Media determinists of all stripes have hailed the role of Twitter, Facebook and other social media in prompting the recent pan-Arab revolts. Though it could be argued that these revolts were bound to happen eventually, the catalyst isn’t likely social media — it’s food.

One of the main causes of the French Revolution was a combination of a mismanaged economy and climate change that resulted in soaring bread prices. The Egyptian uprisings have been compared to the French Revolution by many columnists (and the comparison dismissed, as well). On the same note, The Daily Telegraph declared the events in Tunisia and Egypt to be “food revolutions.”

The cost of food is on the rise, with devastating impacts across the Global South. At the start of a recent podcast episode, NPR’s Planet Money discussed the rising cost of wheat, which makes up roughly 70 percent of bread prices in Egypt but only two percent in the U.S.

The Western world tends to feel less impact in fluctuation of food commodities because so much of the cost of food goes to packaging, marketing and processing. In addition, Western countries have stockpiles of grain unimaginable in the developing world.

Planet Money also gives a comprehensive breakdown of just how crazy worldwide changes in food costs have been and what’s causing them. As one of our most basic needs, food plays a huge role in security and diplomacy.

After wheat prices jumped 25 per cent in one day in 2008, the UN held a food security summit in Rome and urged governments to invest in agriculture. The conference’s final declaration warned of disastrous crises that were not just looming, but well under way.

Food and famine has driven much of the world’s relations with North Korea. Meanwhile China — estimated to supply North Korea with 40 percent of its food — faces its worst drought in 60 years.

Last summer’s Russian forest fires resulted in a shortfall of tonnes of grain, prompting Putin to halt wheat exports for both 2010 and 2011 harvests. This summer we’ll learn the impact of this change, along with the effects of flooding in Pakistan and Australia, as well as natural disasters in numerous other countries.

Meanwhile, the cost of food continues to reach historic highs, which Bill Clinton believes could worsen if companies use too many crops for biofuels.

Unless climate change gets under control and we use food resources more efficiently, we can expect more such revolutions in the years to come.

[Creative Commons photo by Flickr user adactio]

North Mart in La Ronge, Saskatchewan. Larger retailers will benefit disproportionately from the new, privatized Nutrition North Canada program.

Changes to the government’s food subsidy program are making some in Northern Canada fear higher prices and fewer small, local stores.

The Food Mail Program was axed last October, to be replaced by a redesigned initiative in April 2011. The program, jointly run by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Canada Post, and Health Canada, provided food and sanitary items to isolated communities in the North at reduced postal rates. By cutting down on the transportation costs, food prices in the North were more affordable.

An INAC spokesperson told us that the program started around the 1960s through Canada Post’s air stage program. In 1991, responsibility over the program was transferred to INAC. Toward its end, the program was supporting 70,000 people in 80 communities each week, delivering over 18 million kilograms of food by mail annually.

The program required meticulous detail. Food arrived in shipping centres in the South, were packaged for sale and insulated to survive northern weather conditions. They were then driven to nine points of entry before being loaded into Canada Post aircraft, along with postal deliveries. Although 90 percent of the food was sent to communities in Nunavut and northern Quebec, the program served communities from Yukon to Labrador.

A 2007 video (which looks much more dated) explains the process in detail. The government subsidy meant that northern food prices were about 40 percent more than in the South—instead of double the price, which they would have been without the subsidy. (A Globe and Mail article reported on one community affected by the changes. Photos from the local grocery store include $30 jars of Cheez Whiz, $13 spaghetti, and $7 heads of cabbage.)

Last May, the Conservatives announced that three private companies would take on Canada Post’s role after concluding the crown corporation was too expensive.

The program was cut in October and will be replaced with the Nutrition North Canada initiative in April. The new program limits subsidies to “nutritious” perishable foods instead of “convenience” perishable foods (TV dinners, breaded meats) and limits eligibility of non-perishable foods. In the interim, the original Food Mail Program continues although subsidies have been discontinued for a list of items that aren’t covered under the new plan. Discontinued items include “whole pumpkins” and “croissants and garlic bread,” but also discontinued are water and prescription drugs.

An excellent CBC radio segment explored the implications of food costs for the largely Aboriginal populations who live in the isolated communities served by the program. With a genetic susceptability to Type 2 diabetes, a high rate of social assistance use, and a higher birth rate, these northern communities badly need access to nutritional foods. When a jug of fresh orange juice is 10 times the price of a bottle of Coca-Cola, affording a balanced diet is a struggle.

It’s this line of thinking that prompted changes to the subsidy system, but is it really the most effective action? Some advocate investment in summer agriculture programs, noting that areas in the Far North receive near-24 hour sunlight, making them even more fertile than some communities in the South.

