Living Democracy, Feeding Hope

As perhaps never before in our history, all the pieces are in place for a democracy movement to take off in America, one strong enough to tackle the system-roots of our country’s crises. What? You don’t see it? I understand, because it is really hard to discern the democratic impulse in a political culture increasingly dominated by bluster, bullying, and blame, all bank-rolled by a tiny minority. But here’s all I ask — that you take in the six key pieces below, and then imagine what they could add up to, and your place in them. One: We’re angry. Not handfuls of marginal “activists” but most Americans — left, right, middle — are really pissed. We know things are foundationally unfair, and getting worse — in just the first three years after the ‘08 Wall St. crash, 91 percent of all income gains went to the top 1 percent. So today the 20 richest Americans hold as much wealth as the bottom half of our entire population . Twenty people? Please let this sink in. In the Manhattan coffee shop where I sit, that’s the number in easy view. Incredible. Two: We now know the system is rigged. We know that those making the rules in Washington and our state houses make them in the service of those who fund them, not the vast majority of us. Out of 120 million American households, just 158 families contributed nearly half the money in the early stage of the 2016 presidential election. No wonder 84 percent of American adults believe that money has too much influence in politics. We feel evicted from our home — democracy itself. Three: We’re finally connecting the dots. More and more of us grasp that whether the outrage most afflicting us, or moving us, is hunger and homelessness, racism in all its forms, roadblocks to unions, an unjust justice system, crippling student debt, unaffordable housing, assault on voting rights, our climate catastrophe, or a maddening healthcare system, we see that without democracy we’re stuck . Our inability to solve any of these problems — for which solutions are already known — comes back to one thing: the growing democracy deficit as the voices of regular citizens are drowned out by the megaphones of great wealth. Four: We agree on solutions. Fully 85 percent of us want deep change or a complete “rebuild” of our campaign finance system. Almost two-thirds of us want “citizen-funded” elections and 80 percent oppose secret or “dark” money in political contests. And 78 percent of us want the Citizens United ruling overturned. I for one can’t recall such widespread agreement across party and generational lines, ever. Plus, another great thing: Most of the solutions favored by so many Americans today are already proven to work . They include at least these five elements: •Citizen-funded elections •Disclosure of political funding sources •A strong election-rule enforcement agency staffed by people who believe in the rules •A ban on non-persons (i.e. corporations) influencing elections. (Among many reasons for limiting participation to real human beings is that healthy democracy depends on citizens able to weigh the impact of their choices on the wellbeing of our whole society not just on our own pocketbooks. Corporations fail the test.) •An end to the “revolving door” between lawmaker and lobbyist that lures legislators to make choices based on future employment options and circles lobbyists with strong loyalties to industry back into shaping laws. Five: We’re uniting across old divides. Did you ever imagine environmental, civil rights, and labor activists all organizing toward common goals? Likely not. Yet, recently 131 organizations came together to create a Unity Statement of Principles on solutions to the undue influence of money in politics. And two years ago six huge but very different groups — the Sierra Club, NAACP, Greenpeace, AFL-CIO, the Communications Workers of America, and Common Cause — created a coalition called Democracy Initiative to press forward essential democratic system-reforms. It helped lead the 2015 thousand-mile march for voting rights restoration. Now roughly fifty issue organizations are on board.Plus, thought-leaders from both left and right are standing up for democracy. Robert Reich, who most recently wrote Saving Capitalism for the Many Not the Few , is a powerful progressive voice. Law professor Richard W. Painter made the “Conservative Case for Campaign Finance Reform“ in the New York Times last month. And Tea Party strategist John Pudner now leads Take Back Our Republic , an organization building conservative support for reducing the influence of private wealth in politics. Six: A massive and savvy citizens’ movement is taking off. We’ve learned a lot since the Occupy Movement focused hearts and minds on the inequality crisis. The movement now arising is organized, goal oriented, and amazingly unified. So, this April, get ready to join in two of its unprecedented public actions. First is Democracy Spring . Launched last fall by 99Rise and Avaaz, it now has one hundred organizational backers, including the Small Planet Institute. Demanding fundamental electoral reform for citizen-funded elections, voting rights protection, and beginning the process of amending the constitution, its march begins April 2nd at the Liberty Bell in Philly and travels to the steps of the capitol on the 11th. There, 2,000 have already pledged to risk arrest if Congress does not act on its demands. Starting on the 16th, a broad coalition, Democracy Awakening , takes up the torch! A series of public actions include a march, teach-ins, a concert, a human circle around the capitol, and visits to legislators to press the case for democracy in America. Already about 200 organizations, including mine, are official endorsers. These mobilizations are enabled by strong communications across issue lines and really savvy use of social media. They are intergenerational, with a spirit appreciative of diversity of views. All this looks, feels, talks, and walks like what could be an historic citizens’ movement. Surely, you would not want to miss out! On the sites linked above and at our Field Guide to the Democracy Movement you’ll find groups eager for your enthusiastic engagement. There are so many ways to jump in: Join or start a campus group through Democracy Matters or get in through your faith community through DemocraticFaith.com . Ask teachers and students you know to bring the debate on the shape of our democracy into their classrooms. Sign up to help register voters and to get out the vote this election year! To seize this moment in which six essential pieces are now in place, there is, though, one still-needed ingredient I’ve yet to mention: the catalytic agent bringing all this to life. Some might say that ingredient is greater compassion, but I sense that human hearts are good enough. Since our species is so deeply social, what’s even tougher to come by is courage—the courage to break with the pack and take a stand. True, the deeply human need for inclusion and camaraderie can be increasingly met within the growing throngs of gutsy people who’ve gotten the democracy movement this far, but we still need guts to speak up and act up. So let’s help each other be heroes. Often, it only takes one gutsy soul to trigger a cascade. And, as we show up, I think we’ll discover that the surging, solutions-oriented democracy movement is a whole lot more fun than either ranting or moping. It’s truly stirring, and it’s changing my life. See you in April? Originally published by Huffington Post on 03/08/2016

