising solutions, from Africa and beyond, that offer paths to a more Seats are limited, so please RSVP as soon as possible to secure your seat. Your seat is only reserved once you sustainable, robust and just food have received a confirmation email in response. system. This talk will explore their common features, and impediments Conversations in Soil, Soul and Society Interesting talks and a chance to network with friends, students, to their progress. alumni and SI staff. ABOUT RAJ PATEL Advisor to Olivier De Schutter, angle using a complex the former United Nations systems approach, and Raj Patel is an award-winning Special Rapporteur on the Right combining experiential and writer, activist and academic. to Food. formal academic teaching He is a Research Professor In addition to numerous methodologies, in a global in the Lyndon B Johnson scholarly publications in South-relevant context. School of Public Affairs at the economics, philosophy, politics University of Texas, Austin and and public health journals, THE SOUTHERN a Senior Research Associate at he regularly writes for The AFRICA FOOD LAB the Unit for the Humanities at Guardian. His first book was the university currently known Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden The Southern Africa Food Lab as Rhodes University (UHURU), Battle for the World Food System is an initiative brings together South Africa. and his latest, The Value of diverse, influential stakeholders He has degrees from the Nothing, is a New York Times in southern African food University of Oxford, the best-seller. systems in order to respond to London School of Economics systemic issues in creative ways and Cornell University, has SUSTAINABILITY and to inspire change in how worked for the World Bank and INSTITUTE’S FOOD we think and act on complex WTO, and protested against SYSTEMS CENTRE social challenges. The purpose them around the world. He of the SAFL is to facilitate the has been a visiting scholar The Sustainability Institute’s interaction, communication, at UC Berkeley’s Center for Food Systems Centre provides and collaboration between African Studies, an Honorary a space to explore approaches different stakeholders, Research Fellow at the School to creating socially equitable including those with conflicting of Development Studies at food systems that restore interests, to highlight the the University of KwaZulu- rather than destroy the need for and to design and Natal and continues to be a ecosystems within which all implement coherent, systemic fellow at The Institute for Food societies are embedded. The responses to the food system and Development Policy, also FSC is unique in offering food through collaborative learning known as Food First. Raj was an courses from a sustainability and experimental action..

Copy Link

Recommended publications

How Society Subsidizes Big Food and Poor Health Invited Commentary
How Society Subsidizes Big Food and Poor Health Invited Commentary Invited Commentary How Society Subsidizes Big Food and Poor Health Raj Patel, PhD Approximately 80% of calories eaten in the United States are Farmer debt has increased since the farm crisis of the mid- grown domestically.1 Yet, the US diet is a leading cause of mor- 1980s. Subsidies are vital for highly indebted farmers to pay bidity. The analysis by Siegel et al2 in this issue of JAMA Internal their creditors. Not all farmers benefit from government sup- Medicine suggests that through commodity subsidies that encour- port: previous Farm Bills have supported approximately 40% age poor diet we are, in part, paying for our own demise. of US farmers, with the rest being ineligible for subsidy. Al- However, commodity subsidies are a small part of a big- though some among the beneficiaries are larger-scale enter- ger problem. From 2014 to 2023, the 2014 US Farm Bill will cost prises, many are not. Yanking away the income on which many $956 billion (letter from D. W. Elmendorf to Frank D. Lucas, depend will do little to help and may cause harm. chair of the House Commit- Our food policies must also take farmworkers into ac- tee on Agriculture; http: count. Agricultural laborers earn a mean annual salary of Related article //www.cbo.gov/sites/default $19 300 in the United States.4 Farmworkers in the United States /files/cbofiles/attachments are not covered by the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (Na- /hr2642LucasLtr.pdf), of which direct support for commodity tional Labor Relations Act of 1935.
