Summary
The Monsanto-Bayer merger caps off three rounds of mega-mergers among global chemical corporations. These companies are consolidating and jockeying for better control of their market share of bio-technologies, agricultural seeds and agricultural data.
Rural women in these arenas are caught up in extremely challenging situations of feeding and providing for their families today while trying to plan for the future – a future fraught with unknowns.
Two waves of change – long term climate change and immediate term economic crises – are bringing the issue of food security into sharper relief – particularly in those Caribbean countries where food security is already volatile and faces a series of risks and challenges.
Canadians are used to thinking of themselves as good global citizens. It may come as a shock then, to hear the UN applying the term ‘self-righteous’ to our new approach to international relations.
‘The first and greatest violence is the systematic exclusion of people - a great number of people - by society. From this violence other violence directly and indirectly flows.
If there is one core factor underpinning systemic power imbalances between women and men in the food system, it is the overriding influence of the ‘market place’ on society. Societal power and earning capacity make up the two sides of the same coin – one feeds the other.
As acknowledgement of women’s farming roles grows, so does the set of solutions targeted at rural women as farmers, as heads of household and as those responsible for providing for and caring for their communities.
In 1992, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the United Nations held its landmark Conference on Environment and Development. Also known as the Earth Summit, the Conference set the global environmental agenda for the next two decades.
In March 2009, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed its Global Food Security Act (SB 384).
The multi-fold hike in food and fuel prices in late 2007 came out of the volatility in the financial markets.