Originally Published on Great Transition Initiative in April, 2016 Thanks to GTI for taking up this issue and doing so with Frances Moore Lappé’s brilliant overview of the issue. She again shows her gift for marshaling a wide range of the most solid research in a way that is compelling and accessible. It is also wonderfully nuanced in highlighting that agroecology is primarily neither a state of mind nor a pure agricultural practice. Rather, it is a process, one in which agroecology itself should be seen more as a journey than a destination. It is something I have been thinking about a lot since attending a conference in Mexico last year hosted by ANEC, a national association of small-to-medium-scale grain farmers. The convening organization cast the issue perfectly, I thought, referring to its own “Integrated Project on Scientific and Traditional Knowledge” and encouraging a “dialogue of knowledge systems,” an inelegant translation of the Spanish “diálogo de saberes.” The stated goal was to bring modern agroecological science into the fields to work with farmers to create more ecologically and—just as important—economically sustainable practices. What was striking about the conference was the mix of people in attendance. On the one hand, we had established agroecology professionals and practitioners from all over the Americas, most notably from Cuba, where such practices are perhaps the most advanced. Many of these experienced agroecologists led discussions on diversified farming, integrated pest management, soil composition, the protection and use of native maize seeds, and the evils of corporate-led industrial agriculture. On the other side of the room (literally)—in one breakout session—were about 100 ANEC members, farmers from different parts of the country, who were often silent in the larger discussion. Why? They were overwhelmingly commercial farmers, well integrated into national markets for maize, wheat, beans, and other staples. Many are now using hybrid seed varieties in monocultures fed by chemical inputs, which is practically the only way to sustain monocultures. These farmers were not returning to native maize seeds intercropped with beans and squash—the famous Mexican milpa—anytime soon. ANEC’s embrace of agroecology is, for them, a challenge, and it entails significant risks. Their farmers depend on farm sales for a living, and they can’t afford the kind of initial yield decrease often associated with a shift to organic practices. They have loans to pay off, for one thing. But their lands are a long way from the agroecological ideal. Like many smaller-scale farmers in the developing world, they are no longer defending traditional agroecological practices. They are on the technology treadmill, and they know it is getting them nowhere fast, but that doesn’t mean they can just get off. In the conference room, we turned the discussion from agroecology as an ideal to agroecology as a transition, and they opened up. Their own experiences illustrated the genius of ANEC’s approach to the issue, which focuses less on an ecological ideal than on the goal of reducing both production costs and dependence on multinational input suppliers. For these farmers, this is what “food sovereignty” means: increased control over their production and their livelihoods. One farmer said that with the help of ANEC’s scientifically trained extension agents, he had reduced input costs by two thirds and, despite a slight drop in productivity at first, had experienced a significant increase in profitability. Slightly lower yields but much lower costs. What practices was he introducing? Some that one associates with agroecology, such as compost instead of fertilizer, and microbial applications to release soil fertility. And some that one doesn’t, such as self-produced hybrid maize seeds that his cooperative could produce for one-third the cost of the varieties sold by multinational firms. Fertilizer applications had been reduced from two to one per season, and pesticide use had declined as well. Soil quality was slowly improving, and he expected further reductions in chemical use. Did he expect he would reduce it to zero? No. Did he care? Not really. This was what the transition toward agroecology looked like on a small commercial farm, and I was impressed at how different it was from the agroecological ideal. For millions of farmers around the world, including many of the farmers who grow most of the food for local markets, this is the kind of transition that needs to happen. Lappé’s characterization of the challenges facing us in agriculture left ample room for such practices, valuing them every bit as much as the crucial defense of native seeds and organic practices. I think many of us always knew there was a zen quality to her work: it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.

Originally published by Dollars & Sense on 03/03/2015 I introduced myself to Luis Sitoe, economic adviser to Mozambique’s minister of agriculture, and explained that I’d spent the last two weeks in his country researching the ProSAVANA project, decried as the largest land grab in Africa. This ambitious Brazil-Japan-Mozambique development project was slated to turn 35 million hectares (over 85 million acres) of Mozambique’s supposedly unoccupied savannah lands into industrial-scale soybean farms modeled on—and with capital from—Brazil’s savannah lands in its own southern Cerrado region. Mr. Sitoe smirked. “Did you see ProSAVANA?” I hadn’t, in fact. “So far there is no investment in Pro-Savana,” he said, with surprising satisfaction considering that the project’s most ardent supporter had been his boss, agriculture minister José Pacheco. A firestorm of controversy had dogged the project since its “Master Plan” had been unceremoniously leaked in 2013. Farmers were actively resisting efforts by foreign investors and the government to take away their land. And Brazilian investment was almost nowhere to be found. Had the land-grab boom gone bust? Was ProSAVANA’s stuttering start a sign that African farmland had lost its luster? No, but it turns out to be easier to get a government to give away a farmer’s land than it is to actually farm it. Reality Asserts Itself Data from the Land Matrix project suggest that economic realities have begun to assert themselves. Commodity prices are down, speculative capital has returned to rebounding stock markets, low oil prices have cut the profit margins on biofuels. Oil and gas discoveries in some developing countries, meanwhile, have taken the wind out of the sails of domestic alternative energy projects which were fueling some land-grabbing. As a result, the pace of large-scale land acquisitions has slowed, many projects have failed, and those underway often operate on a fraction of the land handed over to them. National governments—perhaps the most willing negotiating partners in this often-ugly process—have ceded the rights to large tracts of land to foreign investors. As of mid-September 2014, Land Matrix had recorded 956 transnational land deals completed globally since 2000, with another 187 under negotiation. The completed agreements, most of which have taken place since 2007, cover 61 million hectares (about 150 million acres), with about half of that land under formal contract. Interestingly, of the 37 million hectares under contract, only 4.1 million (just 11%) are confirmed to be in production. The much lower acreage contracted for production reflects how hard it can be to turn vague intentions, and government concessions into concrete business plans. Hardest of all is putting those plans into operation, which involves dealing with weak regional markets, poor infrastructure, and—most importantly—resistance from local residents currently using the land. By all accounts, ProSAVANA stalled before it could even register as a productive project in the Land Matrix database. Mozambique is fifth among all target countries in the project’s ranking by amount of land given away (behind Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo), with 99 concluded projects covering 2.2 million hectares. Three-quarters of that is for forestry projects. Of the agriculture projects, one finds just a few comparatively small soybean projects in the Nacala Corridor, ProSAVANA’s