UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization Calls Food and Hunger a “Crisis Within a Crisis” of COVID-19 Food often suffers from the problem that it can’t get no respect as a public policy issue. But the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization has been quick off the mark to produce a flurry of food-related briefings reminding people that food policy must stay front…
Category: Politics
Four ways COVID-19 will change food systems and food security
It’s too early for precise answers to questions about the coronavirus pandemic’s long-term impacts on the ways food is produced, processed, distributed, eaten, recycled and appreciated. But my experience managing food policy issues in Toronto for one of the world’s leading city-based public health departments gives me some searching questions that can help us prepare for possible outcomes. These open…
Bare essentials: T.O. org puts women’s underpants on Haiti’s aid agenda
On the second anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti, let’s get down to a skimpy project that lays bare a whole lot about the men in charge of international emergency aid missions. This has to do with women’s drawers, and their new role in the agenda of global emergency assistance. The story starts here in T.O. at a fundraiser for…
Canadians Grieve Jack Layton, Crusader for City Health, Food, Environment and Optimism
By Wayne Roberts Jack Layton’s death on August 22 feels so cry-out-loud tragic – and has touched a chord across the country with an outpouring of national grief, leading the federal government to hold a formal state funeral in his honor – because he was still brimming with vitality, positive energy and hope even as he knew cancer was stealing…
Big Powers Missing in Action on Food Price Crisis but New Leaders Emerge
Find Wayne’s article Here Featured On the WorldWatch Institute website.
How government food policy got in your face but not in your heart
Cuts to Government Services, But not to Double Standards By Wayne Roberts Politicians at all levels are promising more cuts to government expenses without any cut to services. For politicians, this is better than a gift that keeps on giving. It’s a promise they can keep on promising. For most of the past 40 years, North American and British politicians…
Open Pit Gravel Mine Tells Farmers to “Eat My Dust”
Although the Ontario election is still six months away, the surprise candidate for most polarizing issue likely to turn the political contest into an emotional cliffhanger has already come to the fore. A 6 billion tonne gravel “mega quarry” – second-largest in North America – has been proposed in what is now quiet farm and cottage country some 100 kilometers…
Whatever Happened to Election Debates on Economics?
Tears have been wiped dry, major resignations are in, and thoughts about ways of overcoming disproportionate misrepresentation allowing Harpers Conservatives to turn 39 per cent of all votes into a majority government are in the hopper. But the sleeper issue on the political agenda continues to doze. One reason why all pundits are talking about the electoral politics of the…
A New Political Alignment May Follow Canada’s Federal Election
As much as Canada’s federal election delivered historic consequences for every political party, the election’s future significance turns more on historic changes within the electorate than on changes of any significance within any particular party. There’s a strong — though barely visible — possibility that the unrest and volatility expressed by voters will drive political change during the next years…
Are We Seeing the End of Supermarkets?
I grew up with the habit of Thursday nights as the time when family shopped together at the local supermarket, and I always assumed, for good or ill, that supermarkets were permanent. It’s now clear that old style super-markets are on their way out. Beginning this month, Wal-Mart Canada kicks off its one-year agenda to add 40 new supercenters to…