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Bill Gates took on the Famine Lobby while addressing a forum on the world food supply in Iowa. Speaking at the World Food Prize Symposium in Des Moines, Gates took aim at the chorus of environmental leftists and organic food advocates who believe Africans should starve rather than eat genetically modified (GM) foods. “Some voices are instantly hostile to any emphasis on productivity. They act as if there is no emergency, even though in the poorest, hungriest places on earth, population is growing faster than productivity,” he said.The opposition is significant, because Gates is left-of-center himself. The Bill and Melinda...

NAIROBI, Kenya – Parents in some of Africa's poorest countries are cutting back on school, clothes and basic medical care just to give their children a meal once a day, experts say. Still, it is not enough. A record 1 billion people worldwide are hungry and a new report says the number will increase if governments do not spend more on agriculture. According to the U.N. food agency, which issued the report, 30 countries now require emergency aid, including 20 in Africa. The trend continues despite a goal set by world leaders nine years ago to cut the number of...

Will the silent tears or the loud crying ever stop?Look at the eyes, gentle reader, the photographers have captured the pain, the hunger, the shame, the fear, the horror... The UN was supposed to alleviate such problems and usher in a new era of peace and prosperity. It has failed miserably! Precisely because of its all inclusiveness. “Would that include Nazi Germany if it existed today?” I asked him. “Why, yes,” he replied, “a sovereign state is a sovereign state.” The UN makes no demands that its members show even the most minimal regard for human rights or even human...

Weekly Roundup - Living On Nothing Edition Category: Roundups | Comments(15) Did you hear about the guy that lives on nothing? No seriously, he lives on zero dollars a day. Meet Daniel Suelo, who lives in a cave outside Moab, Utah. Suelo has no mortgage, no car payment, no debt of any kind. He also has no home, no car, no television, and absolutely no “creature comforts.” But he does have a lot of creatures, as in the mice and bugs that scurry about the cave floor he’s called home for the last three years. To us, Suelo probably sounds...

MORE THAN 4 MILLION MEALS TO BE PROVIDED DURING HOLIDAYS Bob Dylan will release a brand new album of holiday songs, Christmas In The Heart, on Tuesday, October 13, it was announced today by Columbia Records. All of the artist’s U.S. royalties from sales of these recordings will be donated to Feeding America, guaranteeing that more than four million meals will be provided to more than 1.4 million people in need in this country during this year’s holiday season. Bob Dylan is also donating all of his future U.S. royalties from this album to Feeding America in perpetuity. snip Christmas...

In the final days of a nearly three-year battle with lymphoma, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug was asked by his daughter if he needed anything. The 95-year-old responded: "Africa. Africa. I have not finished my mission in Africa," his daughter, Jeanie Borlaug Laube, said Sunday from Dallas. Norman Borlaug, an Iowa farmboy who graduated from the University of Minnesota, believed food was a moral right. He traveled the world as a scientist and humanitarian, becoming the Green Revolution's "Apostle of Wheat" for the high-yield grain he perfected. Borlaug, who most recently had been a distinguished professor at Texas A&M...

According to Gunny G Online: “This astounding control will include the elimination of organic farming by eliminating manure, mandating GMO animal feed, imposing animal drugs, and ordering applications of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides. Farmers, thus, will be locked not only into the industrialization of once normal and organic farms but into the forced purchase of industry’s products.” HR 2749 creates severe criminal and civil penalties, including prison terms of up to 10 years and/or fines of up to $100,000 for each violation. Does it include judicial review, Congressional oversight, a defined and limited set of penalties and punishments for a...

Years have passed since investors seemed to pay attention to anything other than the latest short-term, but irrelevant, number of the day. Perhaps the ESPN approach being applied to business news is part of the reason for that. What might happen next week or next year seems of little concern. However, next week and next year have a habit of becoming today over time. Sometimes though, short-term events, being largely ignored, unveil longer term developments. One of those might be the drought currently ravaging India’s farmers. Summer monsoons provide more than half of the rainfall in much of India. Indian...

Hillard Green has the right idea. The old adage "Waste not want not" applies for sure in these days of exorbitant food prices. And those of us who grow our own have always known the value of preserving nature's bounty for off-season use. Since tomatoes are easy to grow and often plentiful, you may find yourself up to your ears in the ripe, scarlet fruit as frost approaches—and a few hints on the preservation of the harvest may be welcome. I've also taken the canning jar shortage into account in preparing this article, and have included some guides to the...

DETROIT (CNNMoney.com) -- On a side street in an old industrial neighborhood, a delivery man stacks a dolly of goods outside a store. Ten feet away stands another man clad in military fatigues, combat boots and what appears to be a flak jacket. He looks straight out of Baghdad. But this isn't Iraq. It's southeast Detroit, and he's there to guard the groceries. In this recession-racked town, the lack of food is a serious problem. It's a theme that comes up again and again in conversations in Detroit. There isn't a single major chain supermarket in the city, forcing residents...

