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.

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.

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.

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 indigenous people still speak their native languages.

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 the diversion of land to biofuels. Increased emphasis, however, has been placed on a surge in demand from emerging economies―for instance, from the middle classes of India.

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.

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.

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 Agroenergy Conference, held in Curitiba, Brazil in October, 2007.

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, bilateral trade between the two countries reached $74 billion in goods and $14 billion in services, making the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (Korus FTA) the second largest trade deal since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

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.

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 town.”

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, the poorest country in the world.

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.

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.

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 ultimate symbol of powerlessness.