01 Agriculture – Page 35 – Public Intelligence Blog

Harvestmark offers a mobile phone application and website that allows consumers to trace their food back to the farmers who grew it. How much do we know about what is on our plate, and how easy is it to trace its source?

Source BBC

Phi Beta Iota: This is HUGE because it enables “true cost” information for each individual product to be posted on the web and instantly available to the smart phone user (the billion that buy most of the toxic products). In many ways, this one capability marks the beginning of the integration of the Internet of people, the Internet of things, and the Internet of facts.

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Related:

True Cost Wiki

Sourcemap.org

2011/02/272011/02/27

Guest Post: Analysis of the Global Insurrection Against Neo-Liberal Economic Domination and the Coming American Rebellion

01 Agriculture, 01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth

Guest Post: Analysis of the Global Insurrection Against Neo-Liberal Economic Domination and the Coming American Rebellion

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/26/2011 20:53 -0500

If you think what’s happening in Egypt won’t happen within the United States, you’ve been watching too much TV. The statistics speak for themselves.

Join The Movement In previous Revolution Roundups, before we were knocked offline, we featured mass protests by the people of Ireland, Italy, Britain, Austria, Greece, France and Portugal, as the Global Insurrection contagion spread throughout Europe. And now, as we have seen over the past month, North African and Middle Eastern nations have joined the movement as the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Morocco, Gabon, Mauritania, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Palestine, Iraq, Sudan and Algeria have taken to the streets en masse.

The connection between this latest round of uprisings and the prior protests throughout Europe is one the mainstream media is not making. We are witnessing a decentralized global rebellion against Neo-Liberal economic imperialism. While each national uprising has its own internal characteristics, each one, at its core, is about the rising costs of living and lack of financial opportunity and security. Throughout the world the situation is the same: increasing levels of unemployment and poverty, as price inflation on food and basic necessities is soaring.

Whether national populations realize it or not, these uprisings are against systemic global economic policies that are strategically designed to exploit the working class, reduce living standards, increase personal debt and create severe inequalities of wealth. These global uprising, which have only just begun, are the first wave of the inevitable reaction to the implementation of a centralized worldwide Neo-Feudal economic order.

The global banking cartel, centered at the IMF, World Bank and Federal Reserve, have paid off politicians and dictators the world over — from Washington to Greece to Egypt. In country after country, they have looted national economies at the expense of local populations, consolidating wealth in unprecedented fashion – the top economic one-tenth of one percent is currently holding over $40 trillion in investible wealth, not counting an equally significant amount of wealth hidden in offshore accounts. Read More….

Tip of the Hat to Contributing Editor Jock Gill for the link.

2011/02/272011/02/27

Poverty, Not Terrorism, Is Threat #1

01 Agriculture, 01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Peace Intelligence

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends....

The price of food is at the heart of this wave of revolutions

No one saw the uprisings coming, but their deeper cause isn't hard to fathom

By Peter Popham
Independent, Sunday, 27 February 2011

Revolution is breaking out all over. As Gaddafi marshals his thugs and mercenaries for a last-ditch fight in Tripoli, several died as protests grew more serious in Iraq. Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah tried to bribe his people into docility by splashing out $35bn on housing, social services and education. Across the water in Bahrain the release of political prisoners failed to staunch the uprising. In Iran, President Ahmadinejad crowed about chaos in the Arab world, but said nothing about the seething anger in his own backyard; in Yemen, the opposition gathers strength daily.

And it's not just the Middle East. This is an African crisis: Tunisia, where it started, is an African country, and last week in Senegal, a desperate army veteran died after setting fire to himself in front of the presidential palace, emulating Mohamed Bouazizi, the market trader whose self-immolation sparked the revolution in Tunisia. Meanwhile, the spirit of revolt has already leapt like a forest fire to half a dozen other ill-governed African nations, with serious disturbances reported in Mauritania, Gabon, Cameroon and Zimbabwe. Read more….

2011/02/062011/02/06

Farm Insurance Fraud–Lacking Domestic Intelligence

01 Agriculture, Corruption

Farm insurance fraud is cheating taxpayers out of millions

Perpetrators falsely claim weather or insects destroyed their crops and cash in on a government-backed insurance program. Some don't bother planting at all. Others sell their harvests in secret.

The vast majority of U.S. farmers follow the rules, insurers and federal officials said. Bert Little, director of the data-mining group Center for Agribusiness Excellence, said that less than one-half of 1% of the farmers who take part in the program cheat the system.

“But that less than 1% represents a pretty big chunk of money, between $100 million to $200 million a year,” said Little, whose Texas group is contracted by the federal government to analyze farm records in search of fraud clues.

Read rest of article…

Phi Beta Iota: Bert Little has been saving the taxpayer millions at a 20:1 ratio (80 million discovered for 4 million in data mining–finding the 1% can be a challenge). He first briefed his successes at OSS '04. If we had the Open Source Agency as recommended by the 9-11 Commission, it would provide intelligence and counterintelligence to Whole of Government, addressing both the legal fraud (Wall Street) and the illegal fraud (inattentive government).

