Two Interesting Stories About Food Production

Here are the two radio pieces mentioned at the Wednesday Root Riot Harambee team meeting.

Both radio pieces were on WBEZ earlier this week (7/12/2010) about aspects of food production.  They touched on topics that have been discussed at the Harambee garden over the last couple of weeks, and I thought others might find them interesting.  You should be able to listen to both of them using the links below.

• Did Wall Street Cause A Food Bubble?
  This is the title of an article that appeared in this month’s Harper’s Magazine.  The author, Frederick Kaufman, was interviewed on the Public Radio show “Hear and Now”.  The author does a good job of translating a very esoteric topic – speculating on commodity futures – into an understandable explanation of why this might have caused the sudden enormous increase in worldwide food prices a few years ago.
  >> http://www.hereandnow.org/2010/07/rundown-712/

• Food Politics:  What Everyone Needs to Know
  The Public Radio show Worldview has a series called “Food Mondays”.  Today’s speaker was Robert Paarlberg, the author of a recent article in Foreign Policy Magazine called “Attention Whole Foods Shoppers” and the book Food Politics:  What Everyone Needs to Know. His views are contrary to much of the conventional wisdom about organic and local food production.
  >> http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/content.aspx?audioID=43136

Submitted by  Harambee Root- Riot Regular Maggie Hein