How to Come Out of the Food Crisis

Here's one of the most chilling facts I heard about the current food crisis. People in Haiti living on $2 a day are paying more than $1 for a bowl of rice. Sparse diets are becoming starvation diets, and people who were just barely holding on before are facing desperation.

Even in the United States, land of abundance and charity, people are scrambling to keep up with rising food prices. KUOW, Seattle's NPR affiliate, invited people to call in today about how they are coping, and the voices ranged from resigned (we just have to consider meat a condiment, not a staple) to desperate (I got sick, lost my job, and now I'm trying to feed four children on the $400 per month I get from welfare.)

The immediate need is for emergency measures to get food to prices that the poor can afford.

But there is the longer term question, also, about the industrial agriculture model we've come to rely on. As John Nichols points out in a recent article in The Nation, the policies of trade liberalization, agribusiness, and genetically modified crops have brought us to this point. Growing genetically modified, fertilizer-hungry crops for international trade has been richly rewarded. Growing locally-bred crops for local subsistence has been undermined by these global policies.

Economics 101 tells us that everything, including food, should be sold to the highest bidder. But the highest bidder at the moment may be the biofuel industry, which is converting vast quantities of corn into ethanol and other biofuels.

Here's another chilling fact, this one from Lester Brown, of the Earth Policy Institute. The amount of corn needed to fill up an SUV with ethanol would feed someone for a year.

SUVs are competing with human beings for grain, and grain-fed farm animals are also. As more people, especially the Chinese, demand more meat, there is less available to feed people.

The laissez-faire economics breaks down at this point. Poor people have less cash, so they can't compete in the global marketplace with SUVs or steak dinners. There is no ethical way to justify this.

Instead, we need to take a page from Naomi Klein's new book, The Shock Doctrine. Her book shows that disasters--natural and human made--often provide openings for policies that people would never accept under ordinary circumstances. She calls this anti-democratic practice, disaster capitalism.

Perhaps we need to do the inverse. Use disastrous times to create the bottom-up, deeply democratic alternatives that, during ordinary times, might seem more trouble than they're worth. These alternatives may be small scale at first, but they can function like seeds in a supersaturated solution. Without these particles, a solution can remain in a dissolved state. But add the "seeds" and crystals rapidly take shape and grow.

On KUOW this morning, people talked of planting more gardens, going to the farmers market, hooking up with local farmers. Local food is not expected to get more expensive, one farmer said.

Rather than follow the advice of World Bank president Robert Zoellick, who is calling for more of the same trade liberalization and instead of pushing GM crops on more farmers and consumers, we should turn to local production for local, human consumption. Biofuels should be made from waste crops and manure, not from food. The Farm Bill has provisions we should support and others we need to resist. We should be developing the local capacities to feed ourselves, turning lawns into "victory gardens," supporting local farmers, helping new farmers to get a start, creating farm incubators.

Via Campesina, an international organization of farmers, has been pressing for these changes for years. Also Food First and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

YES! has been covering the emergence of this local, sustainable food movement for many years.

Local food was a big part of our Go Local! issue in winter 2007. Back in 2000, we reported on the rapid growth of the local foods movement. Even in the current issue on climate solutions, we focus on the contribution to climate solutions we can make by reducing our consumption of meat.

With increasing consensus that peak oil is nearly upon us, these local food systems will soon be recognized as the life boats they are.

Cesar Chavez Day

He would have been 81 today -- Cesar Chavez, an organizer of farmworkers, some of the most marginalized people living and working in the United States, and a hero to those who believe nonviolence can change the world. The United Farmworkers is pushing for legislation to make his birthday a national holiday. It's already a state holiday in California, Texas, Arizona, and several other states. Senator Barak Obama called for making March 31 a national holiday in a statement issued today.

Democracy Now's Amy Goodman interviewed United Farmworker co-founder Dolores Huerta today. You can find the transcript here.

