A MONTHLY NEWSLETTER OF FOOD SYSTEM ANALYSIS

No. 287, February 2012

ISSN 0827-4053

The Business of Organics

This years Guelph Organic Conference was an interesting signal that the organic movement, having moved beyond the farm-gate, is addressing the resulting challenges to its integrity as it starts to become an important player in the larger marketplace. As retired farmers, we were less interested in the wide array of practical workshops, and more interested in the many conversations to be had at the Organic Conference. What we observed was a focus on the management of businesses devoted to organic foods and food production. The concern was not so much about business management (note the reversal of word order) as the political and social governance of organic-oriented businesses, for example, training of board of directors candidates and Co-op member education. People are learning that being a good herd manager or even a good cheesemaker is not necessarily sufficient qualification for being a good member of the Board of Directors of a cheese plant. One has also to have a solid grasp of the philosophical basis of the organization or business, particularly if it not just another profit-seeking capitalist business and claims some ethical foundation for its activities. Whether the business is a co-op or not, the challenge is for the Directors (and in the case of a coop, the members as well) to evaluate the business direction and decisions on the basis of the principles that formed the organic movement. One of the people we talked to in Guelph was Ted Zettel, a founding member of Organic Meadow Cooperative, who recently finished a stint as interim manager of the coop. Having participated in the initiation of Organic Meadow, we found Teds reflections on the co-ops current situation very thought-provoking. With his permission we are reprinting below an edited version of two articles he wrote for their members newsletter.

Sober Reflections
by Ted Zettel
Last October I spoke on The Land Our Life: Food, Faith and Dignity at the Great Lakes Region meeting of Kairos and led a workshop on Climate Change, Peak Oil and Food. Digging below the surface on these themes leads inevitably to the conclusions that as a society, we are living beyond our means. The next day I attended the annual Picnic at the Brickworks on the east side of Toronto where I was paired with a chef, giving out samples of gourmet salted caramel, made with Organic Meadow cream and butter. All around the massive old reclaimed brickyard, were tables where the guests could sample everything from a raw Everdale purple carrot, to Pfennings garlic aged in white wine. This is a decidedly upscale event, with an entry price of $120/ person, and it was packed. The theme is local food, but the draw is really entertainment : a fun afternoon where the wealthy foodies can rub shoulders with producers and chefs entrepreneurs who cater to those who have money and want something unique in their eating experience. This is our [Organic Meadows] target market. This is our target market. On the heels of the previous days discussion, the phrase hung in my head, causing a serious episode of self-reflection . . . Is this where we intended to go when we got into organic farming? Was this the vision that motivated the donation of all the energy and self sacrifice that went into the founding and development of our coop? Is there something wrong with this picture, and if there is, can we do anything to fix it?
. . . continued next page

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The question of why our products are so expensive is one that I have been called on to answer hundreds of times. I know the answer well and repeat it faithfully. . . I explain that the farmers, in return for making all the changes that are needed to obtain the many wonderful benefits of organic food in securing all the environmental and health benefits that come from refusing to use the chemical short cuts need a 20% premium for their milk. There are some legitimate, real, extra costs in transporting and processing a smaller volume niche product added to this, but the real culprit, in shooting the premium from 20% at farmgate to 100% at retail, is the way the various levels in between take their cut calculated in terms of percentages instead of actual dollars. In effect, the people between us and the eater make more a lot more per unit on organic food than on regular food. I also outline the basic truth that all food in North America is too cheap, and that the system of externalizing cost and milking (pardon the pun) an unsustainable system is self destructive in the long run. Knowing the answer doesnt reduce the sting of recognizing that my own daughter and her husband, with four small children, struggling to make ends meet on a single income and confined mainly to supermarket food, cannot afford our products. Most of those products end up in the fridges of the upper middle class (myself included) who are at the top end of the consumption spectrum. My conclusion? Yes there is something wrong with this picture. It is the fact that what begins as a modest premium to compensate the farmer for undertaking a radically different, ecologically sound farm management method, works its way through a series of percentage-based markups and results in a price point that is roughly double what consumers pay for regular milk, cheese or eggs . . . This means that the growing number of meals eaten outside the home, in restaurants, hospitals, schools and other institutional settings will likely not be made with organic ingredients. A large segment of the population who could benefit most: kids at school, the infirm or elderly, dont have access to our products. We know that retail price is the primary limitation on the expansion of the organic food movement. Surveys consistently show that most of the consuming public, possibly as high as three quarters, are in agreement that there is value for them personally and would like to eat organic food. But the steep premiums charged at retail have us confined to a meager 2 to 3% of the market. This problem is only one aspect or symptom of a much bigger, more pervasive problem the unsustainable, unjust, industrial, commodity food system which we are all part of. . . . So what can we do? What is the role of Organic Meadow Cooperative?