[Show full text]
The Long Green Revolution
The Journal of Peasant Studies ISSN: 0306-6150 (Print) 1743-9361 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fjps20 The Long Green Revolution Raj Patel To cite this article: Raj Patel (2013) The Long Green Revolution, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 40:1, 1-63, DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2012.719224 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2012.719224 Published online: 16 Nov 2012. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 9735 View related articles Citing articles: 28 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=fjps20 Download by: [The University of Edinburgh] Date: 17 January 2016, At: 10:55 The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2013 Vol. 40, No. 1, 1–63, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2012.719224 The Long Green Revolution Raj Patel To combat climate change and hunger, a number of governments, foundations and aid agencies have called for a ‘New Green Revolution’. Such calls obfuscate the dynamics of the Green Revolution. Using Arrighi’s analysis of capital accumulation cycles, it is possible to trace a Long Green Revolution that spans the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Such an analysis illuminates common- alities in past and present Green Revolutions, including their bases in class struggles and crises of accumulation, modes of governance – particularly in the links between governments and philanthropic institutions – and the institutions through which truths about agricultural change were produced and became known. Such an analysis also suggests processes of continuity between the original Green Revolution and features of twenty-first-century agricultural change, while providing a historical grounding in international financial capital’s structural changes to help explain some of the novel features that accompany the New Green Revolution, such as ‘land grabs’, patents on life, and nutritionism.
[Show full text]
Anna Selmeczi Central European University Selmeczi [email protected]
“We are the people who don’t count” – Contesting biopolitical abandonment Anna Selmeczi Central European University [email protected] Paper to be presented at the 2010 ISA Convention in New Orleans, February 17-20th Panel: Governing Life Globally: The Biopolitics of Development and Security Work in progress – please do not cite without the author’s permission. Comments are most welcome. 2 “We are the people who don’t count” – Contesting biopolitical abandonment 1. Introduction About a year before his lecture series “Society Must be Defended!”, in which he first elaborated the notion of biopolitics, in a talk given in Rio de Janeiro, Foucault discussed the “Birth of the Social Medicine”. As a half-way stage of the evolution of what later became public health, between the German ‘state medicine’ and the English ‘labor-force medicine’, he described a model taking shape in the 18th century French cities and referred to it as ‘urban medicine’. With view to the crucial role of circulation in creating a healthy milieu, the main aim of this model was to secure the purity of that which circulates, thus, potential sources of epidemics or endemics had to be placed outside the flaw of air and water nurturing urban life. According to Foucault (2000a), it was at this period that “piling-up refuse” was problematized as hazardous and thus places producing or containing refuse – cemeteries, ossuaries, and slaughterhouses – were relocated to the outskirts of the towns. As opposed to this model, which was the “medicine of things”, with industrialization radically increasing their presence in the cities, during the subsequent period of the labor force medicine, workers and the poor had become to be regarded as threats and, in parallel, circulation had been redefined as – beyond the flow of things such as air and water – including the circulation of individuals too (Ibid., 150).
[Show full text]
Community Struggle from Kennedy Road Jacob Bryant SIT Study Abroad
SIT Graduate Institute/SIT Study Abroad SIT Digital Collections Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection SIT Study Abroad Fall 2005 Towards Delivery and Dignity: Community Struggle From Kennedy Road Jacob Bryant SIT Study Abroad Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection Part of the Politics and Social Change Commons, and the Race and Ethnicity Commons Recommended Citation Bryant, Jacob, "Towards Delivery and Dignity: Community Struggle From Kennedy Road" (2005). Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection. 404. https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection/404 This Unpublished Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the SIT Study Abroad at SIT Digital Collections. It has been accepted for inclusion in Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection by an authorized administrator of SIT Digital Collections. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TOWARDS DELIVERY AND DIGNITY: COMMUNITY STRUGGLE FROM KENNEDY ROAD Jacob Bryant Richard Pithouse, Center for Civil Society School for International Training South Africa: Reconciliation and Development Fall 2005 “The struggle versus apartheid has been a little bit achieved, though not yet, not in the right way. That’s why we’re still in the struggle, to make sure things are done right. We’re still on the road, we’re still grieving for something to be achieved, we’re still struggling for more.” -- Sbusiso Vincent Mzimela “The ANC said ‘a better life for all,’ but I don’t know, it’s not a better life for all, especially if you live in the shacks. We waited for the promises from 1994, up to 2004, that’s 10 years of waiting for the promises from the government.
