Michael Edwards and staff, Reposted from ABC News, January 31, 2012

Fruit and vegetables have just become the latest battleground in the discount war between supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths.

Coles' bid to get a bigger share of Australia's grocery market kicked off today with a flurry of ads spruiking discounts on fresh produce.

A range of items have been discounted by as much as 50 per cent.

The latest round of cuts comes on top of Coles and Woolworths scrambling to undercut each other on items such as bread and milk.

But while lower prices may be good news for consumers, farmers' groups are renewing warnings that the price war risks driving growers out of business.

And shoppers have been warned that savings on some items may be clawed back…

There's been a great deal of controversy about the proposed New Zealand Food Bill. Below are a couple of perspectives - one critical of the bill, and one from the Nelson Mail. The proponents of the bill are downplaying its potential impacts, while critics maintain that in its current form, the bill could have serious impacts on home food growing, community based food exchanges, seed saving and other small-scale, sustainable food production and distribution approaches.

The NZ organisation OOOBY (Out of Our Backyards) has also compiled three perspectives on the bill here: http://ooooby.ning.com/profiles/blogs/food-bill-time-for-action.

Kiwis kowtow to WTO…

In reaction to the growing global population, the environmental loss of food producing areas, and local resident demand, the City of Unley has endorsed a Food Security Strategy.

The Food Security Strategy has been created in partnership with the local community through the City of Unley's Community Sustainability Advisory Group who wrote the document with the Council.

The strategy aims to assist and encourage food production by local residents and in public places, and is an important acknowledgement of the need to develop more resilience in local, urban food systems, together with providing a model for other councils to consider in strengthening their own food security.

The full strategy can be downloaded here.

Agricultural production will need to increase by 70 percent by the year 2050 in order to cope with the pressures of climate change, a growing world population, and limited resources, according to the first-ever UN report on land, water scarcity, and food.

The report, released by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) on 28 November, found that many of the countries that will need to produce food for feeding this population are, consequently, the countries facing the most land degradation.

About 40 percent of degraded lands lie in regions with high poverty rates, where small-scale farmers must pay the price for unsuitable land. “The distribution of land and water resources does not favour those countries that need to produce more in the future,” the report states.

The report also warns that many agricultural systems face “the risk of progressive breakdown of their productive capacity under a combination of excessive demographic pressure and unsustainable…

Local Harvest is a new national initiative aiming to help people find local sources of food and grow their own. It will provide a national directory for finding food co-ops, swap meets, community gardens, farmers markets, box systems, organic retailers and more by simply entering your postcode. Find out more at http://www.localharvest.org.au/

In Ohio, Eddie Miller and two of his Jacob sheep, Panda and Nerd, walk to their truck after a mowing job. Customers pay $1 per sheep per day. (Photo: Randy Harris for The New York Times)

Reposted in full from The New York Times. For more images, visit the site.

Kevin Roose | November 2, 2011



(OBERLIN, Ohio) IN this verdant lawn-filled college town, most people keep their lawn mowers tuned up by oiling the motor and…