Food Security and State: Policy Considerations for the Contemporary Food Crisis

In 1996, The World Food Summit (WFS) set a target to eradicate hunger in all countries and an immediate goal to half the number of undernourished people by 2015. Backed by the United Nations (UN), international organizations launched a global effort with the intent of achieving food security for all people. A variety of approaches were employed, including the distribution of food aid and farming supplies, skills training in agricultural development, funding for country-specific research, and legal counsel for states. Despite international efforts, over a decade later the number of undernourished was calculated to have risen by nearly 60 million people (FAO 2011). It appears unlikely that the WFS will reach its immediate goal

Review of the Gender and Social Impacts of Improved Seed Technology in Developing Countries: Policy Implications

Experts have acknowledged the limits to growth that the processes of climate change, population expansion, and resource depletion will place on agricultural producers in the 21st century (FAO 2012). In response, scientists are employing biotechnology to create new improved seed varieties. However, developing improved seed technology (IST) involves complex and controversial issues that span across disciplines in the biological and social sciences (see Box 1). In this policy brief, we emphasize the need to better examine the gender and social impacts of advancements in seed technology. Based on a detailed review of the literature, we determine that despite recent advancements, women and small farmers still face distinct challenges, particularly in developing countries. For example, farmers need to access a variety of resources to use IST but access to those resources is restricted by gender and class. Formal regulatory and property rights agreements can further hamper women’s agricultural potential. We suggest that policy makers (1) take into account existing gender and class inequalities in agricultural systems when crafting IST regulations, (2) work to understand how marginalized farmers may be lost in the gap between public and private IST distributions systems, (3) strive to increase transparency in how IST innovations are created and regulated, and (4) promote and support interdisciplinary research teams

Intellectual Property Rights for New Seed Technologies: Balancing Farmers’ and Breeders’ Rights

Many cite improved seed technologies as vital to addressing the challenge of food insecurity, especially when faced with combined stresses of global climate change, population growth, and natural resource depletion (Anthony and Ferroni 2012; Lipton 2007). As improved seeds find their way into the developing world, policymakers are struggling to find the appropriate institutional mechanisms to regulate their creation and use. Arguments over intellectual property rights (IPR) are central to this debate. Some activists in the Global South are distrustful of any IPR regime that creates private ownership over seeds, whereas international financial institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) encourage stronger IPR protections for commercial seed breeders creating new plant varieties. Policymakers face two conflicting imperatives in making these policies: (1) promote improved seed development and distribution in ways that will encourage new seed innovations and protect the interests of commercial breeders and (2) protect the interests of farmers who serve as both a source of vital germplasm and as the potential users of these improved seeds. In this policy brief, we consider the sources of these conflicting imperatives for developing nations to protect the rights of commercial plant breeders and small farmers, as well as some examples of national policies trying to balance those demands

Potential safety risks in schools: ensuring the safety of our precious ones

The school has become an inextricable part of the modern society throughout the world and especially in Malaysia. During the weekdays, schools are typically a hive of activities where the adults (teachers and other workers) and children (students) interact with each other daily. Schools often maintain a low-risk level of safety and health. Schools have potential variety of risk and hazards (physical and social) that can negatively affect the wellbeing and health of the people. The Malaysian Department of Safety and Health (DOSH) have issued the Hazard Identification, Risk Assessment and Risk Control (HIRARC) for identifying the risk elements during usual and special operations and to predict the likelihood and severity in workplaces. This study was carried out to identify all the factors and hazards that may cause harm to occupant of a selected school in the state of Selangor, Malaysia. An assessment was carried out to consider the chances of that harm befalling anyone in the circumstances of a particular case and the possible severity of the outcome to enable school administrators to plan, introduce, and monitor preventive measures to ensure that the risks are adequately controlled at all times. The HIRARC assessment on the selected school identified that physical hazard has the highest frequency, followed by ergonomic, biological, chemical, and psychosocial hazards. The kitchen, science laboratory, and toilet are the areas that have higher potential for accident to happen. Although in terms of risk, most of the hazards are categorized under medium followed by low risk, but none of hazards are categorized under the high-risk group. There is a critical need to ensure that the school environment is constantly kept safe and healthy to ensure that the process of lifelong building of knowledge and practices can be sustained for the future of the nation

Translating participation in informal organizations into empowerment: Women in rural India

This dissertation research analyzes the degree to which poor women are socially empowered because of group participation. I address three main questions: (1) what has been the strategy of the state vis-á-vis movement organizations in addressing women\u27s empowerment issues? (2) How have current trends in globalization supported collaboration between the state and community based initiatives for women? (3) What are the effects of such group based initiatives (structure and functioning) on individual women\u27s empowerment? ^ The research model integrates gender theory and social movement theory to examine how poor women organize as informal groups. I focus on a specific state initiative called the Mahila Samakhya Karnataka Program in India engaged in organizing women\u27s groups (called sanghas) in villages. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods, and based on a quasi-experimental research design, the field-level data collection spanned about four months (September 1998–January 1999). The data collection involved identifying key state reports, field level participant observation of 10 group meetings and observation of program activities, and structured interviews with 605 individual women (502 participants and 103 women from villages where groups have not been formed) and 31 group facilitators. ^ Using basic statistical procedure, OLS regression, HLM, and interpretation of the qualitative data my analyses suggest that participation in groups is socially empowering for women facing multiple systems of oppression; class, caste and gender. The framing of opportunities to define new interests facilitated by the interactive linkages between the macro and micro levels (global-national-local) create conditions for the emergence of new movements. At the theoretical level, my findings emphasize the need to understand the social basis of poverty and empowerment. I identify and define three types of empowerment as critical for social change for women: socio-economic, purchasing power, and social empowerment. My findings suggest that organizing facilitates women\u27s participation in groups. Individual membership duration and perception of importance of issues discussed in meetings have a significant and positive effect on social empowerment. Collective action is likely in informal groups and group level characteristics explain about 64 per cent of the variance in the social empowerment of individual women.

Grand Challenges Conference Panel 2

A panel discussion on Catalyzing Interdisciplinary Grand Challenge Research with Robin Clair, professor of communication; Rosalee Clawson, head and professor of political science; Mangala Subramaniam, associate professor of sociology; Kartik Ariyur, limited term lecturer in Mechanical Engineering; and Shannon McMullen, associate professor of visual and performing arts and interdisciplinary studies. The moderator was James Mullins, dean of libraries and the Esther Ellis Norton Professor at Purdue