[Show full text]
Ccs Events and Activities, May - August 2006
CCS EVENTS AND ACTIVITIES, MAY - AUGUST 2006 1 With goodnatured mirth and to knowing laughter, Ashwin Desai offered our July 21 Social Movements Research Workshop a caustic assessment: ‘Patrick seems to think that by scheduling a bewildering series of seminars this month, somehow we’re going to get closer to The Truth.’ Still, discounting a mild case of institutional burnout, perhaps we did get a bit closer during the middle third of 2006. This was CCS’s most active period to date, and this newsletter records conferences, workshops, major lectures, seminars, publishing outputs and other projects. But we also began to take time for reflection on CCS’s trajectory, in the form of our first Phase (2001- 06) review. This led to some innovative strategies for the second Phase, which we will be sharing with our associates and broader community in coming weeks. Highlights included several Economic Justice project debates in June, including one that brought us the views of ANC/Alliance leaders and intellectuals; the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR) biannual congress; and in late July, the Workshop on the World Social Forum cohosted with the Bangkok/Manila/Mumbai thinktank Focus on the Global South (attended by 200), four ecological seminars and the International Sociological Association (ISA) quadrennial world congress. Detailed reports are below. The Phase 1 review included two aspects thus far: a draft report – Inquiring Activism: CCS Five Years On – authored by the highly regarded civil society analyst David Sogge, who is associated with the Netherlands Institute for Southern Africa; and a local follow-up workshop report on implications for strategy by local organisational development expert Catherine Collingwood.
[Show full text]
You'll Never Silence the Voice of the Voiceless
YOU’LL NEVER SILENCE THE VOICE OF THE VOICELESS CRITICAL VOICES OF ACTIVISTS IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA Kate Gunby Richard Pithouse School for International Training South Africa: Reconciliation and Development Fall 2007 Table of Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………..2 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………3 Background……………………………………………………………………………………4 Abahlali………………………………………………………………………………..4 Church Land Programme…..…………………………………………………….........6 Treatment Action Campaign..…………………………………………………….…...7 Methodology…………………………………..……………………………………………..11 Research Limitations.………………………………………………………………...............12 Interview Write-Ups Harriet Bolton…………………….…………………………………………………..13 System Cele…………………………………………………………………………..20 Lindelani (Mashumi) Figlan...………………………………………………………..23 Gary Govindsamy……………………………………………………………….........31 Louisa Motha…………………………………………………………………………39 Kiru Naidoo…………………………………………………………………………..42 David Ntseng…………………………………………………………………………51 Xolani Tsalong……………………………………………………………….............60 Reflection and Discussion...……………………………………………………………….....66 Teach the Masses that Everything Depends on Them…………………………….....66 The ANC Will Stay in Power for a Long Time……………………….......................67 We Want to be Treated as Decent Human Beings like Everyone Else………………69 Just a Piece of Paper Thrown Aside……………………….........................................69 The Tradition of Obedience……………………………………………………….....70 The ANC Has Effectively Demobilized and Decimated Civil Society……………...72 Don’t Talk About Us, Talk To
[Show full text]
Impact Campaigns, Summarised in Impact Reports Which Are Published on Our Website
@britdoc britdoc.org 2 The Art of Impact. STORIES CAN CONQUER FEAR, YOU KNOW. THEY CAN MAKE BEN OKRI POET THE HEART LARGER. 04 The Art of Impact. The Impact of Art. 05 OUR ABOUT FUNDS OUR BRITDOC p34 p06 FILMS p40 Helping good films be great Engaging new HELLO partners GOOD PITCH p82 IMPACT Sharing our FIELD GUIDE learning p124 We are a nonprofit, founded in 2005, committed to enabling great Building new documentary films and connecting audiences them to audiences. Doing and measuring Based in London and New York, we work with filmmakers and partners globally, reaching IMPACT DOC audiences all over the world. AWARD ACADEMY p118 p94 In this book you can find out SOMETHING more about what we do and IMPACT REAL how it fits into our five DISTRIBUTION p102 interconnected strategic areas. p106 06 The Art of Impact. The Impact of Art. 07 “For many years, BRITDOC has spotted and supported the most urgent projects – OUR MISSION OUR DRIVING PRINCIPLE nurturing them with love, ensuring they make a difference. But gradually We befriend great filmmakers, Great documentaries enrich BRITDOC became more support great films, broker the lives of individuals. They than a fund. It is, by now, new partnerships, build have a unique ability to the forum for our most important conversations new business models, share engage and connect people, in nonfiction cinema.” knowledge and develop transform communities and Joshua Oppenheimer Director audiences globally. improve societies. “ BRITDOC are experts in We aim to lead by example — That’s why we are dedicated collaboration, innovation and rapid prototyping.” innovate, share and be copied, to the Impact of Art, and the Cara Mertes and innovate again.