But the loudest criticism of the new plan has to do with funding structure.

The old subsidy applied to the grocery item itself, allowing businesses and consumers to pay a fixed price for groceries, while costs such as air shipping were handled by the government. The new subsidy goes straight to retailers, leaving it to them to negotiate their shipping and air costs.

Smaller stores therefore face unfair competition. Larger chains like North Mart will benefit from economies of scale, but smaller stores—in the most remote areas with small populations—will face higher shipping costs—and thus higher prices. Ultimately this risks not only the livelihoods of food vendors, but also the purported goal of the subsidy program: the ability of Northerners to get a balanced diet.

Computer model of a Bisphenol-A molecule.

Canadians – a bunch of walking, talking BPA vessels? Apparently so. Statistics Canada recently released results from their first nationwide look into bisphenol A, and the results aren’t pretty.

According to a Globe and Mail report on the stats, 91 per cent of Canadians tested show some sort of BPA exposure, and teenagers carry most of the brunt, with their bodies often containing up to 30 per cent more BPA than the rest of the population.

When the first round of BPA warnings surfaced years ago, it looked like Canada would take a stand that could lead to the ingredient being declared a toxic chemical. And since then, while that declaration has stalled, the levels of BPA found in our bodies continues to rise.

It can seem like fear mongering, but BPA really is in a shocking amount of everyday products. CDs, tin can liners, and plastic water bottles all contain BPA. Most people get a steady BPA diet through food packaging. The big deal is that the chemical mimics estrogen — the average level of BPA in our bodies is actually close to 1,000 times the normal level of naturally occurring estrogen.

Of course, some scientists, and those who are involved in the BPA industry, say that just because something is in our body, doesn’t mean it’s causing harm. And it’s true that while we can speculate on what this added BPA might mean for us, we don’t know for a fact if it causes health problems.

But it’s concerning the ease with which we let synthetic products become a part of our diet with very few restrictions. The argument that it’s probably not causing any harm to our bodies is ridiculous — seeing as how BPA’s not a naturally occurring ingredient in our food system, we shouldn’t be ingesting it.

It’s interesting that the media also recently wondered why puberty continues to hit our adolescents earlier and earlier. If what we’re putting into our bodies as fuel isn’t natural, our bodies won’t act that way either. (Of course it hasn’t been proved if there are any links between chemicals like BPA and early puberty, though the New York Times article linked above does mention it briefly.)

The pessimist in me wonders if it’s too little too late now. We’ve been exposed to products with BPA so long that all the studies are doing is proving that our bodies are at the whim of packaging manufacturers. This is testing that shoud have been done years ago, but it’s only now that we’ll get a peek at what’s happening to us.

Vandana Shiva with a Tibetan Monk (the Refugee Government ex-Minister of Agriculture) attend a demonstration against Monsanto in Hyderabad, India in 2003. Photo by Naoko Yatani courtesy of Flickr user skasuga.

Monsanto has donated 475 tonnes, that’s $4 million worth, of hybrid vegetable seeds to Haiti, proving that a devastated nation is land ripe for corporate sowing.

But at least one of Haiti’s major peasant-driven activist groups is looking a gift horse in the mouth.

In an article for The Huffington Post, Beverly Bell explains

“A new earthquake” is what peasant farmer leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste of the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) called the news…The MPP has committed to burning Monsanto’s seeds, and has called for a march to protest the corporation’s presence in Haiti on June 4, for World Environment Day.

Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the Executive Director of MPP and the spokesperson for the National Peasant Movement of the Congress of Papay (MPNKP), called the entry of Monsanto seeds into Haiti “a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds…, and on what is left our environment in Haiti.”

At this point, Haiti doesn’t have any policy governing the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and so its Ministry of Agriculture nixed Monsanto original offer of Roundup ready GM frankenseeds. Not that the hybrid seeds are much better.

According to Bell:

The hybrid corn seeds Monsanto has donated to Haiti are treated with the fungicide Maxim XO, and the calypso tomato seeds are treated with thiram. Thiram belongs to a highly toxic class of chemicals called ethylene bisdithiocarbamates (EBDCs). Results of tests of EBDCs on mice and rats caused concern to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which then ordered a special review. The EPA determined that EBDC-treated plants are so dangerous to agricultural workers that they must wear special protective clothing when handling them.

Monsanto’s passing mention of thiram to Ministry of Agriculture officials in an email contained no explanation of the dangers, nor any offer of special clothing or training for those who will be farming with the toxic seeds.

Apparently Monsanto–you might remember them from previous life affirming chemical projects like Agent Orange—has left those responsibilities to U.S. foreign assistance workers. What could go wrong there?