Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy publications

Language:  English IATP author(s):  Julia Olmstead File:  2012_01_31_LearningFromILUC_JO.pdf For the last few years, environmental advocates and ethanol producers have been mired in a debate over something known as indirect land use change (ILUC), a measure of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by, but not directly associated with, biofuel production. The controversy centers on these questions: Does ethanol demand in the U.S. and other countries lead to destruction of forests and other carbon-sequestering ecosystems in countries other than where the ethanol or the crops used to make it are produced? And if it does, can the GHG emissions associated with those land use changes be accurately quantified and used for regulatory carbon footprint assessments? For the moment, the debate has...

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Subtitle:  “A triple win” for the environment, economy and consumers Language:  English IATP author(s):  Andrew Ranallo File:  2012_01_25_GreenChemConf.pdf MINNEAPOLIS – Over 200 business owners, entrepreneurs and green chemistry advocates will come together for the second annual Minnesota Green Chemistry Conference tomorrow, co-hosted by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) and the University of Minnesota’s Center for Science, Technology and Public Policy (CSTPP). Held at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs, the conference will feature keynote speaker Dr. Patrick Gruber, the Chief Executive Officer of Gevo and prominent leader in green chemistry. Gruber will...

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Language:  English IATP author(s):  Andrew Ranallo File:  2012_01_20_AntibioticResistantMRSA.pdf MINNEAPOLIS – New peer-reviewed research published January 19 found methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in pork samples collected from retail stores at a higher rate than previously identified. The study, by researchers from the University of Iowa College of Public Health and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, titled “MRSA in conventional and alternative retail pork products,” represents the largest sampling of raw meat products for MRSA contamination to date in the United States. It appears in the online science journal PLoS ONE from the Public Library of Science. In total, 395 pork samples were collected from a total of 36 stores in Iowa,...

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Language:  English IATP author(s):  Sophia Murphy Author(s) (external):  Timothy A. Wise File:  2012_01_17_ResolvingFoodCrisis_SM_TW.pdf Executive summary The recent spikes in global food-prices in 2007-08 served as a wake-up call to the global community on the inadequacies of our global food system. Commodity prices doubled, the estimated number of hungry people topped one billion and food riots spread through the developing world. A second price spike in 2010-11, which is expected to drive the global food import bill for 2011 to an astonishing $1.3 trillion, only deepened the sense that the policies and principles guiding agricultural development and food security were deeply flawed.  There...

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IATP author(s):  IATP File:  The Road to Rio +20.pdf Factsheet compiled by IATP, the Alliance for Democracy, Council of Canadians, Earth Law Center, Food & Water Watch and the International Indian Treaty Council. 

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Subtitle:  Keep Antibiotics Working calls on FDA to act further to protect antibiotics Language:  English IATP author(s):  Andrew Ranallo Author(s) (external):  Keep Antibiotics Working File:  KAW_press_cepha_ban_1.4.2011.pdf Keep Antibiotics Working (KAW) today applauded the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for prohibiting some off-label or “extralabel” use of cephalosporin antibiotics in food-producing animals, more than three years after that order was first issued but withdrawn. At the same time, KAW renewed its calls for the agency to take immediate and forceful action to further address the misuse of antibiotics in agriculture,...

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Language:  English IATP author(s):  Karen Hansen-Kuhn File:  2011_12_21_OffTheRails_KHK.pdf Washington D.C., December 21, 2011 – At a World Social Forum event in 2006, Walden Bello warned that the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization (WTO) was careening down a track to disaster. Negotiators urgently needed to pull back before the Round went off a cliff, the founder of Focus on the Global South said. Although the global economy has certainly changed since then, the WTO seems stuck on the same track. The WTO ministerial last week in Geneva unsurprisingly failed to change course, perhaps most visibly on the issue of trade and food security. In a lively debate, WTO head Pascal Lamy and U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier de Schutter highlighted the need for a fresh...

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Subtitle:  Twelve Years Later, U.S. Grain Exports Are Up, So Too Is Hunger Language:  English IATP author(s):  Julia Olmstead File:  2011_11_14_FeedingTheWorldUpdate_JO.pdf In 1999, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) published a groundbreaking report by Mark Muller and Richard Levins entitled Feeding the World? The Upper Mississippi River Navigation Project that examined agribusiness’ and the Mississippi River navigation industry’s claim that U.S. grain exports “feed the world.”1 At the time of the report’s publication, several multi-billion dollar proposals were in play to expand and upgrade the lock and dam system on the Mississippi River, proposals that would have worsened...