[Show full text]
Shack Fires Are No Accident by Raj Patel and Richard Pithouse Before the Treatment Action Campaign Successfully Politicised AIDS
Shack Fires are No Accident by Raj Patel and Richard Pithouse Before the Treatment Action Campaign successfully politicised AIDS it was widely assumed that people killed by the HI virus had died from natural causes. Now, outside of the Presidency, it is widely accepted that people who die from AIDS are most often killed by a profoundly immoral policy rather than a treatable virus. A similar politicisation needs to be fought for with regard to shack fires. Disastrous fires are regular events in shack settlements. People are regularly killed and badly burnt. They are also subject to the major set backs that follow from a total loss of property, including things like I.D. books and school uniforms that are necessary to access the resources that the state does provide to the poor. In Durban shack dwellers often do everything that they can to cope with the constant danger of fires. In many settlements there are volunteers who take turns at standing watch for fires. When half of the Lacey Road settlement in Sydenham burnt down last month the shack dwellers’ movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, was able to able to send in teams of relief workers from nearby settlements to clean up and reconstruct the settlement and to use various networks in and outside of the settlements to arrange large donations of food, clothing, blankets and building materials. Abahlali baseMjondolo have also invested a lot of time in looking for safer options for cooking and lighting. Recently, a promoter of a new fuel - ethanol (a sop for SA's sugar cane industry) - came to the Kennedy Road settlement, to advertise a stove that is supposedly cleaner, safer and cheaper than paraffin.
[Show full text]
'Choice Lite' – Food Politics on the Global Stage
Power Politics, Agribusiness, and 'Choice Lite' – Food Politics on the Global Stage From Foreign Policy magazine - “The New Geopolitics of Food” and “How Food Explains the World” • “Welcome to the new food economics of 2011: Prices are climbing, but the impact is not at all being felt equally.” • Comparing the current situation with the global food crisis of 2007-2008 • “Civilization can survive the loss of its oil reserves, but not the loss of its soil reserves.” • “Everything from falling water tables to eroding soils and the consequences of global warming means that the world's food supply is unlikely to keep up with our collectively growing appetites.” ◦ What is behind this precipitous rise in demand? • Global food yields are no longer going up, up, up – why not? • Food and water scarcity as a microcosm of the 'coming resource wars' • “As land and water become scarcer, as the Earth's temperature rises, and as world food security deteriorates, a dangerous geopolitics of food scarcity is emerging. Land grabbing, water grabbing, and buying grain directly from farmers in exporting countries are now integral parts of a global power struggle for food security.” Framing International Development: Neoliberalism vs. the Anti-Globalization Movement • It's important to understand that Raj Patel is firmly on the side of the rural poor, and that there are arguments to be made in favor of neoliberal economic globalization ◦ Going back to the start: understanding comparative advantage ◦ Bretton Woods, the international financial institutions, and the Washington Consensus ▪ The World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Trade Organization • The role of Structural Adjustment Programs (Patel 94-95) Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power, and the Hidden Battle for the World Food System Introduction • “That geography matters so much rather overturns the idea that personal choice is the key to preventing obesity.” (re.
