If you only will read three... eh... five words today, read these:----The communists lost in Moldova----
If you've decided to read more, find the news on New York Times or the BBC .
The new government will have a lot to deal with, as do the new Bulgarian. And the biggest problems might not even be corruption...
In an earlier post I praised Bojko Borisov, Bulgarias new premier minister for putting agriculture on the agenda. Borisov stressed that employment in the agricultural sector is an important buffer in times of unemployment and the need to develop the Bulgarian countryside. It might be bullshit, but at least the guy has spotted an important problem.
One week the Bulgarian ministry of agriculture announced that the agriculture output in Bulgaria will be ca 20% lower in 2009 than in 2008, Noggers Blog reports. And it is not only Bulgaria...
Similar numbers are announced on marketskeptics . Argentina, Ukraine, the US, Russia... all report falling sales. Sometimes aggravated by bad politicians, but the main reason is one - heat and drought. Caused by climate change.
On marketskeptics you can see a nice graph of the sugar price hitting an all time high, so I guess food prices are set to get higher globally... but maybe we should be happy as long as there is something to eat.
As gloomy as these numbers sound, there is no reason to despair. I am sure most people who read this blog can easily consume 20% less in general. Myself I could easily eat 20% less if I had to. Maybe I should try it next week... to take a single hot dog in stead of a double, 33 cl of beer in stead of 50 cl...
Food is important. In the interconnected world it is very easy to forget that the coffe you drink actually come from a plantation, dependent on water and sun etc... Sometimes I feel the internet has only alienated us even further from this basic reality. That's why I was really happy to see the homepage of Smaka på Skåne.
Skåne is the southernmost region in Sweden, whereto I will soon move. If you write "potato" in the search field, you will get results where in Skåne you can buy potatoes produced on local farms. Food that has not travelled all over the world letting out CO2 and poison. It is just genius, a combination of internet technology and local farming.
This one is only in Swedis for obvious(?) reasons. But I guess it could be easily translated.
The picture is purely there for aestetical reasons, taken in Texas in 1955. It is taken from flickr, credits to austrini, found through creative commons
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