Agricultural Economics—Without Apology
The short answer is: Most of them.
That’s the conclusion from a meta-analysis by Jonathan Schoenfeld and John Ioannidis (yes, that John Ioannidis) in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
From James Choi’s blog:
There is nothing more basic than food. Food is the biggest of the essentials of life, our biggest industry, our most frequently indulged pleasure, and perhaps the greatest cause of disease and death. Despite its importance, food is often taken for granted, especially by academics, who have long considered food matters to be too coarse for scholarly attention.
From Warren Belasco’s introduction to his book Food: The Key Concepts, which I will be using as one of the core readings in the food policy course I am teaching next semester. The emphasis is mine.
Would It Kill Olivier De Schutter to Consider Incentives?
Overfishing is becoming increasingly recognized for the ecological disaster that it is. The capacity of the global aggregate fishing fleet is at least double of what is needed to exploit the oceans sustainably, and fishing methods such as industrial bottom trawling have proved particularly destructive. Add to this the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, leading to increased sea temperatures and ocean acidification, oil spills, agricultural and industrial run-off, pollution from aquaculture, and the enormous accumulation of plastic debris in water, and the critical situation for marine wildlife becomes clear.
That’s UN special rapporteur on the right to food Olivier De Schutter writing in — where else? —The Guardian last week.
Not once in his op-ed does De Schutter even remotely consider the idea that we already have a good mechanism in place to regulate overfishing and the depletion of the world’s stock of fish.