In The News

Trade Ruling Is Expected to Favor Biotech Food

Andrew Pollack February 6, 2006
The US is seeking a ruling from the WTO that could be a turning point in the fight over the growth of agricultural biotechnology. After numerous delays, the WTO will decide whether Europe is restricting the importation of genetically modified crops without legal basis. Joined by Canada and Argentina, the US calls European delays a moratorium, while Europe counters that the delays are justified...

Caviar Trade Shut Down to Save Sturgeon

CJ Chivers January 17, 2006
Caviar - a delicacy symbolic of wealth - may soon become an even more rarified substance. The secretariat of Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species has blocked the global export of wild caviar, or sturgeon eggs. Sturgeon, whose population is waning, are an ancient fish, but damming, pollution, and corruption involving fishing and illegal trade threaten their survival. The ban...

Ears of Plenty

December 21, 2005
Throughout human history, grains such as maize, rice and wheat provided the sustenance that allowed successive generations to survive and increase their numbers. Out of these three plants, wheat is the oldest and most broadly dispersed. Wheat tells the story of human agricultural practice, to which the growth and wane of human populations are inextricably linked. Technological innovation, from...

Shopkeeper Took on Coke - and Won

Jo Tuckman November 17, 2005
“I thought that they were going to be able to say to me, 'Look, ant, we stamped on you,” declared a triumphant Raquel Chavez, “I said I'd rather die with my dignity intact than be trampled on.” In a landmark case, the 49-year-old corner shop owner from a poor neighborhood of Mexico City brought charges against a Coca-Cola subsidiary and fifteen of its distributors in 2003. Following a...

Why the French Love Their Farmers

Philip H. Gordon November 15, 2005
French President Jacques Chirac has admitted to a "profound malaise" in the country that led to the recent rioting, but French policy on farm subsidy is emerging as another source of malaise within the European Community. Policymakers all over the world are calling for great reductions in EU farm subsidies, since such reform would help stave off budgetary crisis as well as bring EU...

'Protect Regime Now, Feed People Later'

Shim Jae Hoon October 18, 2005
Locked in a food shortage approaching crisis proportions – which reportedly caused two million deaths in the past five years – the government of Kim Jong-il has been wooing neighboring China and its brethren to the South for more far-reaching aid. As Seoul-based journalist Shim Jae Hoon reports, this move comes at the expense of broader, international emergency efforts coordinated by...

As Polar Ice Turns to Water, Dreams of Treasure Abound

Clifford Krauss October 11, 2005
What will be left when the Arctic's polar ice cap is gone? The answer, in the eyes of the nations who border the Arctic Ocean, is untapped economic opportunity. New oil deposits, new fisheries, and new trade routes – including the fabled Northwest Passage – all promise tantalizing riches to what are now barren, frozen outposts. But who will get to tap those riches? Russia, Canada, Norway...