target region. Tucked in the database, one finds a grand “intended but not concluded” 700,000-hectare project that lists Brazilians as the investors and the Brazilian, Japanese, and Mozambican governments as partners. ProSAVANA. What happened to the 35 million hectares? That was the press release, the sales pitch to Brazilian investors. Only a fraction of that land is even suitable for agriculture; much is forested or degraded. Or occupied. Fundamentally Flawed Frankly, I was surprised to find ProSAVANA to be such a bust. This wasn’t some fly-by-night venture capitalist looking to grow a biofuel crop he’d never produced for a market that barely existed. That’s what I saw in Tanzania, and such failed biofuel land grabs litter the African landscape. ProSAVANA at least knew its investors: Brazil’s agribusiness giants. The planners knew their technology: soybeans adapted to the tropical conditions of Brazil’s Cerrado. And they knew their market: Japan’s and China’s hog farms and their insatiable appetite for feed, generally made with soybeans. That was already more than a lot of these grand schemes had going for them. But ProSAVANA foundered because its premise was fundamentally flawed. The Grand Idea was that the soil and climate in the Nacala Corridor were similar to those found in the Cerrado, so Brazilian technology could be easily adapted to tame an uninhabited region inhospitable to agriculture. It turns out that the two regions differ dramatically. The Cerrado had poor soils, which is why it had few farmers. Technology was available, however, to address soil quality. The Nacala Corridor, by contrast, has good soils, which is precisely why the region is the most densely populated part of rural Mozambique. If there are good lands, you can pretty well bet people have discovered them and are farming them. Democracy and Resistance Mozambique has one other thing Brazil didn’t have when it tamed the Cerrado: a democratic government forged in an independence movement rooted in peasant farmers’ struggle for land rights. At the time of Brazil’s soybean expansion in the mid-1980s, a military dictatorship could impose its Cerrado project. Mozambique has one of the stronger land laws in Africa, which prevents private ownership of land and grants use rights to farmers who have been farming land for ten years or more—whether they have a formal title or not. Even if the government is now siding with foreign investors, it has laws through which an increasingly restive citizenry can hold it accountable. What may end up dooming ProSAVANA is farmers’ growing awareness of the threat to their land, and their capacity to resist. Spearheaded by União Nacional de Camponeses (UNAC), Mozambique’s national farmers’ union, the campaign to stop the project formed quickly, fueled by a Mozambican tour of the Cerrado organized with Brazilian farmer groups. The images of unending expanses of soybeans, without a small farmer in sight, and the tales of environmental destruction spread quickly through Mozambique. Within months of the release of the Master Plan, a tri-national campaign in Japan, Brazil, and Mozambique formed. An open letter to the heads of government of the three countries caused a stir, particularly in Japan where the country’s international development agency was accused of violating the long-standing separation of development assistance from commercial interests. Last year, the campaign adopted a firm “No to ProSAVANA” stance until farmers and local communities are consulted on development plans for the region. Local resistance to specific land deals may have had an even greater impact. That certainly scared off some of the largest Brazilian investors, who complained not only that they couldn’t own the land outright, but that it took a negotiation with the national government and then further negotiations with local governments just to get a lease. Even then, that lease was for land that was anything but unoccupied. Most packed up their giant combines and went home. No End to Land Grabbing I asked Mr. Sitoe in the Ministry of Agriculture if the lesson of ProSAVANA was that agricultural development needed to be based on Mozambique’s three million small-scale food producers. He smirked again. No, he assured me, the government is committed to foreign investment, with its capital and technology, as the path to agricultural development. He pulled out a two-inch-thick project proposal for a 200,000-hectare foreign-funded scheme for irrigated agriculture along the Lurio River, on the northern edge of the Nacala Corridor. Was this part of ProSAVANA? No, he reassured me with another smile. That brand was clearly tarnished. Had farmers and communities in the region been consulted about the Lurio River project? “Absolutely not,” said Vicente Adriano of UNAC. In the words of the Mozambican independence movement, La Luta Continua—the struggle continues.

Originally published by Food Tank on 03/25/2015 The World Health Organization (WHO) apparently has not gotten the memo about the supposed consensus on GMOs being safe. On March 20, 2015 the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) released a new analysis of the evidence on five organophosphate pesticides, including glyphosate, the herbicide in Monsanto’s Roundup weed-killer. The international scientific body concluded that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” The WHO analysis puts the lie to the supposed “scientific consensus” on the safety of GM crops, declared but not proven by National Geographic, the Gates Foundation, and the Cornell Center for Science, among others. (See my previous article, “ The War on Genetically-Modified-Food Critics .”) The WHO findings, summarized in an accessible two-page monograph and in The Lancet Oncology , raise alarms. Glyphosate is by far the most widely used herbicide because it is the weed-killer that genetically modified corn and soybeans are engineered to “tolerate.” With GM varieties now accounting for 90 percent or more of the U.S. market for corn and soybeans, glyphosate is being liberally sprayed over ever-more-vast tracts of farmland with farmers secure in the knowledge that their crops won’t be harmed by the herbicide. Apparently humans may not be so tolerant, and animals in feeding trials certainly aren’t. The WHO found, “For the herbicide glyphosate, there was limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans for non-Hodgkin lymphoma.” By WHO protocols, “limited evidence” means some evidence but not conclusive evidence. The expert panel cited studies that glyphosate “caused DNA and chromosomal damage in human cells, although it gave negative results in tests using bacteria. One study in community residents reported increases in blood markers of chromosomal damage (micronuclei) after glyphosate formulations were sprayed nearby.” Because there have been no long-term human feeding trials, the evidence is limited, mainly to studies of agricultural exposures. Human feeding trials are considered unethical, so the gold standard for epidemiological research is the animal study. WHO found, in its year-long expert scientific review of the evidence from government and peer-reviewed studies, that “there is convincing evidence that glyphosate also can cause cancer in laboratory animals.” That finding makes glyphosate a “probable carcinogen” for humans, according to accepted WHO standards. That probably will not quiet the consensus campaigners, but it should. Will the Gates-funded Cornell Center for Science declare the members of WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer to be “science doubters” on GM food safety? Probably. That’s what the center is funded to do. Et tu, National Geographic? How about a correction or a retraction of your assertion that such scientists are no more credible than creationists? The first retractions came from investors: Monsanto stock was down sharply on the news.