Food Riots, Tax Rebellions By 2012...Trend forecaster, renowned for being accurate in the past, saysThe man who predicted the 1987 stock market crash and the fall of the Soviet Union is now forecasting revolution in America, food riots and tax rebellions - all within four years, while cautioning that putting food on the table will be a more pressing concern than buying Christmas gifts by 2012. Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, is renowned for his accuracy in predicting fut ure world and economic events, which will send a chill down your spine considering what he told Fox...

DETROIT (CNNMoney.com) -- On a side street in an old industrial neighborhood, a delivery man stacks a dolly of goods outside a store. Ten feet away stands another man clad in military fatigues, combat boots and what appears to be a flak jacket. He looks straight out of Baghdad. But this isn't Iraq. It's southeast Detroit, and he's there to guard the groceries. "No pictures, put the camera down," he yells. My companion and I, on a tour of how people in this city are using urban farms to grow their own food, speed off. [snip] There have been plenty...

An economist is saying the recession is over, Goldman Sachs is making money again and the Dow Jones is up almost 5.5% for the year. But Shangrai-La this is not. According to this telling report, middle class folks in Detroit are hungry. That's right -- they don't have enough food: "The food crunch is intensifying, and spreading to people not used to dealing with hunger. As middle class workers lose their jobs, the same folks that used to donate to soup kitchens and pantries have become their fastest growing set of recipients. 'We've seen about a third more people than...

World leaders met Friday with African nations before an expected announcement of a new food security proposal that represents a fundamental shift in the way the West tackles world hunger, taking wisdom from the old proverb about teaching a man to fish. President Barack Obama is expected Friday to announce an up to $15 billion agriculture investment initiative, delegates attending the Group of Eight summit in Italy said. The initiative includes some $3 billion from Washington. The strategy seeks to enable poor farmers to produce more of their own food by improving productivity, shifting the focus from delivering aid. It...

The Ug99 fungus, called stem rust, could wipe out more than 80% of the world's wheat as it spreads from Africa, scientists fear. The race is on to breed resistant plants before it reaches the U.S. The spores arrived from Kenya on dried, infected leaves ensconced in layers of envelopes. Working inside a bio-secure greenhouse outfitted with motion detectors and surveillance cameras, government scientists at the Cereal Disease Laboratory in St. Paul, Minn., suspended the fungal spores in a light mineral oil and sprayed them onto thousands of healthy wheat plants. After two weeks, the stalks were covered with deadly...

One billion people throughout the world suffer from hunger, a figure which has increased by 100 million because of the global financial crisis, says the UN. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said the figure was a record high. Persistently high food prices have also contributed to the hunger crisis. The director general of the FAO said the level of hunger, one-sixth of the world's population, posed a "serious risk" to world peace and security. The UN said almost all of the world's undernourished live in developing countries, with the most, some 642 million people, living in the Asia-Pacific...

SEATTLE - Desperate times are calling for desperate measures at food banks around the area. Longer lines and shorter tempers are now forcing some facilities to hire security guards to keep people safe. The need for increased security comes with food banks across the region seeing more people than ever before. Seattle’s Cherry Street Food Bank recently saw 2,651 people walk through their doors in a single day -- an all-time record. “It's a problem with people wanting more than they get, and not getting what they think they deserve,” said Cherry Street security guard Ron Washington. “Then, they have...

South African farmers suffered millions of dollars in lost income when 82,000 hectares of genetically-manipulated corn (maize) failed to produce hardly any seeds.The plants look lush and healthy from the outside. Monsanto has offered compensation. Monsanto blames the failure of the three varieties of corn planted on these farms, in three South African provinces,on alleged 'underfertilisation processes in the laboratory". Some 280 of the 1,000 farmers who planted the three varieties of Monsanto corn this year, have reported extensive seedless corn problems. Urgent investigation demanded However environmental activitist Marian Mayet, director of the Africa-centre for biosecurity in Johannesburg, demands an...

<p>A record 32.2 million people -- one in every 10 Americans -- received food stamps at latest count, the government said on Thursday, a reflection of the recession now in its 16th month. Food stamps are the major U.S. antihunger program and help poor people buy groceries. The average benefit was $112.82 per person in January.</p>

Shortly after the Second World War, a “Green Revolution” began to transform agriculture around the globe, allowing food production to keep pace with worldwide population growth. By means of irrigation, fertilizer, pesticides, and plant breeding, the Green Revolution increased world grain production by an astonishing 250 percent between 1950 and 1984, raising the calorie intake of the world’s poorest people and averting serious famines. The revolution’s benefits have tapered off, however, as the number of mouths to feed has grown ever larger and as conventional breeding of new plant varieties has produced diminishing returns. What’s needed is a new revolution....