[Show full text]
2005 Annual Report
Our objective as the Centre for Civil Society, our staff determined in 2005, is to advance socio-economic and environmental justice by developing critical knowledge about, for and in dialogue with civil society through teaching, research and publishing. The Centre was established at the University of KwaZulu- Natal in July 2001, with the mission of promoting the study of South African civil society as a legitimate, flourishing area of scholarly activity. A related goal was to develop partnerships within civil society aimed at capacity-building, knowledge sharing, and generating reflection and debate. With an excellent start in these directions, we now also aim to work across the African continent and internationally. Our three core strategies are: independent critical scholarship (including provision of research grants); information dissemination; and teaching/training. Our two-dozen strong community at UKZNs Howard College campus is comprised of academics and research officers, administrators, visiting scholars, and doctoral and masters students. Our colleagues include more than 200 research grantees, Research Associates, community liaisons and other collaborators. Internal research: The Centre serves as a research unit housing several major multi-year programmes. These have their own staff funded mainly from external resources raised from international foundations, including the Ford Foundation, Mott Foundation and Atlantic Philanthropies. In addition, the Centres staff work on their own self-directed research projects and contribute to the vibrant intellectual life of the Centre through seminars. Several thematic research areas economic justice, energy, water, HIV/AIDS and others in formation are being developed. Grant Agency: The Centre has been fortunate to have resources for grants made available to academics, research institutes, independent scholars and civil society organisations based in South Africa and other African countries.
[Show full text]
Purcell Thesis 11 June.Pdf (816.4Kb)
KEEPING STOLEN LAND KWAZULU-NATAL’S LAND, LABOR & HOUSING STRUGGLES A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Professional Studies in Africana Studies by Jeffrey Lee Purcell August 2007 © 2007 Jeffrey Purcell ABSTRACT This thesis explores the common roots of several contemporary social movements in Durban, South Africa. My point of departure is a series of community meetings in May, June, and July 2006, during which geographically separated Black and Indian community organizations expressed remarkably similar grievances against the municipality and government, all rooted, I argue, in the colonial dispossession and alienation of Africans, and later in the enforced marginalization of Indian communities. Largely, these dispossessions occurred in the 19th century and early in the 20th century – decades before the policy Apartheid begin in 1948. It is the continued relationship of exclusion and repression in relation to land and space in Natal, I argue, that accounts for the common struggles of these movements. I shall cite Antonio Gramsci extensively in order to argue that his conceptions of “consent” and “coercion” explain the perpetual success of policies designed to preserve colonial and Apartheid dispossession. Moreover, several labor struggles will be considered in order to illustrate the degree to which the majority’s consent has been secured, and to offer evidence that Gramsci’s theories are powerful assistance to us. Moreover, Mahmood Mamdani’s identification of “subject” and “citizen” will factor, as the transition from Apartheid to ANC rule has essentially cemented the status of landless South African subjects.
[Show full text]
Democracy Dispossessed: Land, Law & the Politics of Redistribution In
Democracy Dispossessed: Land, Law & the Politics of Redistribution in South Africa Amanda Alexander Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2016 © 2015 Amanda Alexander All rights reserved ABSTRACT Democracy Dispossessed: Land, Law & the Politics of Redistribution in South Africa Amanda Alexander This dissertation concerns the history of land politics in South Africa and, equally, land as a vehicle for understanding the transition from apartheid to the post-apartheid order. In 2004, after a decade in power, the ANC government’s failure to carry out widespread land reform began to test the country’s democratic possibilities. In the lead up to that year’s national election, social movements urged landless people to boycott the polls and occupy land instead as part of a “No Land! No Vote!” campaign. With this clash as its entry point for analysis, this dissertation examines historical factors that have shaped South Africa’s neoliberal democracy and prospects for redistribution. It offers insights into some of the most significant questions facing the country: What is the historical relationship between land dispossession, citizenship, and politics in South Africa? And why, well into the Mbeki years, was the country unable, or unwilling, to reckon with it? Broad in scope, this dissertation examines a number of institutions that shaped the politics of land, economic development, and citizenship in South Africa over the last century. It is particularly focused on period of the 1940s-2004, encompassing the apartheid era and the first ten years of democracy.
[Show full text]