This is the third of a five-part, weekly series celebrating Earth Day. Earth Day is really People Day, isn’t it ? The fate of Earth is now in human hands. And, recognizing this truth, some have named our era the Anthropocene. So it’s high time that we get a grip on what makes this era-making species tick... don’t you think? Speaking as an environmentalist, I admit that so far our tactics haven’t been as successful as we know they have to be — after all, until the recent global recession carbon emissions continued a pretty steady climb . And in January, a Princeton Survey Research Associates International poll found that only 39 percent of Americans believe that fossil fuels are causing our climate to warm. So maybe we’ve not yet grasped well enough how to reach our species, the giants of Anthropocene. Sometimes it can feel that humans just don’t want to “get it.” If you’re already stressed by two jobs and drowning in debt, why would you add another thing to worry about? So my hunch is that as long as we pursue an environmental “agenda” with our fingers wagging in disapproval or our arms waving in wild alarm, we’re bound to fail. In a recent TV interview with environmental luminaries, a fellow panelist declared that people just aren’t afraid enough. We have to increase the fear to get action on the environment. My heart sank. We know too well that fear, particularly of our own death, typically brings out terrible things in human beings. Psychologists Tom Crompton and Tim Kasser report that most of us humans, when confronted with a survival threat, try to enhance our self-esteem through material gratification and by denigrating the out-group. And in this case, the “out group” might well be environmentalists or even nonhuman nature itself. Many also try to avoid exposure to the bad news and to appear not to care. So, environmental messages that trigger guilt and fear might enable the messengers to feel as if we’re being tough realists. But are such messages actually tough? Not if they fail to challenge us to dig deep, to dig to the system roots of our crises. It’s easy to bewail our lack of environmental progress and call for a string of desirable policies — from pricing carbon to upgrading public transportation — but then stop short. We too often fail to name, for example, an essential prerequisite — removing the power of private wealth over public decision making — so that our elected representatives are free from dependency on the very industries blocking the policies we advocate. Imagine that! And check out www.Represent.us to take action. And are messages that evoke fear and guilt realistic? Not if they end up backfiring because they don’t incorporate what we now know about human nature — including how we typically react to threats. So the trick is learning to tell the truth but drop the scare tactics. It is not only embracing but strategically using our deeply social nature. For one, we can emphasize stories about what is working with confidence that most of us are more likely to support an action if we know the approach has already proven to make a difference. Respondents in one survey were more apt to support climate-change laws, for example, if they were told a similar approach worked to confront acid rain. And a take-away? Why not vow every week to seek out and to share at least one example of environmental sanity bursting out somewhere? Psychologists are also helpfully documenting that because our social nature encourages us to want to be like others, we’re motivated by messages that seem to offer us a way to meet that need. In an experiment comparing the effectiveness of messages to encourage hotel guests to help save water and energy by reusing towels, psychologist Robert B. Cialdini found that imploring guests to save the planet wasn’t too effective. And what message did the trick? Join your fellow guests in helping to save the environment, followed by a note explaining that almost 75 percent of guests who were asked to reuse their towels did so. Since it seems we’re more likely to act when we believe others are, another easy take-away for me is to emphasize the role everyday people in the stories of progress I share. Even more broadly, Cialdini warns that we make a big messaging mistake if we mainly scold those causing environmental harm — driving their SUVs, failing to recycle, leaving lights ablaze in empty rooms, and so on. The trouble is, what the public takes in is a message about what others around us are doing, he says, and our desire to be with the group responds. His advice? Heap attention on those people who are doing the behavior we seek. Cialdini tested his theories using a public service announcement in Arizona communities that combined these three messages: The majority of Arizonans approve of recycling, the majority of Arizonans do recycle, and they disapprove of the few who don’t. These messages resulted in what Cialdini called an impact unheard of for public service announcements: a 25 percent increase in the tonnage of recycled material in communities exposed to the ads. Finally, we can shed the assumption that in any simple sense humans don’t like change. Knowing how much change must happen, and really fast, that thought is a killer. Sure, we do typically experience change in part as loss, but a striking feature of our species is our attraction to the new. Virtually from birth, humans are learners, testers, explorers. Even very young babies get bored with a repeated sound and, when hearing something new, become attentive and start listening, says cognitive scientist Alison Gopnik. So we can avoid any hint that environmental progress means return to a bygone era and celebrate humanity’s fascination with the new. I’m sure these findings only scratch the surface of how we can use our understanding of our social nature to become more effective communicators. Most broadly, though, is this single key: We humans respond more powerfully to emotional than reason-based appeals, as psychologist Drew Westen underscores in Political Brain . Taking Westin to heart, we can deliberately speak to and seek to evoke — whether with the public, among friends, or in our own inner dialogue — a range of positive emotions about facing our global challenges. What about these five? Exhilaration in feeling powerful as a contributor to something truly historic. Dignity and self-respect , for don’t we all secretly want to be heroes, at least to ourselves? Camaraderie in knowing that we’re walking shoulder to shoulder with others in common work. Excitement in novel experiences as we try out new ways of living. Anger at the needlessness of deepening suffering around us — a positive, too, if we have a framework for putting our anger to work. So maybe it’s time to resist cajoling others to be better people, for the challenge is not instilling empathy or the need for a larger meaning in life or other pro-social qualities. They are in us. Our challenge is making this century’s planetary turnaround an epic struggle for life so vivid and compelling that it will satisfy these deep needs in billions of us. Adapted from EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think to Create the World We Want , new April 23, 2013 in paperback from Nation Books. Photo: Kids gardening in Denver, Colorado. Image from Creative Commons Originally published by Huffington Post on 04/22/2013

Go here to view the above image and watch Frances’ panel, “Stakeholder Synergies: Socio-Economic Dimensions of Sustainable Agriculture,” at approximately 1:33:00 and Straight Talk on GMOs: Fact, Fiction, and Food Security panel at approximately 2:40:00. I spoke in Des Moines, Iowa, last Friday at the World Food Prize, where the day before three biotech scientists and executives, including a Monsanto executive vice-president, received the 2013 honor. Not exactly where you’d expect to see me? I was there because the courageous, sustainable agriculture leader, Dr. Hans Herren — 1995 World Food Prize Laureate — invited me to join his panel. I knew that in the five minutes allotted each panelist, I couldn’t change minds. But, maybe, I thought, I could create a moment of dissonance for a few. I chose not to focus on the seed, but on the system it powers. Not only do GMOs not help end hunger, I argued, but they reinforce the extreme power imbalances at the root of hunger. Ambassador Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize Foundation, deflected criticism that the award is honoring the biotech industry, stating that it is instead “recognizing... basic science.” He also assured us that the point of the Borlaug Dialogue, which included our panel, was indeed to engage in real dialogue. You can watch my presentation here . Joining me in talking about sustainable agriculture and how to end hunger were four distinguished colleagues: Hans Herren , Yemi Akinbamijo , M. Jahi Chappell , and Jomo Kwame Sundaram. Our presentations strove to be informative and respectful. We then sat down to listen to the next panel: “Straight Talk on GMOs: Facts, Fiction and Food Security.” It was anything but. The panel included: Greg Jaffe , Gilbert Arap Bor , Anne Glover , Sir Brian Heap , and Mark Lynas . Their gist: Anyone who raises questions about GMOs is deluded, having fallen for what Anne Glover called “unfounded propaganda.” She went so far as to equate the certainty of scientific evidence about climate change with