Financial Transparency Coalition

Every time I ride my bike by a corn field inOregon—full and glowing—I feel a little bit thankful. I am thankful for our mild summer heat, this year and others. Thankful forOregon’s efforts to create a more sustainable food system. And particularly thankful that I live in country where record high temperatures don’t affect my ability to feed myself. It’s not true everywhere. Record heat across the U.S. Midwest has battered corn crops, making it likely this year’s harvest will be one of the lowest in years—and sent prices soaring. As a result, consumers in the United States will have...

Today the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations reported that 925 million people are undernourished in 2010. This is actually a decline from the all-time high of 1.02 billion in 2009. It’s easy to forget, when faced with our own brand of pain in the developed world, that a global recession is the difference between life and death for millions worldwide. It is startling to realize that an economic downturn that originates in the skyscrapers of New York can hit hardest in the rural towns of Bangladesh and Ethiopia, where most haven’t heard of...