Opinions
The mismeasure of poverty
THE Census Bureau reported yesterday that the poverty rate in America held stable between 2011 and 2012, at about 15 percent. According to the official measure, poverty today is higher than it was in 1973, when it reached a historical low of 11.1 percent....
A new bracero program wiil hurt farmworkers
Most media coverage of immigration today accepts as fact claims by growers that they can't get enough workers to harvest crops. Agribusiness wants a new guest worker program, and complaints of a labor shortage are their justification for it....
Mindlessly gutting food stamps
Among the many scars of the recession, the most intolerable should be the pangs of chronic hunger that still assail a stunning 14.5 percent of the nation’s households, according to the Department of Agriculture’s latest survey. A decade ago, the figure was 11 percent — a group defined as regul...
Dishonor among African election thieves
Zimbabwe had its presidential elections on 31 July 2013. Elections as in rigged. Robert Mugabe, the senile octogenarian and the only president since Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980, ‘won’ for the seventh time by 61 percent of the vote. His Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front...
Love for labor lost
It wasn’t always about the hot dogs. Originally, believe it or not, Labor Day actually had something to do with showing respect for labor....
The servitude of immigrant guestworkers
THE words “guest workers” and “strike” are not often seen together. Yet twice this summer, members of a group of more than 150 Jamaican guest workers who clean luxury Florida hotels and condos walked off the job....
Let’s drop “feed the world”—a plea to move beyond an unhelpful phrase
After years of participation in public discussions about agriculture, I’ve developed something of an allergy to the catchphrase “feed the world.”...
Golden rice: Lifesaver?
ONE bright morning this month, 400 protesters smashed down the high fences surrounding a field in the Bicol region of the Philippines and uprooted the genetically modified rice plants growing inside....
A huge cheap-food scheme to influence voters will not end malnutrition in India
“HISTORIC” and “unparalleled” were the words Sonia Gandhi, boss of the ruling Congress party, used to describe India’s new food law at a launch in Delhi on August 20th. She promised an end to hunger for the poor....
The government as a low-wage employer
In 1965, in a nation torn by racial strife, President Johnson signed an executive order mandating nondiscrimination in employment by government contractors. Now, as President Obama has observed, the nation is divided by a different threat: widening income inequality....
-
World Hunger Education
Service
P.O. Box 29015
Washington, D.C. 20017 -