the certainty about GMO safety. In his opening statement Mark Lynas dismissed Dr. Gilles-Éric Seralini’s peer-reviewed study showing worse tumor growth in GMO-fed rats as “utterly fraudulent.” Doesn’t that qualify as slander? The audience loved it. (More accurately, most did, for a number of audience members later thanked our panel members for our comments.) I sat in the first row steaming, aware that sitting next to me was one of the world’s most esteemed scientists, Hans Herren, who is precisely the type of GMO critic that the panel seemed to imply does not exist! Later, privately, I told Ambassador Quinn that the tenor of his “Straight Talk” panel, which he publicly called “extremely valuable,” was not dialogic but insulting. Leaving Des Moines Saturday, I worked to keep my spirits up. Little did I know that, on Monday, my first morning email would announce the release of a statement — signed by 85 scientists, academics, and others knowledgeable about GMOs — from the European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility ( ENSSER ). It stresses: “As scientists, physicians, academics, and experts from disciplines relevant to the scientific, legal, social and safety assessment aspects of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), we strongly reject claims by GM seed developers and some scientists, commentators, and journalists that there is a “scientific consensus” on GMO safety and that the debate on this topic is “over.” ...[A] review... found that most studies concluding that GM foods were as safe and nutritious as those obtained by conventional breeding were ‘performed by biotechnology companies or associates, which are also responsible [for] commercializing these GM plants.’ ...[S]ome [independent studies] have revealed toxic effects or signs of toxicity in the GM-fed animals. The concerns raised by these studies have not been followed up by targeted research that could confirm or refute the initial findings.” If I had known last week what I know now, I would still have focused my five minutes on power, but I would have also said clearly: It is the extreme power imbalances in our world — exactly what generates hunger amid plenty — that enables some to ridicule legitimate scientists with impunity. Given this year’s award, please join me in asking the World Food Prize Foundation to make three critical improvements to its process — with the goal of ensuring that such a violation of the Foundation’s own vision of nutritious and sustainable food for all could never happen again. And please share with friends and colleagues our GMO factsheet , based on peer-reviewed studies and other authoritative sources — fully cited on our website. We use rigor not ridicule to make our case. As I stress in my panel remarks, the root of hunger is not inadequate quantities of food but the inevitable outcome of certain qualities of human relationships: specifically, whether they reflect concentrated power and secrecy or inclusive power and transparency. It is the latter that make human dignity, including the right to food, possible. Photo courtesy of Tim Wise Originally published by Huffington Post on 10/23/2013

Originally published by Triple Crisis Blog on 10/03/2013 Was Thomas Malthus right after all? In 1798, Malthus postulated that exponential population growth would outstrip our ability to feed ourselves, dooming civilization. This early attempt at global economic modeling has since been widely discredited. But if you’ve been listening to policy-makers and pundits since food prices spiked in 2008, you’ve likely heard the eerie echoes of Malthusian thinking. “With almost 80 million more people to feed each year, agriculture can’t keep up with the escalating food demand,” warned Frank Rijsberman, head of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). “FAO estimates that we have to double food production by 2050 to feed the expected 9 billion people, knowing that one billion people are already going to bed hungry every day.” Well, not so fast. Yes, resource constraints, exacerbated by uncertainties over climate change and the unsustainable consumption of non-renewable resources have introduced new threats to our ability to feed a growing population. The issues are indeed serious, but the specter of looming food shortages is a bit overblown. The policy prescriptions that follow these dire forecasts typically call for the expansion of industrial-scale agricultural development while ignoring the obvious threats to our global food supply: biofuels expansion, inadequate investment in climate-resilient agriculture, lagging support for small-scale and women food producers, and the massive loss of food to spoilage and waste. Add to those the need for more equitable distribution of the food we currently produce, and there is no doubt we can feed the world in 2050 – if we change course. Our new report, “ Rising to the Challenge: Changing Course to Feed the World in 2050 ,” shows that many of the public pronouncements calling for a doubling of global food production by 2050 are based on outdated or flawed economic forecasting and misleading characterizations of this research. Recent research at Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute , makes it clear that reliable estimates of current supply, productivity, and demand trends – assuming business-as-usual policies – instead suggest the need and the capacity to increase agricultural production by just 60% over 2005-7 levels by 2050. The distinction between food and agricultural production in the statistics cited above is both essential and frequently overlooked. In fact, the failure to distinguish food production from agricultural production obscures the largest single contributor to recent food price spikes: the massive expansion of agricultural biofuel production. This dramatic increase in food, feed, land, and water use for non-food products is a relatively recent phenomenon that has been poorly captured by most economic modeling to date. Few models adequately account for current trends. Even fewer offer policymakers the information they need to understand the food-security impacts of policies such as the US Renewable Fuel Standard, which contains national mandates that drive biofuels expansion. Those policies are a major cause of rising and volatile food prices, with up to 40% of recent price increases in agricultural commodities attributable to biofuels expansion. Looking ahead, such policies are projected to divert as much 13% of cereal production from needed food production by 2030. As our report points out , recent economic forecasting and analysis fails to adequately reflect several other key variables: Inadequate and poorly targeted agricultural investment – Agricultural investment is critical to increasing food production. Whereas many projections stress the importance of agricultural productivity growth, few models assess the range of possible priorities for agricultural research and investment. A growing consensus supports increased investment in climate-resilient food production, focusing on small-scale producers in food-insecure parts of the world. Yet most research, private and public, focuses on large-scale, input-intensive agricultural development. So too does most investment, driven by private sector-led projects, such as the “ New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition ,” initiated by the G8. Food waste and spoilage – One-third of global food production fails to nourish anyone. In industrialized countries, wasteful consumption patterns result in tremendous losses, while in developing countries poor infrastructure means high rates of spoilage before food makes it to market. Most current forecasts ignore the possibility that measures could be taken to address this problem, assuming continued waste of food at current rates. Climate change – We are only just beginning to understand the implications of climate change for agriculture and food security. These impacts, plagued by multiple layers of uncertainty, are poorly incorporated into most economic forecasts. With the outcome of international climate negotiations uncertain, urgent attention is needed to mitigate industrial agriculture’s tremendous contribution to global warming and help developing country food producers adapt to a changing climate. A growing body of experience at the local and regional levels demonstrates the lasting value of investments in smallholder farming and sustainable agricultural methods. Strategic policy changes and investments in this area can scale-up successful approaches and expand them to regions where they are most appropriate and most needed, especially in regions where food security is tenuous despite high agricultural potential. While policymakers talk about how global agriculture will feed the world, we must remember that food insecurity is local and that 70% of the world’s hungry are small-scale farmers or agricultural workers. In the end, there is no “we” who feeds “the world.” As our report makes clear: hunger, now and in the future, is less a matter of inadequate production than inequitable access to food and food-producing resources. The developed world’s myopic focus on increasing production is obviously misguided as we simultaneously waste one-third of the food that is produced and pursue a course to devote another 13% of cereals to feeding our cars instead of our people.

