A perfect storm
Features
Since becoming a junior minister, Mark Malloch Brown's fondness for speaking his mind has sometimes landed him in trouble. It has certainly got people's backs up. He does not show enough diplomacy or modesty, say some colleagues; he is too big for his Whitehall boots. The remarks he makes in today's paper are also bound to be controversial - but they show the UN's former deputy secretary general at his best, talking expertly about matters of serious concern. Because there are few issues in the world economy more worrying at the moment than the rocketing price of food and, while Lord Malloch-Brown's former colleagues from the international agencies have been discussing it over the past few months, too few members of the British government have even begun to the address the problem.
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: May 10, 2008
From the UN to Whitehall, with a will to change our view of Africa
Features
Of all the eminent figures drafted from outside Labour politics into Gordon Brown's "government of all the talents" last year, Lord Malloch-Brown, foreign office minister for Africa, Asia and the UN, probably had the toughest entry into what he describes as Britain's media-policed political culture.
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: May 10, 2008
A world apart
Features
Set-aside, the scheme to take a proportion of farmland out of production and rid Europe of the grain mountains of the 1980s, has itself been set aside. Good for tackling overproduction and, by accident, good for wildlife affected by agricultural intensification, set-aside has been officially reduced to 0% this year by the EC.
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: May 07, 2008
Badgers: Super furry animal or cattle-killing, TB-ridden vermin?
Features
From half a mile away you know Merrivale Wood is badger country. Even for a townie like me it triggers old subterranean associations of roots and grubs, tangle and secrecy. I'm walking up towards it across flat farmland not far from Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire with Colin Gray, who is chairman of the county's hundred-strong badger group.
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: May 04, 2008
UN taskforce to tackle global food price crisis
Features
The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, yesterday called for world leaders to attend a summit in June to tackle the food price crisis that has triggered global social unrest. In the run up to the summit in Rome, a UN taskforce headed by a British diplomat, Sir John Holmes, will try to develop a coherent international response to the crisis, at a time of sharp international divisions over food exports, genetically modified crops and biofuels.
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: April 30, 2008
Shops ration sales of rice as US buyers panic
Features
The global food crisis reached the United States yesterday as big retailers began to ration sales of rice in response to bulk purchases by customers alarmed by rocketing prices of staples.
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: April 24, 2008
Co-op clashes with organic group over CO2 and food miles
Features
Two leading voices in the fight against climate change were at loggerheads last night over the weight given to "food miles" in a labelling system designed to encourage consumers to choose low-carbon products in shops and supermarkets.
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: April 22, 2008