Food speculation: ‘People die from hunger while banks make a killing on food’

01 Agriculture, 01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Health, Civil Society, Commerce, Ethics, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, True Cost

It's not just bad harvests and climate change – it's also speculators that are behind record prices. And it's the planet's poorest who pay
John Vidal Sunday 23 January 2011

article

Just under three years ago, people in the village of Gumbi in western Malawi went unexpectedly hungry. Not like Europeans do if they miss a meal or two, but that deep, gnawing hunger that prevents sleep and dulls the senses when there has been no food for weeks.

Oddly, there had been no drought, the usual cause of malnutrition and hunger in southern Africa, and there was plenty of food in the markets. For no obvious reason the price of staple foods such as maize and rice nearly doubled in a few months. Unusually, too, there was no evidence that the local merchants were hoarding food. It was the same story in 100 other developing countries. There were food riots in more than 20 countries and governments had to ban food exports and subsidise staples heavily.

The explanation offered by the UN and food experts was that a “perfect storm” of natural and human factors had combined to hyper-inflate prices. US farmers, UN agencies said, had taken millions of acres of land out of production to grow biofuels for vehicles, oil and fertiliser prices had risen steeply, the Chinese were shifting to meat-eating from a vegetarian diet, and climate-change linked droughts were affecting major crop-growing areas. The UN said that an extra 75m people became malnourished because of the price rises.

Continue reading “Food speculation: ‘People die from hunger while banks make a killing on food'”

2011/01/252011/01/25

Public Health Advocates Pressure on EPA Flouride Reduction

01 Agriculture, 04 Education, 07 Health, 12 Water, Corporations

EPA to Bar Fluoride-Based Pesticide

Decision aims to protect children’s health

CONTACT: EWG Public Affairs, 202-667-6982 leeann@ewg.org; Beyond Pesticides: Jay Feldman, 202-543-5450; Fluoride Action Network: Ellen Connett, 315-379-9200
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 10, 2011

Washington, D.C. – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today proposed to grant three environmental groups’ petition to end the use of sulfuryl fluoride, an insecticide and food fumigant manufactured by Dow AgroSciences.

The Dow product, approved by EPA as an alternative to methyl bromide, is used on hundreds of food commodities.

Citing concerns about children’s health and noting their current overexposure to fluoride through tap water, EPA’s decision is the second major federal action in three days to address the safety of fluoride for children. On January 7, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services proposed to reduce its recommended maximum level of fluoride in tap water from 1.2 to 0.7 parts per million (ppm), a 42 percent decrease.

In 2004, Fluoride Action Network, Environmental Working Group, and Beyond Pesticides challenged EPA’s risk assessment of the pesticide sulfuryl fluoride under the Food Quality and Protection Act of 1996, which regulates pesticide safety. The groups objected that EPA’s methodology relied on an outdated health risk assessment and significantly underestimated children’s exposures to fluoride from all sources.

With today’s announcement, the EPA Office of Pesticide Program has concluded that the current legal limit of the pesticide residue on food does not adequately protect children from aggregate fluoride exposures, such as drinking water and toothpaste.

Continue reading “Public Health Advocates Pressure on EPA Flouride Reduction”

2011/01/24

45 Social Entrepreneurs Showcase at “Unreasonable Finalist Marketplace”

01 Agriculture, 01 Poverty, 02 Infectious Disease, 03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 04 Education, 05 Energy, 07 Health, 11 Society, 12 Water, Academia, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Commerce, Gift Intelligence, microfinancing, Technologies

Explore the projects

http://marketplace.unreasonableinstitute.org

January 20, 2011

The Unreasonable Institute Empowers the Public to Choose the Next Wave of High-Impact Social Entrepreneurs

Global donations will determine which entrepreneurs gain admission to esteemed mentorship program

BOULDER, Colo.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Starting Jan. 20, 45 social entrepreneurs will showcase their ventures in an online platform called the Unreasonable Finalist Marketplace (http://marketplace.unreasonableinstitute.org/). For 50 days, people from around the world are invited to vote with their wallets on the most viable ventures. The first 25 of the 45 finalists to raise $8,000 in the Marketplace will earn access to the highly acclaimed six-week mentorship program at the Unreasonable Institute. At the Institute, these social entrepreneurs undergo rigorous training sessions, including personal and entrepreneurial skill development, intensive workshops and hands-on guidance from leading thought leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs and investors.

The 45 finalists were selected from more than 300 applicants in 60 countries. Each applicant had to present a financially self-sustaining venture that has the ability to scale to serve the needs of at least 1 million people and demonstrates customer validation through sales or pilots. The finalists this year include a Chinese engineer with a prototype for waterless composting toilets; a 2010 CNN Hero from Kenya who has distributed over 10,000 solar lanterns; and an American inventor with a water purification system that can roll up to the size of a ruler.

Continue reading “45 Social Entrepreneurs Showcase at “Unreasonable Finalist Marketplace””

Category: 01 Agriculture

Field to Fork: Tracking produce back to farmers

Guest Post: Analysis of the Global Insurrection Against Neo-Liberal Economic Domination and the Coming American Rebellion

Poverty, Not Terrorism, Is Threat #1

Farm Insurance Fraud–Lacking Domestic Intelligence

Food speculation: ‘People die from hunger while banks make a killing on food’

Public Health Advocates Pressure on EPA Flouride Reduction

EPA to Bar Fluoride-Based Pesticide

45 Social Entrepreneurs Showcase at “Unreasonable Finalist Marketplace”

The Unreasonable Institute Empowers the Public to Choose the Next Wave of High-Impact Social Entrepreneurs