Originally published by Huffington Post on 05/08/2013 On February 10, 2012, Ronald McDonald held court in a packed elementary school auditorium. Ronald was visiting the Lexington, Kentucky elementary school as part of his sweep of that state. The visits are meant to teach “the value of leadership and community involvement,” says Ronald, and kick off fundraising drives for Ronald McDonald Houses. According to WheresRonald.com, he’s planning to visit at least 117 more schools there this year. Could you imagine sending your kid off to school only to discover an all-school assembly has turned into an advertisement opportunity for a fast food chain? Today, junk food marketing happens in so many places, and in so many ways, that it’s often behind parents’ backs and beyond our control. This school assembly is just one way McDonald’s does marketing. This Mother’s Day, moms are telling McDonald’s, with the help of the advocacy group Corporate Accountability International, that they’re not lovin’ it. Marketing junk food and drink to kids is big business. McDonald’s alone spent close to $1 billion on advertising in the United States in 2011 with 40 percent of this on marketing directly to kids, according to researchers at Yale University’s Rudd Center. We know this food marketing works: it gets kids to prefer McDonalds and to just eat more — period. With diet-related illnesses afflicting so many young people, marketing to kids and teens is downright dangerous. I talked about all this at a TEDx event earlier this year. My point was simple: If we want to improve the health of children and teens and turn back the epidemic of preventable illnesses, like heart disease, diabetes, and more, we need to talk about marketing to kids. Some people, when they learn about all the ways our kids are targeted, still insist it’s up to parents to make the right choices. Just turn off the TV. Talk to your kids about ads. Wisen ‘em up. Don’t blame McDonalds if your kids don’t eat right. This argument sounds reasonable. As a mom, I couldn’t agree more: parents should take responsibility for their kids’ health. My two girls take their cues from me — at least I hope so! — perhaps nowhere more powerfully than in the kitchen. That’s why I work hard to put good food on the table and keep junk food out of the house. I seek out stuff without high-fructose corn syrup, colorants, and additives; I analyze labels, shop at farmers’ markets, and choose organic when I can. You get the idea. But this is the thing: The ways the food industry now targets kids are so pervasive and the tactics so deceitful that even the most diligent parent cannot prevent their kids from being inundated at the most impressionable stages in their development. Even schools are no longer havens from marketing. The food industry advertises in gyms, yearbooks, and playgrounds. They’ve succeeded in getting ads in school buses — and Ronald into school assemblies. Corporations sponsor school curriculum, like the Oreo Cookie Counting Book, Skittles Counting Book, Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Counting Fun Book. No offender is greater than McDonald’s, who has written the script on this tactic. One McDonald’s first-grade program asks kids to design a McDonald’s restaurant and provides information about applying for a McDonald’s job. If your jaw is hanging open right now, you’re like me: I was stunned when I first learned about it. ( Corporate Accountability International’s “ Clowning With Kids’ Health ” is a great source for more jaw-dropping examples). McDonalds also has a long history of using charity as a form of marketing — and reaching kids. The corporation is a “platinum sponsor” of the 2013 Washington State Parent Teacher Association convention, for instance. Partnerships like this warm up the “gatekeepers” — McDonald’s own internal descriptor for “mothers” — to a brand that is a big negative for their children’s health. Then there’s “McTeacher’s Night.” The corporation puts teachers behind the register for a night and, in exchange for their free labor and in-school promotion of McDonald’s, donates a percentage of the evening’s profits to the local school. Though dubbed as “charity,” McDonald’s is the one getting the real benefit: The typical take for schools is only about $800 or the equivalent of a Saturday morning car wash sans the junk food marketing. Meanwhile McDonald’s gets the benefits of associating with role models like teachers and parents. To make matters worse, other corporations are taking McDonald’s lead. McDonald’s supplier Coca-Cola, for instance, has the popular My Coke Rewards program, which offers points for Coke products purchased. Some PTAs are now pushing My Coke Rewards as a fundraising tool, and the Coca-Cola website has a prominent way to donate to your school. Never mind this essentially means turning school communities into a grassroots marketing arm for a corporation that made $8.6 billion in profits in 2011 . And yes, you can turn off the TV, but is that what kids are really watching? Kids and teens are now spending many hours online, on social media or playing videos games or interacting with apps. With hundreds of websites and apps , some targeting children as young as preschool age, the food industry has come to dominate many children’s social media and online experience. Again, McDonalds’ is leading the way. Its HappyMeal.com attracts more than a half million unique visitors during the summer months when kids spend more time at home. The site features a host of advertising disguised as games, or “adver-games.” The site even features a virtual world for children to become immersed in. To unlock “all kinds of cool stuff” in McDonald’s virtual world (the “Happy Meal gone digital” to borrow from the web site’s description) kids are encouraged to frequent McDonald’s and look for special codes found on the Happy Meal’s “healthier” items (apples with caramel dipping sauce, Chocolate Milk Jugs). In other words, in order to maximize fun in this “free” virtual space, children are incentivized to buy Happy Meals. In McWorld, “where kids rule,” buying Happy Meals is the best way to obtain “accessories for your avatar, treehouse, or interactive pets” and visit with popular movie, comic, and TV characters. Many of these websites also ask for personal information, sometimes requiring it for viewers to engage fully in a game or offering incentives for providing it. All this can go on without parents realizing it. McDonald’s, for instance, buries the line: “Hey kids, this is advertising!” in a small font in a tree branch in the upper left hand corner of its newly revamped online platform. Perhaps most pernicious of all, McDonald’s also pays people the public trusts to serve as “brand ambassadors” for the junk food corporation. Ahead of the 2012 Summer Olympics, for example, McDonald’s amassed a group of 400 food bloggers to write positively about the chain in exchange for “free gifts and parties.” In 2010, the burger giant provided 15 mom-bloggers an all-expenses paid trip in return for their trumpeting the brand to their networks. The corporation also enlists kid-favorite celebrity athletes like Lebron James and Gabby Douglas. So you see, you can turn off the TV — hey, you could even throw it out the window — and your kids will still be exposed to McDonald’s junk food marketing, from all-school assemblies to the internet. For kids today, marketing is ubiquitous — and McDonalds has been front-and-center in making it so. That’s why I’m joining moms everywhere today in calling on McDonald’s to set an example — and conclude five decades of setting a bad example — and stop marketing to kids. You can join me by sharing the image above, adding your voice in social media with #MomsNotLovinIt, and taking action at MomsNotLovinIt.org .