Obama raises the stakes—and Americans respond

Barack Obama took a big gamble in his speech on Reverend Wright and race, last week. And it appears that Americans rose to the call. Instead of giving us a dumbed-down response to the controversy over Rev. Wright's inflammatory preaching, Obama spoke of the complexity, the good and bad, the hardships--and the triumphs that only sometimes result from lifetimes of struggle on uneven playing fields.

I didn't hear the speech as it was delivered. I was in Washington, DC, at a panel at the Take Back America conference on the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., headed up by Rev. Jesse Jackson. I expected that the controversy with Rev. Wright would be discussed, but, bizarrely, there was not a single mention.

Instead, I read Obama's speech on the plane on the way home, in part to see if the words, read critically without his charismatic presentation, would be persuasive.

I felt then, and I feel now after having also watched the speech, that this is one of the most important speeches of our time.

Americans are deeply torn by the issue of race. Obama offered blunt honesty, pain, and hope, coupled with an expectation that we do have it within us all to struggle with an issue that lacks easy answers. No scapegoats were offered for people of any race. No turning a back on anyone, even when they say things we may not like. No easy answers, and no writing off the anger of black people or white people -- who have good reasons to be angry even though people of color are not the source of their pain nor should they be subjected to its expression.

We need to understand and address the causes of the deep disquiet so many feel in this country, and our inability to untangle the issues of race have kept us from doing that -- until now.

Did the gamble pay off? That will be up to all of us. Good leadership, like Obama's, is not a substitute for our own work on this issue. But he showed us it can be done and showed us how. And, according to a NBC/Wall Street Journal post-speech poll, the American people continue to admire and support Obama. He, unlike Hillary Clinton, continues to lead McCain in a hypothetical one-on-one contest.

Whatever you think of his candidacy, Obama is offering us a way forward in the difficult, but ultimately deeply hopeful, process of taking on one of the big challenges of our time -- how we get along across the many lines that divide us.

How to Measure What Really Matters

Forty years ago this week, Robert Kennedy gave his famous speech questioning the GDP. An economic yardstick sounds like a topic of -- shall we say -- limited interest for most people.

But it turns out to be a critical question. If you orient your policies around one measure of success, it better be a good one, and the Gross Domestic Product is not.

Kennedy points out in his speech that it is not "economic growth" that matters most, and that economic growth does not necessarily result in the things that do matter -- like healthy children, clean air, a meaningful life. If you care about those things, you make different sorts of policies -- ones that invest in long-term well being which may, or may not, be associated with economic expansion.

It's a topic YES! has been on about for years. YES! board chair, David Korten, wrote about it in the summer '06 issue of YES! Living Wealth: Better than Money, and in Money Versus Wealth back in our spring 1997 issue, and more recently, contributing editor Jon Rowe wrote about it in his article entitled The Hidden Commons.

Jon Rowe will be among those testifying this week at a congressional hearing on the shortcomings of the GDP. The Glaser Progress Foundation is focusing on this question, and a new video of a portion of Robert Kennedy's speech, with images that illustrate why this matters so much, is now up on YouTube.

Beyond Empire: A Just U.S. Foreign Policy

Here's what we are thinking about for the summer issue of YES! Your comments and suggestions are welcome.

In the latter part of the 20th century, the U.S. moved into an increasingly powerful empire role. After the fall of the USSR, it became the sole superpower, the largest military spender, by far, with close to 800 foreign bases and a mammoth stockpile of nuclear weapons. We also have among the highest per capita rates of consumption of the world's resources, and the U.S. is increasingly placing itself above international law.

In the presidential debates, the candidates and parties differ about foreign policy. But none of them is questioning that the U.S. will continue its imperial course.

This issue of YES! begins with the premise that the American empire cannot last much longer:

• It is fast moving beyond the means of the American people. The U.S. can no longer sustain the massive drain on its resources of maintaining two foreign wars, pork-barrel weapons systems, hundreds of foreign bases. The under-investment in human, social, capital and infrastructure at home is undermining our security.
• The rising oil prices (and limited supply), coupled with the rapidly expanding reach of the Chinese economy and competition for energy and raw materials, are constraining our economic dominance.
• The loss of stature of the U.S. in the wake of the Iraq occupation has undermined the international legitimacy of the U.S. empire.

