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Also, Oxfam America is working hard to build support for USAID reform - click here to follow their efforts
In Minnesota and other midwest states in the U.S. the average farmer uses 100 kilograms of chemical fertilizer per hectare and the average farmer in Kenya uses only 7 kilograms per hectare. Less fertilizer is better for the environment. The question is how to have a "green revolution" in Africa without the environmental problems. Dr. Chinkunutha, the economist turned farmer who appears in "What are we doing here?" says organic agriculture is the way to go? Now the Malawian government is getting results by subsidising chemical fertilizer to it's countries farmers. Either way, we need to end the way we give out food aid as that has a direct negative effect on African farmers - click here for more information on food aid/African farmers.
]]>*photo from Acumen Fund
]]>It is edgy and takes a while to get going, but he has something important to say. It is part of the TED talks.
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Video description from Al Jazerra: In 2008, in the midst of the global food crisis, we travelled to Haiti to look at the politics of rice - how such a fertile country became dependent on food aid.
In the wake of this current disaster, that dependence is - initially - going to deepen.
But as relief efforts slowly turn to plans for reconstruction, it is important to look back at the policies that brought Haiti to the brink in the first place, and the people who had their own vision of self-sufficiency all along.
Avi Lewis talks about the US role in the development of Haiti with PJ Crowley, the spokesman at the US state department, and Emira Woods, the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, and an expert on US foreign policy.
"Microcredit is undoubtedly the most visible innovation in anti-poverty policy in the last half century. In the three decades since Mohammed Yunus gave his first loan to a group of Bangladeshi women, the number of microcredit borrowers has crossed 150 millions. The majority had no access to credit from banks before microcredit came to them. When they needed to borrow, and most people do at some point or the other–to pay for an illness or a wedding, to grow a business or to fix their roof—they would go to money lenders and pay rates that have, justly or otherwise, accounted for the universal unpopularity of moneylenders (they can be over 20% per month). Now they borrow from MFIs at significantly lower (though often high by US standards) rates. At the same time MFIs have managed to find ways to be financially sustainable and to keep growing fast."
Read the whole article.
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Talk-back after the film with filmmakers Nic, Daniel and Tim Klein.
More information here
]]>For more information on the screening at the Bell click here
Thursday, January 7, 2010, 7 p.m.
Free with museum admission.
Join two of the documentary filmmakers after the screening for a brief discussion and take a tour of the museum's Hungry Planet exhibit. More info on the Hungry Planet: What the World Eats exhibit is here.
Check out the article here.