Originally published on GDAE in September 2013 Download the working paper Download the related ActionAid Report Read the Executive Summary Download the working paper in French Since the 2007-8 food price crisis, alarms have sounded regarding our ability to feed a growing population in 2050. Some warn that we need to double food production; other estimates range from 60-70%. All feed the alarmist notion that global hunger is the result of flagging food production amid looming resource constraints. The policy prescriptions that follow -- the expansion of industrial-scale agricultural development – are deeply flawed. They ignore the true threats to our global food supply: biofuels expansion, inadequate investment in climate-resilient agriculture, especially for small-scale and women food producers, and the massive loss of food to spoilage and waste. Most of the recent warnings come from a group of economic modeling studies, which GDAE’s Timothy A. Wise reviews in detail for this GDAE Working Paper, which was adapted for the ActionAid report, “ Rising to the Challenge: Changing Course to Feed the World in 2050 .” He finds that many of these public pronouncements calling for a doubling of global food production are based on outdated or flawed economic forecasting and misleading characterizations of the research. More reliable estimates of current supply, productivity, and demand trends – assuming business-as-usual policies – suggest the need and the ability to increase agricultural production by 60% over 2005-7 levels by 2050. This is a far cry from doubling food production, especially since an increasing share of the world’s agricultural production goes not to food or feed but to biofuels. Wise suggests that the goal of such economic forecasts should be to help policy-makers identify what needs to change in those business-as-usual policies that are contributing to high and volatile prices, food insecurity, and looming resource constraints on agricultural production. Notably, he finds that most economic forecasting fails to adequately guide decisions regarding several key variables: Biofuels expansion - Biofuels expansion is a relatively recent phenomenon that has been poorly captured by most economic modeling to date. Few models adequately account for current trends, with some underestimating business-as-usual expansion by 100%. With national mandates and targets significantly driving biofuels expansion, new updated forecasts are urgently needed to help policy-makers assess the food security implications of current policies. Those policies are projected to divert as much 13% of cereal production from needed food production by 2030. Inadequate and poorly targeted agricultural investment – Agricultural investment is key to ensuring growing food production. Whereas many projections stress the importance of agricultural productivity growth, few models assess differing priorities for agricultural research and investment. A growing consensus supports increased investment in climate-resilient food production, focusing on small-scale producers in food-insecure parts of the world. Yet most research, private and public, focuses on large-scale, input-intensive agricultural development. So too does most investment, driven by private-sector-led projects, such as the “New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition” initiated by the G-8. Food waste and spoilage – One-third of global food production fails to nourish anyone. In industrialized countries, wasteful consumption patterns result in tremendous losses, while in developing countries poor infrastructure leads to high rates of spoilage before food makes it to market. Most forecasts assume the continued waste of the food we now produce, making the alarmist calls for increased food production ring hollow. Climate change – We are just beginning to understand the implications of climate change for agriculture and food security. The impacts, plagued by multiple layers of uncertainty, are poorly incorporated in most economic forecasts. With international climate negotiations stalled, urgent attention is needed to mitigate industrial agriculture’s tremendous contribution to global warming and to help developing country food producers to adapt to a changing climate. Meanwhile a growing body of evidence, based on experiences at local and regional levels, demonstrates the long-term value of investments in smallholder farming and sustainable agricultural methods. Strategic policy changes and investments can scale-up successful approaches and expand them to regions where they are most appropriate and most needed, especially regions in which food security is tenuous despite high agricultural potential. This working paper, and the ActionAid report based on it, reviews the economic forecasting on which most of the alarmist 2050 pronouncements are based, presents alternative modeling that can add useful insights, and identifies important areas in which further research can guide policy-makers in assessing changes to failing business-as-usual policies. Download “Can We Feed the World in 2050? ” Download the ActionAid report, “ Rising to the Challenge: Changing Course to Feed the World in 2050 ” Read the Executive Summary Download the working paper in French Visit the ActionAid site to learn more about their outreach on this topic.

