Issue 418 of New Internationalist

Reader-owned global journalism

December 2008

December 2008

The current meltdown of the global financial system has knocked the crisis caused by runaway food prices out of the news. The fate of investment bankers simply gets more ink than that of those on the edge of starvation. But there is a common thread here – irresponsible profit-seeking with little regard for the future of the vulnerable. This issue dissects the ‘perfect storm’ of conditions that have devastated agriculture in the global south and is undermining the world’s ability to feed itself. The current food price boom is connected to a longer term trend that has created a trap of dependency on an industrial food system based on food imports and agro-chemical inputs. But the NI discovers that it doesn’t take Houdini to find a way out.

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In this issue

  • *David R Montgomery* on the one thing we can’t afford to run out of.
  • *Chris Brazier* makes the case for a green and fair diet.
  • The increase in global food prices may have temporarily stalled but food is expected to remain at record price levels for the foreseeable future. Industrial agriculture’s chickens have come home to roost. But the price is being paid not by agribusiness and food retailers but by small farmers whose income remains low, and by the millions being pushed into malnutrition.
  • *Richard Swift* on the hard edge of hunger in a year of perpetual crisis.
    *Action* – a new diet for the world food system.
  • Across the world, popular protest has demanded adequate food and fair prices. *Stephanie Boyd* reports from Cuzco in Peru.
  • *Ray Burley* is caught in the cost/price squeeze.
  • Late-night meetings between Asian and European social movements produced the beginnings of a manifesto for change – the 'Beijing Declaration'.
  • Out of the ashes of the crash, how are we to create a fairer future? *New Internationalist* asks leading experts from around the world to focus on specific areas and propose practical action for change.
  • How did we get here? *David Ransom* takes a global – and historical – look.