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Language:  English IATP author(s):  IATP File:  IATPFairTradeUSAStatement.pdf As the founder of Fair Trade USA (originally Transfair USA), and the founder/owner of Peace Coffee, one of the largest 100-percent fair trade coffee companies in the U.S., the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) strongly disagrees with the recent decision of Fair Trade USA to resign from Fairtrade International at the end of this year. The fair trade system was created as a producer-led movement to help family farmers and rural communities benefit more directly from their production and work. The system is founded on a set of internationally recognized core principles aimed at increasing the capacity and participation of stakeholders, and dedicated to transparency in criteria setting, transactions...

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Subtitle:  Funds for agriculture adaptation more urgently needed Author(s) (external):  IATP, et. al File:  DurbanPR_11_28.pdf   read more

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Subtitle:  A civil society analysis of mitigation issues in the Durban talks Language:  English Author(s) (external):  IATP, et. al File:  DurbanAssessment(28 Nov).pdf Factsheet produced by IATP in conjunction with eight other NGOs analyzing mitigation issues in the Durban climate talks. The world is already reeling from major humanitarian emergencies exacerbated by climate change: floods in Thailand and Pakistan, landslides from extreme rains in many Latin American countries, and the multi-year drought in the Horn of Africa that threatens the lives of millions. read more

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Subtitle:  Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and Center for Food Safety petition FDA to eliminate toxic arsenic residues in meat Language:  English IATP author(s):  IATP Author(s) (external):  Center for Food Safety File:  ANADA PR_Final.pdf Nearly 88 percent of Americans surveyed by the National Turkey Federation eat turkey at Thanksgiving, but most will be blissfully unaware of what their turkey may have eaten—arsenic. Arsenic-containing compounds have been added to animal feeds since the 1940s, including in turkey, chicken and swine production where they are FDA-approved for “increased weight gain, improved feed efficiency, and...

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Subtitle:  Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and Center for Food Safety petition FDA to eliminate toxic arsenic residues in meat Language:  English File:  ANADA PR_Final.pdf Washington, D.C., November 22 – Nearly 88 percent of Americans surveyed by the National Turkey Federation eat turkey at Thanksgiving, but most will be blissfully unaware of what their turkey may have eaten—arsenic. Arsenic-containing compounds have been added to animal feeds since the 1940s, including in turkey, chicken and swine production where they are FDA-approved for “increased weight gain, improved feed efficiency, and improved pigmentation.”  Today, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) and the Center for Food Safety (CFS) filed a petition calling on the...

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Subtitle:  Farm Bill must link crop insurance with climate resilience IATP author(s):  Andrew Ranallo File:  2011_11_16_CropInsuranceFarmBill.pdf MINNEAPOLIS – Recent Farm Bill proposals to expand crop insurance for U.S. farmers have failed to acknowledge threats to agriculture from climate change, finds a new report from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). In their report, “A Risky Proposition: Crop Insurance in the Face of Climate Change,” authors Julia Olmstead and Jim Kleinschmit argue that crop insurance expansion without climate adaptation for agriculture would threaten food security and farmers’ livelihoods, while increasing costs for taxpayers. “Agriculture is extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change,” said...

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Subtitle:  Crop Insurance in the Face of Climate Change Language:  English IATP author(s):  Jim Kleinschmit Julia Olmstead File:  2011_11_11_ARiskyProposition_JO_JK.pdf In the last year, the U.S. has experienced some of the most severe floods and droughts in recent history. According to climate scientists, more droughts, more floods and more heat waves are what the future holds. 1 Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that in the run-up to the 2012 Farm Bill, most farm lobby groups have made clear they are willing to sacrifice direct and counter-cyclical payments (federal crop subsidies long considered untouchable) in order to hang on to and expand federal crop insurance. While...

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Language:  English IATP author(s):  Sophia Murphy File:  2011_11_02_CFS37_SM.pdf Rome, October 2011 – Multilateralism is in crisis. It is perhaps most evident in the painful and truly frightening failure of governments to come to grips with the implications of climate change. But it was also evident on a much less well-publicized stage in mid-October in Rome, where governments were gathered at the U.N. Committee on Food Security (CFS) to discuss food price volatility. The newly reformed and reconstituted CFS completed its week-long 37th session on October 22. The CFS is a reinvention of a long-standing U.N. committee. In its new incarnation, the CFS unites the three Rome agencies (FAO, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Fund for Agriculture and Development) and...

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Subtitle:  Remarks of Jim Harkness National Food Policy Conference, organized by Consumers Federation of America Language:  English IATP author(s):  Jim Harkness File:  2011_10_20_Feeding2050_JH.pdf Feeding 9 billion people by 2050 will be an enormous challenge. In many circles when people talk about feeding the world in 2050, the focus is almost exclusively on increasing food production. How can we do what we’re already doing better? What technologies can we produce to get more yield, or calories, out of the handful of crops and food animals that dominate the global food supply? I’m going to present you with a very different perspective on this issue, because in fact the challenge of feeding 9 billion people by...

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