Good Food is Everybody's Business
The Ebola outbreak – which has led to rising food prices and potential food shortages – reinforces the need for self-sufficiency and food security in times of crisis. Liberia has just begun to stabilize a network of rice growers and processors; rice grown in Liberia could go long way to support the Liberian population during this crisis.
William Tolbert, a Liberian citizen educated in the US, was inspired by the organic movement here and moved back to his home country in 2010 to implement organic farming techniques. He exemplifies the “Triple Bottom Line” – Environment, Economy, and Ethics – it his farming practice. Now Tolbert is building a program to provide training, support, and microloans, and connections to quality buyers for subsistence farmers so they can grow more and better produce and generate higher incomes and profits.
By the time they were planting, the good seeds were gone. The problem is that the other farmers didn’t have money to buy the good seeds when they were available. Sometimes there’s no money. A small loan can make all the difference.
The intrinsic quality of the food system we uphold is reinforced by humane practices throughout; by fair and equitable agreements with farm/food workers, by respect for and restoration of natural ecosystems, by humane treatment of animals, and by collaborative and distributional structures that share resources sustainably, spread assets, and bring health.
You won’t find a lot of Big Ag in Suriname; in fact, you won’t find a lot of big anything there. With a population that barely eclipses the half-million mark — most living along the northern coastal area — the largest venture in South America’s smallest country is bauxite mining. And while there are some export food crops, primarily rice and bananas, start heading deeper into the Amazon Jungle and soon the scale of farming operations shrinks.
Liberia is one of Africa’s poorest nations steeped in a domestic food crisis. This is how one man aims to increase food safety and food security without raising the price.
Burlington is not a very old city center and got its start in 1902 as a logging camp. Today the small town of 8,380, located in the Skagit River watershed north of Seattle, does count with a prosperous fruit and vegetable agricultural industry. Of course, the industry relies on mostly migrant families for farm labor. This is especially the case during harvest work and strawberry crops present an opportunity for workers to seize the current condition of ‘labor scarcity’ and high demand for skilled pickers during harvest time to organize for their workplace rights. And that is exactly what has happened in the State of Washington, and not in the Yakima or Wenatchee valleys but on the western side of the Cascades where peri-urban farming is increasingly big business.
Fruit farms in Washington have been in the spotlight for years, from employing children to unfair tiered wages. Sakuma berry pickers have walked off the job three times since July when this video was aired by King5 TV.
