Overwhelmed by floods of information and trying to make sense of it all? We’ve put together a short primer on the Global Food Crisis for you, in English and in French. It answers three key questions:

• What is it?
• What’s causing it?
• What can we do about it?

Food issues are deeply connected to the most pressing issues of our times. In fact, if you can get a handle on the global Food Crisis, you’ll have a pretty good handle on almost all the most serious challenges of our day. And the good news is, we can turn this around if we understand the problems and get started on the solutions.

So take a look at the primer, and then follow up by exploring the web-resource and links listed below.

Got any additional resources? Send us feedback with any useful information, statistics, videos, and reports that will help us take those important steps forward. We’ll add them to the list below.

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 General Resources

• People’s Food Policy Project. (April 2011). Resetting the Table: A People’s Food Policy for Canada.
• Lappe, F.M. (Oct 3, 2011). The Food Movement: Its Power and Possibilities, in The Nation.
• Fraser, E. Rimas, A. (2010). Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations. Free Press. Watch the video.
• Elton, S. (2010). Locavore: From Farmers’ fields To Rooftop Gardens – How Canadians Are Changing the way we eat. Harper Collins.
• Hesterman, O. (2011). Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All. PublicAffairs
• Watch the many videos available through La Via Campesina.
• Foresight. The Future of Food and Farming (2011). The Government Office for Science.
• International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development. (2009). Agriculture at a Crossroads.

 

Food as a Market Comodity

• Pawlick, T.F. (2009). The War in the Country: How the Fight to Save Rural Life Will Shape Our Future. D&M Publishers.
• Turner, C. (Oct 2011). The Farms Are Not Alright, in The Walrus.
• Lappé, A. (2011). Who Says Food is a Human Right? in The Nation.
• Watch Tim Jackson’s Economic Reality Check  from TED talks.
• De Schutter, O. (Sept 2010). Food Commodities Speculation and Food Price Crises: Regulation to Reduce the Risks of Price Volatility. United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food: Briefing Note 02.
• Baker, L., Campsie, P., and Rabinowicz, K. (Jun 2010). Menu 2020: Ten Good Food Ideas for Ontario. Metcalf Foundation and Sustain Ontario – The Alliance for Healthy Food and Farming.
• Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2011). The State of Food Insecurity in the World: How does international price volatility affect domestic economies and food security?
• Kaufman, F. (Dec 20, 2011). The Speculative Scrum Driving up Food Prices in The Guardian.
• M. Lagi, Yavni Bar-Yam, K.Z. Bertrand, Yaneer Bar-Yam. The Food Crises: A Quantitative Model of Food Prices Including Speculators and Ethanol Conversion arXiv:1109.4859, September 21, 2011.

 

Uniformity

• Crossfield, P. (March 9, 11). UN: Eco-Farming Feeds the World, in The Huffington Post.
• A Global Oneness Project Film (2011). A Thousand Suns.
• ETC Group (Nov 2009). Who Will Feed Us: Questions for the Food and Climate Crises.
• Smale, M and King, A. (Nov 2005). Genetic Resource Policies: What is Diversity Worth to Farmers? The International Food Policy Research Institute and International Plant Genetic Resources Institute.
• Check out USC Canada’s own focus on biodiversity webpage for additional resources.

 

Energy Consumption

• ETC Group. (2010). The New Biomassters: Synthetic Biology and the Next Assault on Biodiversity and Livelihoods. Ottawa, Canada: ETC Group.
• Dominguez-Faus, R., Powers, S.E., Burken, J.G., and Alvarez, P.J. (2009). The Water Footprint of Biofuels: A Drink or Drive Issue? in Environmental Science and Technology, 43(9), 3005-3010.

 

Climate Change and Environmental Damage

• Mapping the Impacts of Climate Change. Centre for Global Development.
• Paul, H., Ernsting, A., Semino, S., Gura, S., and Lorch, A. (Dec 2009). Agriculture and Climate Change: Real Problems, False Solutions.  Oxford: ExoNexus.
• Via Campesina Views. (Dec 2009). Small Scale Sustainable Farmers Are Cooling Down the Earth. Jakarta: La Via Campesina.

 

Trade

• Cullather, N. (Jan, 11). World food prices aren’t too high – they’re too low, in The Globe and Mail.
• Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2011). The State of Food Insecurity in the World: How does international price volatility affect domestic economies and food security?

 

Land Grabs

• GRAIN. (Sept 2010). World Bank Report on Land Grabbing: Beyond the Smoke and Mirrors.
• Oakland Institute (2011). Special Investigation: Understanding Land Investment Deals in Africa
• International Land Coalition (2011). Land Rights and the Land Rush: Findings of the Global Commercial Pressures on Land Research Project