Skip to main content Skip to footer

Publications

Quifel International Holdings in Sierra Leone

Land Deal Brief: Quifel International Holdings in Sierra Leone

Quifel International Holdings (QIH) is the Lisbon-based personal holding of businessman Eng. Miguel Pais do Amaral, a Portuguese aristocrat, businessman, and former majority owner of the Media Capital Group.

Land Deal Brief: Saudi Star in Ethiopia

Saudi Star Agriculture Development PLC, owned by Saudi-Ethiopian billionaire Mohammed Al-Amoudi, acquired 10,000 hectares of land along the Alwero River in the Gambella region of Ethiopia.

Voices From Africa: African Farmers & Environmentalists Speak Out Against a New Green Revolution in Africa

This report issues a direct challenge to Western-led plans for a genetically engineered revolution in African agriculture, particularly the recent misguided philanthropic efforts of the Gates Foundation's Alliance for a New Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), and presents African resistance and solutions rooted in first-hand knowledge of what Africans need.

(Mis)Investment in Agriculture: The Role of the International Finance Corporation in the Global Land Grab

Oakland Institute’s report exposes the role of the Bank’s private sector branch, International Finance Corporation (IFC), in fueling land grabs, especially in Africa.

Food & Energy Sovereignty Now Brazil report cover

Food & Energy Sovereignty Now: Brazilian Grassroots Position on Agroenergy

While Brazil's leadership on biofuels - particularly sugarcane-based ethanol - has been held as a global model for sustainable biomass production, a new report from the Oakland Institute and Terra de Direitos, Food & Energy Sovereignty Now: Brazilian Grassroots Position on Agroenergy, describes the opposition that biofuels face from the Brazilian social movements and civil society, as formulated at the First National...

The Great Land Grab: Rush for World’s Farmland Threatens Food Security for the Poor

The Great Land Grab: Rush for World’s Farmland Threatens Food Security for the Poor

The Oakland Institute sounds the alarm on the threat that land grabbing poses to food security and livelihoods. Land grabs--the purchase of vast tracts of land from poor, developing countries by wealthier, food-insecure nations and private investors--have become a widespread phenomenon, with foreign interests seeking or securing between 37 million and 49 million acres of farmland between 2006 and the middle of 2009.

Turning the Tide: Challenging the Right on Campus, report cover.

Turning the Tide: Challenging the Right on Campus

Turning the Tide, with an introduction by historian Howard Zinn, presents a historical analysis of how the Right has advanced its agenda and strategies used to gain political influence on campus. It asserts that through strategic planning and massive funding, the Right has been able to reach and influence students and dominate the campus arena, and ultimately reshape politics and public policies at the national, state and local levels. On the...

Food Aid or Food Sovereignty? Ending World Hunger In Our Time

 If we think of hunger in terms of numbers then the solution also seems as though it should be found in numbers. The goal created at the Second World Food Summit in 1996, to reduce the number of malnourished by half by 2015, was a result of governments thinking in terms of numbers. But if hunger had been understood as a reality faced by individuals and families, we would have realized that hunger is also...

The Blame Game: Who is Behind the World Food Price Crisis?

World prices for basic staples have skyrocketed―up 83 percent compared to three years ago―while hunger and destitution reaches record levels. Corn registered a 31 percent increase between March 2007-2008, rice 74 percent, soya 87 percent and wheat a whopping 130 percent. Policy makers and media continue to place blame for skyrocketing prices on a variety of factors, including high fuel costs, bad weather in key food producing countries, and...

Food Price Crisis: A Wake Up Call for Food Sovereignty

Food prices have been increasing sharply since 2005. According to the World Bank, global food prices have climbed by 83% over the last three years. The real price of rice rose to a 19-year high in March 2008―an increase of 50% in two weeks alone―while the real price of wheat hit a 28-year high, triggering an international crisis.

Playing Politics With Aid: The Unholy Trinity of Defense, Diplomacy and Development in the War on Terrorism

For decades U.S. foreign aid has been accused of prioritizing U.S. political and military agenda over the needs of the poor around the globe. Now, the Bush administration has declared this to be the official foreign assistance policy of the United States.

The Status of International Food Aid Negotiations

In October 2005, the Oakland Institute published its report, Food Aid or Food Sovereignty? Ending World Hunger in our Time. Since then the issue of food aid has taken center stage in foreign aid, global hunger, and development discourse, sparking interest and debate amongst policy makers, media, and civil society internationally.

The High Food Price Challenge: A Review of Responses to Combat Hunger

High food prices in 2007-2008 threatened the livelihoods and food security of billions of people worldwide for whom getting enough food to eat was already a daily struggle. All over the world, individuals, civil society groups, governments and international organizations took action to cope with the crisis triggered by skyrocketing food prices.

Additional Languages: Lire en français

The 2008 Food Price Crisis: Rethinking Food Security Policies

The 2008 Food Price Crisis: Rethinking Food Security Policies, the latest in the G-24 Discussion Paper Series, is a timely report as member states of the United Nations come together 16-18 November, 2009 at the World Summit on Food Security in Rome, in an effort to find lasting solutions to world hunger. Intended to inform current policy discussions on how to address ever-growing food insecurity, the report contends that it is essential to...

Debunking Five Myths About the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA)

In February 2006, the United States and South Korean governments announced their intention to negotiate a free trade agreement. South Korea is the U.S.’ seventh largest trading partner and the U.S. is South Korea’s third largest trading partner. In 2006,...

Going Gray in the Golden State

Going Gray in the Golden State: The Reality of Poverty Among Seniors in Oakland, California

For a startling number of seniors in the United States, aging is marked by intensified physical deprivation, insecurity, isolation and humiliation. Approximately 9 million Americans live below the poverty level, and of this group, seniors constitute nine percent.

Report cover

Uprooted: The Impact of Free Market on Migrants

Rufino Dominguez, coordinator of the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations (FIOB, Frente Indigena de Organizaciones Binationales) says there are about 500,000 indigenous people from Oaxaca living in the U.S. – 300,000 in California alone. Economic crises provoked by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other economic reforms are uprooting and displacing Mexicans in the country’s most remote areas, where...

Sahel: A Prisoner of Starvation? A Case Study of the 2005 Food Crisis in Niger

In the summer of 2005, the world rocked to Live Aid concerts and the Make Poverty History Movement celebrated developed countries’ fresh commitments towards the International Development Goals (IDG), development assistance, and debt cancellation at the G8 summit in Gleanagles. Some three thousands miles south of this euphoria, a nation witnessed thousands of its children die of hunger. This was summer 2005 in Niger, ...

How Food Became a Casualty of Biotechnology’s Promise

The first genetically engineered (GE) crops were approved for human consumption in the mid-1990’s. Now, millions of genetically modified meals later, the clamor over GE foods has become a fixture of food policy debate. The parties to the argument generally fall...

Report cover

Facing Goliath: Challenging the Impacts of Retail Consolidation on our Local Economies, Communities, and Food Security

In the 1920s and ‘30s, a robust citizen movement to protect local economies from the impacts of chain stores swept across the nation. One ardent spokesperson, writing in a 1929 issue of Harper’s magazine, argued that “chain stores represent a sort of absentee landlordism. On our Main Street, and on thousands of other Main Streets, there is a situation where policies are dictated and standards are set by men who have possibly never seen our...

Pages