If the U.S. empire can't be sustained, what comes next? An economic collapse as overreach comes home to roost? A hand-off to other power-centers (China/India/Russia or the E.U.)? All-out war as we attempt to protect our global dominance?

Can we imagine instead that the U.S. leads the way to a post-empire world?

What would it mean to voluntarily step back from empire and join the community of nations? In particular:

• What is our real source of security? Multi-million dollar jet fighters designed for air battles with the USSR? Or sustainable energy technologies widely shared and locally controlled? A generation of veterans and civilians traumatized by the occupation of Iraq? Or populations with reliable access to education and health care, food and water? Garrison states, with secrecy as official policy and limited civil liberties? Or transparency, rule of law, rights for all?
• Can we be secure with a military that is at the same scale as those of other wealthy regions, such as the E.U.? What will it take to unlearn what we've been taught about being under siege?
• Can we dismantle our nuclear stockpile, as recently proposed by Kissinger, Shultz, and other former cold warriors (and by peace advocates for many years), and keep our promises in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to rid ourselves and the world of the existential threat of nuclear weapons?
• How can our economy thrive without the economic stimulus of massive military spending and without the privileged access to the world's resources that comes with super-power status? What resources would be released, and how might that build the foundations of a strong, sustainable domestic economy?
• How can we change our trade policies so migration is less driven by the economic disruptions brought about by NAFTA, CAFTA, the IMF, World Bank, and corporate domination? What is our fair share of the world's resources, and might living within our means reduce the impetus for a global military presence?
• How do climate change, peak oil, and other signs of a "full planet" affect the future of international relations?
• How can our policies help unlock the Israel-Palestinian stalemate, instead of perpetuating it? What can we do to under-cut the causes of terrorism, rather than spending billions and compromising democracy at home and abroad to counter a relatively small group of violent criminals?
• How can we end the occupation of Iraq and prevent an attack on Iran?
• How can we support nonviolent grassroots power to counter tyranny (in other words, how can we support real democracy), rather than supporting despots friendly to the U.S. to counter leaders who aren't? When is outside assistance constructive?
• How can the diversity of cultures complement each other and enrich everyone's lives rather than set the stage for violent misunderstandings.
• How does the trauma of one war set the stage for the next round of violent conflict, and are there ways to interrupt and heal this deadly cycle of trauma?
• How can ordinary people get involved in creating foreign policy through their cities, states, or tribal governments and through citizen-to-citizen diplomacy?

We are especially interested in creative responses, diverse voices, and a variety of forms of articles (essays, profiles, stories, poems, info-graphics).

Please query asap, and before sending submissions: editors [at] yesmagazine.org. Include the number 46 in the subject line.

Just, green economic stimulus

It's the perfect opportunity. Democrats and Republicans agree that an economic stimulus package is needed. So the government is getting ready to inject cash, quickly, into the economy. With markets plummeting, foreclosures up, this is urgent, right?

Here's another thing that's urgent: Getting the U.S. to kick the addiction to fossil fuels before we toast the planet. Building green, retrofitting buildings to reduce their climate footprint, weatherizing the homes of the poor and elderly, installing solar panels and wind mills. And making sure that the people who have been left out up until now, are part of this rebuilding of economy.

It all adds up to a great idea, being pressed by the people at 1Sky and others: Lets spend the economic stimulus money on greening the country, and lets put lots of people to work making it happen.

What better way could there be to address three of the most pressing issues of our time?

The moment things shifted in Bali

Check out this amazing account of the moment the U.S. agreed to accept the worldwide pressure to end it's obstruction of climate change progress. This moment, captured by an eye witness in Bali, may be one of the most important historic moments of our lifetimes.