Originally published by FirstPost on 12/07/2013 1. India’s food security and stockholding program uses precisely the same policies that the United States used in its early farm policy coming out of the Great Depression. Exactly the same: price supports, food reserves, administered markets,subsidies. We used them because they work. India and other countries should be allowed to use them too. Because they work. 2. The WTO’s Green Box, which is meant to hold non-trade-distorting subsidies, is now home to about $120 billion of the US’s $130 billion in nutrition programs and farm supports. This dwarfs India’s commitments. 3. The allowed levels of trade-distorting support – the Aggregate Measure of Support (AMS) – for the US is about $19 billion. Why so high? Because the level was set back in 1994, based on the prevailing high levels of US support, and it was reduced only 20% since then. India? Like 61 of 71 developing country WTO members at the time, India’s AMS is zero. Like most developing countries, it couldn’t afford such expensive policies. Now such countries are punished for their past good behavior. 4. The United States has been unfairly notifying the WTO of its trade-distorting subsidies for years. A WTO dispute panel ruled that insurance subsidies and direct payments should count as trade-distorting subsidies because they go to producers of a defined set of crops. If one counted such payments correctly, US AMS notifications for 2010 would rise from $4 billion to $15 billion. 5. India’s procurement program and stockholding is for domestic producers and for domestic consumption. Where is the trade distortion? Meanwhile, US subsidies – AMS and Green Box – go to crops like corn, soybeans, wheat, and cotton that are heavily exported. 6. Not only are those crops exported, corn and soybeans serve as inputs for livestock feed, and corn is the main input for ethanol. Input subsidies should be notified as trade-distorting, yet these are treated as non-trade-distorting subsidies. The US exports both meat and ethanol. 7. The US is calling India out for its food security program even though India has ten times the beneficiaries, provides less than one-quarter the food, and spends one-sixth the amount per person. The United States spends about $75 billion per year for its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the main domestic food aid program. That provides on average 240 kg of grain for each of the 47 million beneficiaries, valued at $1,608 per year. Before expanding its food security program, India was reaching 475 million much hungrier people with food aid of just 58 kg per person, valued at roughly $27/year. 8. In 2005, the WTO committed itself to resolve the issue of the US’s trade-distorting cotton subsidies “in an expedited manner.” Eight years later, Africa’s cotton producers are still waiting for US compliance. In Bali, the US has offered nothing on cotton, continuing the damage to some of the world’s poorest farmers. 9. India’s simplest demand is truly simple, if technical. Its administered prices for farmers are calculated as subsidies by comparing them not to market prices in India but to an international “reference price.” That reference price is archaic, from 1986-88. Inflation since then has been about 500%, so any price today will look like a high support price and will result in a high subsidy estimate. India asked simply that the reference price be updated for inflation, so its administered prices can be compared to something vaguely resembling current market prices. No go, says the US. Never mind that those 1986-88 reference prices were even lower because the US and the EU were at the time dumping huge surpluses on the international market, crashing the prices. 10. Last but not least is the audacity of calling for a Peace Clause at all. Peace Clause? Really? For those who don’t remember recent history, the US and the EU imposed a Peace Clause in 1994 at the end of the round of negotiations that launched the WTO. It protected them from WTO suits over their hugely distorting subsidies. How long did it last? Nine years, and it covered Subsidies and Countervailing Measures. The current Peace Clause being offered to India and the G-33 countries is just four years, excludes the subsidies measures, and expires even if there has been no resolution of the outstanding Doha issues. Instead of “special and differentiated treatment” for developing countries, India gets special and differentiated punishment.

Originally published on GDAE in May 2013 Read the Report The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) created a stir in October 2012 with its revised estimates of global hunger. After revising the methodology used in its annual State of Food Insecurity (SOFI) reports, the FAO reported that the number of hungry had not surpassed one billion following the 2008 food price spikes. Indeed, the new estimates showed barely an upward blip. Moreover, new trend lines based on revised estimates of past hunger suggested significant progress in reducing the incidence of hunger. “New estimates show that progress in reducing hunger during the past 20 years has been better than previously believed,” the FAO concluded, “and … given renewed efforts, it may be possible to reach the MDG hunger target [of halving world hunger] at the global level by 2015.” Now, a group of hunger researchers led by Frances Moore Lappe and Jennifer Clapp, and including GDAE’s Timothy A. Wise, have published a detailed critique of the SOFI 2012 estimates and report. “ Framing Hunger: A Response to ‘The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012' ,” offers recommendations to the FAO as much in relation to the presentation of its hunger estimates as on the methodology itself. Key recommendations include: The estimate represents a lower-bound because it is based on food availability and the caloric requirements required only to lead a “sedentary lifestyle.” A less restrictive FAO threshold leads to an estimate of 1.33 billion hungry in the world rather than SOFI 2012’s widely cited 868 million. The words hunger, food insecurity, and chronic undernourishment are used interchangeably, but the FAO methodology is designed to estimate the latter: undernourishment lasting more than one year. Partly for this reason, the methodology is poorly designed to capture the hunger impacts of short-duration events such as food price spikes. The focus on global hunger masks wide regional variation. In fact, progress in China and Vietnam alone account for more than 90% of the estimated reductions in the number of hungrypeople in the world. National success stories – Ghana, Brazil – are lost in the global estimates, as are countries and regions in crisis. SOFI 2012 implies that a return to pre-recession economic growth will allow the world to resume progress in reducing hunger, but this obscures the many other enabling government policies that are needed to harness growth to guarantee the right to food. “Framing Hunger” has already prompted a very productive dialogue with FAO officials, who share the goal of improving the measurement and eradication of hunger. Read " Framing Hunger " from the Small Planet Institute, by Frances Moore Lappé, Jennifer Clapp, Molly Anderson, Richard Lockwood, Thomas Forster, Danielle Nierenberg, Harriet Friedmann, Thomas Pogge, Dominique Caouette, Wayne Roberts, Timothy A. Wise, Sophia Murphy, Brother David Andrews, Susan H. Holcombe, Robin Broad, Ellen Messer, and Christina Schiavoni.

Originally published by Timothy A. Wise at Tufts University on 10/08/2013 In relation to biofuels, the obligation of the CFS is to ensure that the rapid and recent expansion of first-generation biofuels, and its projected continued expansion, is not undermining agreed rights to food, land, and natural resources. We strongly believe it is, and the evidence is clear. The HLPE report is unambiguous about the contribution of biofuels to food price increases, added pressure on land and water rights, and gender inequities. Other independent research has confirmed such findings, particularly in relation to the US and EU biofuel programs. A report last month to the European Commission by the Joint Research Centre showed that eliminating current EU tax incentives and blending requirements would lower vegetable oil prices significantly and prevent the conversion of 6 million hectares of land to biofuel production, with much of that land instead devoted to cereals production for human consumption. In the United States, 40% of maize is consumed by ethanol production, accounting for 15% of global maize supplies. Estimates on price impacts range from 20-79%, as Prof. de Gorter argued yesterday. The oil industry can find or hire scientists who will claim to prove that climate change is not happening. That does not make it true. The scientific consensus is otherwise. So too is the consensus on biofuels and food security, as confirmed by the HLPE, in two different reports, with comprehensive literature reviews, as well as by a wide range of international agencies and experts. The time to act is now. As an open letter from 80 civil society organizations, released this afternoon, states: “We are deeply concerned that the recommendations in the current CFS draft Decision Box would not protect the right to food from existing biofuels policies and the growing demand for biofuels. Instead, the text proposal refers to the alleged benefits of biofuels, which have not been shown to exist at any significant scale.” As the Special Rapporteur has pointed out, the delegates to the CFS would betray their obligations if they fail to take action to address the very real impacts of biofuel expansion on world food security. Thank you. Read the full text of the open letter