Bøger udgivet af Food First Books

Translation of: Cuba atando cabos: la agricultura Cubana: contratiempos, reajustes y desafios.

Grabbing Power explores the history of agribusiness and land conflicts in Northern Honduras focusing on the Aguan Valley, where peasant movements battle large palm oil producers for the right to land. In the wake of a military coup that overthrew Honduran president Manuel Zelaya in June 2009, rural communities in the Aguan have been brutally repressed, with over 60 people killed in just over two years. United States military aid--spent in the name of the War on Drugs--fuels the Honduran government's ability to repress its people. A strong and inspiring movement for land, food and democracy has grown over the last two years, and it shows no sign of backing down.

Around the world, people are resisting the environmental, social and political destruction perpetuated by the industrial agricultural system. This resistance has led to a new and radical agricultural practice amongst peasant and farmer organizations: food sovereignty. Food sovereignty aims to provide for the food needs of all people while respecting the principles of environmental sustainability, local empowerment and agrarian citizenship. Concerned not only with local food production but also with fundamental social change, food sovereignty aims to transform the industrial agricultural system. Bringing together internationally recognized experts in the field, this book critically engages contemporary debates concerning food sovereignty while exploring new research directions. This exceptional collection examines the historical rise of the industrial agricultural system, outlines the environmental and social consequences of this system and gives voice to the peasant movements that are planting the seeds of a revolution that could fundamentally alter our relationship with food - and with each other.This book advocates for the ideology and practice of food sovereignty world wide as the means to achieve a system that will provide for the food needs of all people. The current neo-liberal industrialized, market-driven food system certainly does not achieve that goal, as is most obviously indicated by the growing levels of hunger in the world especially among marginalized populations in both the North and South. In particular, it is among the world's most numerous farmers (what we in the North call the family farm) that hunger is the most pressing. The dramatic conversion of agricultural land into production of bio-fuel rather than food, while millions go hungry, is the one of the most glaring contradictions of the industrial, market model of food organization. The UN-endorsed goal of food security will likely fall short of the mark as well, as dependence on the market and the corporate model of food production and distribution is maintained. The authors of this book describe the recent emergence and the parameters of a food system that puts the levers of food control in the hands of those who are both hungry and produce the world's food - farmers, not corporate executives. As the authors show in both conceptual and case study terms, food sovereignty promises not only increased production of food, but also food that is safe, food that reaches those who are in the most need, and agricultural practices that respect the earth.

On January 1, 1994, in the impoverished state of Chiapas in southern Mexico, the Zapatista rebellion shot into the international spotlight. In this fully revised third edition of their classic study of the rebellion's roots, George Collier and Elizabeth Lowery Quaratiello paint a vivid picture of the historical struggle for land faced by the Maya Indians, who are among Mexico's poorest people. Examining the roles played by Catholic and Protestant clergy, revolutionary and peasant movements, the oil boom and the debt crisis, NAFTA and the free trade era, and finally the growing global justice movement, the authors provide a rich context for understanding the uprising and the subsequent history of the Zapatistas and rural Chiapas, up to the present day.

Challenging the prevailing wisdom on Asia's "miracle economies," Dragons in Distress argues that South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore are headed for crisis. Writing for a diverse audience, Walden Bello and Stephanie Rosenfeld lead their readers on an exploration of the different dimensions of this crisis: environmental degradation, agriculture on the road to extinction, deteriorating labor-management relations, eroding political legitimacy, and deepening structural fissures in the industrial economy. Showing how these problems stem from the dynamics of the model of high speed, export-oriented industrialization, they suggest strategies to surmount the unfolding crisis and open up the path to equitable and ecologically sustainable development. The first comprehensive critique of the "Newly Industrialized Countries" (NICs) paradigm, this book is a very welcome antidote to the usual uncritical celebration of the "dragon" or "tiger" economies.

Every minute, someone in the Third World becomes a victim of pesticide poisoning. Circle of Poison documents the international marketing of restricted pesticides that leave a globe-circling trail of sickness and death. But the circle's victims are not silent. Around the world, people are fighting back.

As debate rages over the costs and benefits of genetically engineered crops, noted agroecologist Miguel Altieri lucidly examines some of the issue's most basic and pressing questions: Are transgenic crops similar to conventionally bred crops? Are transgenic crops safe to eat? Does biotechnology increase yields? Does it reduce pesticide use? What are the costs to American farmers? Will biotechnology benefit poor farmers? Can biotechnology coexist with other forms of agriculture? What are the known and potential environmental and biological risks? What alternatives do we have to genetically modified crops?

In the country with the widest income gap between rich and poor and where millions of children fend for themselves on city streets, one of the world's most successful grassroots social movements has arisen. To Inherit the Earth tells the dramatic story of Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement, or MST-millions of desperately poor, landless, jobless men and women who, through their own nonviolent efforts, have secured rights to over 20 million acres of farmland. Not only are the MST fighting for their own rights, they are transforming their society into a more just one-and their approach may offer the best solution yet to Brazil's environmental problems in the Amazon and elsewhere. Authors Wright and Wolford put the movement in its historical, political, and environmental context, trace its growth, and address the issues the MST faces going forward. And throughout, they share dozens of personal stories of people in the movement--stories filled with tremendous courage, personal sacrifice, faith, humor, drama, and determination.

NAFTA. The WTO. Trade agreements are supposed to benefit us all. Instead, in the decade since they've been in effect, life has become much worse for millions of working Americans. In Shafted, working people-family farmers and farmworkers, fishermen and seamstresses-describe the ruin free trade has brought to them, their families, and their towns. These aren't theorists; these are the voices of experience. And they're telling us, clearly and eloquently, that it's time to stop the madness that enriches a few corporations at the cost of justice, human rights, community, family, and the dignity of work and of workers.

A muckraking expose of corporate greenwashing and of the disturbing trend toward U.N.-corporate "partnerships" that give corporations good PR without requiring them to improve their behavior. In the decade between the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, transnational corporations have increasingly used their resources to deter regulation, suppress opposing voices, and try to buy civil society's acquiescence with slick PR. But we don't have to acquiesce, and neither should the U.N. The United Nations may not be perfect, argue Kenny Bruno and Joshua Karliner, but in its principles and structure it has the potential to counter the WTO-a potential it is squandering, say the authors. earthsummit.biz exposes the current state of corporate rhetoric vs. corporate reality and debunks the paradigm of transnational "responsibility" and self-regulation. It contains 18 corporate case studies, as well as the complete texts of the U.N.'s toothless Global Compact with corporations, and the Global Compact's civil society counterpart, the Citizens Compact on the United Nations and Corporations.

As we enter the 21st century, many countries of the South are in a state of economic crisis, with once optimistic visions of the future cruelly dashed by rising mass poverty, inequality, and hunger. At the same time, working people in the North find their living standards declining. Dark Victory reveals the roots of these global trends in a sweeping strategy of global economic rollback unleashed by the US to shore up the North's domination of the international economy and reassert corporate control. Bello argues that lower barriers to imports, removal of restrictions on foreign investments, privatization of state-owned activities, reduction in social welfare spending, and wage cuts and devaluation of local currencies-all conditions of structural adjustment loans from the North-have had disastrous consequences. Hailed as a classic study of global poverty, Dark Victory is now reissued with a new epilogue by the authors.