British Petroleum and the U.S. government can’t figure out how to cover up an underwater oil leak that’s spewing tens of thousands of gallons of oil day into the formerly rich fishery off the Gulf coast of Louisiana. But between the two of them, they’ve done a masterful job of covering up a hole in public policy that allows risky…
Category: Policy
The Unknown Earthquake in Haiti’s Countryside
March, when next season’s crops are due to be planted in Haiti, is less than a month away. For the tens of thousands who have left the rubble and despair of Haiti’s capital to find shelter in some 500 camps throughout the countryside, it could be their chance to plant a new life for themselves – if only a trickle…
Video: Food Policy and the New Urban Vision
Here is a video of Wayne speaking about food policy at the Toledo Public Library, from September 28, 2009. Thanks to the WGTE-TV (PBS) and Knowledge Stream for making it possible.
TIME FOR AN ALTERNATIVE TO CHEAP FOOD
Only Time will tell if we’re at the point in the food debate to pop the taboo question: how come, despite all the squawking about food being too expensive these days, food is so incredibly cheap? What hidden force lies behind all the obvious problems. To give credit where it’s due, Time magazine, a showpiece of glossy conventional wisdom since 1924, is…
LOCAL FARMERS HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT THEIR CHAINS
A crack lets the light in, the song goes, and a first crack has just appeared in the corporate walls of Canada’s top food retailers. Sobeys — a chain that flies the banner “the Hometown Advantage,” and which ten years ago took over a chain that called itself “Hometown Proud”– now confronts nine formerly locked-in franchisees from farm country in…
Red Ink: A Canadian View of Food Inc.
I read about Chef Jamie Kennedy possibly going broke on the front-page news (not bad profile for someone who’s not a banker or carmaker getting bailed out by the government) at the same time I got an invite to see the preview of Food Inc. So the chance to think about the two food happenings together gobsmacked me. Food Inc and Food…
Stimulate This! Whole New Field of Vision for Farm Environmental Services
A newly-formed Ontario-wide coalition will work to convince governments to pay farmers for environmental services. That’s a promising sign a whole new environmental economy may be in birth, based on giving back to nature so it can lay more golden eggs. If the people concocting infrastructure investments that governments can sink taxpayers’ money into gave a thought to the enduring…
Sharing Food and Work Creates an Upside to the Economic Down
Unlike most people, Thomas Homer-Dixon doesn’t think today’s world economic crisis is very complicated. He thinks it’s very complex, which makes for a world of difference in understanding which government anti-recession programs will fail (most of them) and deciding which ones can help.Homer-Dixon, who chairs a centre for global systems analysis at the University of Waterloo, is one of the…