Here’s a challenge; how many agriculture ministers would cheerfully stake their political careers on the agressive tone of the visual below? Subtle as a flying brick, this artwork got right up the noses of the farming unions they were targeting. There can be nothing worse than projecting a goody two shoes image of your industry only to see the minister’s team spoil the effect.
French farming unions milked a government department that they thought they could call their own. For years, the FNSEA posted teams of so-called advisors in the corridors of rue de Varenne, who would be consulted on all manner of policy matters, trivial or otherwise. Fast food ingredients do not automatically earn thick margins in a competitive sector: even economists need to be realistic occasionally. In the middle of multiple crises with local, regional and national consequences, seemingly overnight we had a food crisis. Sociologist Claude Fischler, research director at CNRS, cautions against considering a collection of local responses to specific, localised problems will somehow add up to ways of working that will add up to a regional or national strategy that will work straight out of the box. In particular, there is an ever-present push-pull tension between planning for food security, (making sure that there is food on sale) including, but not exclusively, supermarkets and other distribution models. The rich world which was once home to eaters is now populated by consumers, with all the implications of added-value strategies. Consumers transfer their disposable income to products increasingly heavily-processed products, thus spending more on food and transferring market power to an ever smaller group of brand owners. As such, they become closed off to the outside world, in an increasingly bitter war of words to justify their positions, if only in their eyes. Food manufacturers focussing on sales targets and profit margins will drift out of markets in the hungry world, widening the gaps between consumers and ever greater numbers of starving populations who are constantly hungry. To say such things are “nobody’s fault” would be disingenuous but is often used to dissipate any blame implied.
A more urgent question is whether or not poor countries should be assisted to stimulate higher productivity among their fellow citizens, with an ever-greater risk of system failure in technology that will stop working sooner or later. Capital-intensive systems have less to offer traditional peasants with lower capital exposure, they are also more likely to survive extended drought or unforeseeable weather conditions (climate change).
Spare a thought for Tex, a grizzly bear with form for breaking, entering and… eating. It should come as no surprise that between fishing trips, Tex likes urban environments. Something to do with easy pickings and creature comforts, no doubt. Apparently, the Canadian state has teams of animal experts who monitor delinquent grizzlies, inter alia. Some weeks ago, Tex took a high-risk 