It is worthwhile to go back to our roots and look at the Mission Statement that was written in 1989. . . . The irony is that after 22 years of hard work and enviable development, we are, along with other successful organic brands, a well entrenched piece of the faulty system we set out to change. . . . We are not making a great dent in changing the system. The great thing about unsustainability is that it is unsustainable. Activities which by their nature cannot be carried on indefinitely eventually collapse and are replaced by something else. It seems that our present industrial economy is a good candidate for the natural selection process. . . either extinction or renewal. We do what is necessary to stay in business through these turbulent times, and to keep returning a fair price back to the producer to sustain the organic family farm. That includes selling our products at prices we believe are too high, through a food chain that fails to serve many of the people. Our mission of reform seems a bit like Mission Impossible. But who knows what will change tomorrow or next year?

Monsanto:
Beyond the Love to Hate
If you are a regular reader of the Rams Horn you will know that we frequently report on the underhanded, misleading and just plain evil communications and actions of that corporation. Its not just us, either: Monsanto has become the symbol of everything that is wrong with our contemporary biotech-chemical-industrial-monoculture food system for good reason. But despite the egregious wickedness of their deliberate policies to contaminate the world with geneticallycolonized crops and to control the worlds seed supply (they have stated as much themselves, were not making it up), Monsanto is by no means the only actor in this play. As the Rams Horn resident graphic artist, Monsanto makes my life easier, since when a figure is labeled Monsanto everyone has a good idea of what it represents. So I am not really happy to have to point out that while it is important to keep tabs on what they are doing, and to expose their lies for what they are so that people are not misled, it is equally important to remember that if (and hopefully when) Monsanto goes down in flames, another biotech-agrotoxin giant will pop up to take their place.

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We should not confuse the standard-bearer with the army if only because by so doing we may miss the different strategies which may be employed by, say, Syngenta, or Bayer, or Dow, or BASF. C.K

Specious Arguments
Saskatchewan prof upholds bad science of substantial equivalence and organic-GE crop coexistence:
We were sad to see the intellectual dishonesty displayed by Peter Phillips, a respected professor of public policy at the University of Saskatchewan, in a recent opinion piece in Western Producer. Noting that the EU and many countries exporting to the EU remain only minimally engaged in GE crop production and trade while the USA and Canada are deeply committed to it, Phillips comments that both blocks, as he refers to them, use virtually the same basic processes and methods for assessing safety and risk. When it comes to the outcomes of their GM assessments, however, the two blocks make substantially different risk decisions.

Sanitizing Language: from GMOs

to GIOs

Sometime around 20 years ago the corporations that were busy constructing a global food system based on patented, genetically engineered seeds decided that the term genetic engineering was not a good one for PR purposes. So they came up with genetic modification. Who could object? Engineering implied a cold mechanical construction incompatible with biology, or life. Modification, on the other hand, implied a continuity Phillips does not explore the reasons for the differwith biological processes, and a kind of warmth and gentleness. (It also had positive echoes /implications of ences, but does illuminate his ideological bias with the modern.) So the term genetically modified organism, statement that Any country that slows technological change will ultimately jeopardize its competior GMO, was propagated tiveness. . . . Generally, firms move to places and cultivated by the induswhere there is an aggregation of competitors try, including the regulatory and collaborators, where communities faciliagencies such as the Canatate innovation and where innovators are toldian Food Inspection erated and respected. Of course he then cites Agency. The genetic conhis home town of Saskatoon as one such place, structs which were being inagain without looking at the reasons in this troduced to create GMOs case, the huge amount of public funding that were then described as has gone into supporting biotech and the pronovel traits by the CFIA in FROM A VIDEO AVAILABLE AT: duction of GIOs in Saskatoon year after year. a move to further obscure WWW.ORGANICCOUNCIL.CA/NEWS/GMALFAFA the reality of genetic engiFinally, Phillips casts the different apneering. proaches EU vs Canada-USA in moral terms: There The regulatory agencies, including the CFIA, added is an economic, political and moral imperative to find to the deception and its bad science by adopting the ways to work around the effect of this disconnect, and fabricated concept of substantial equivalence, refer- offers Canadian practice as such a way out. He ignores ring, for example, to a genetically engineered canola the widespread scientific critique of substantial equivaplant and an unmolested canola plant as substantially lence which is the ideological keystone of Canadas equivalent despite the fact that the whole point was to biotech assessment of GE, and points to our novelty genetically alter the GE plant so that it was not equiva- trigger, our well-respected, science-based processes. lent and could tolerate a specific herbicide (Monsantos He also praises our voluntary national standard for Roundup) and indeed, that this was the basis for labelling of GM food [which] is the only World Trade patenting. Science was thereby pushed aside as an Organization compliant standard in the world and could offer a model for consumers to exercise their inconvenience to innovation and profit. preferences in the market. This voluntary standard is, Finally, the biotech industry, which includes both of course, utterly inconsequential and to the best of our food and drug companies, dressed itself up as a bunch knowledge has never been used by the food industry. of life science companies. Phillips thus turns his back on the mounting Now it is time to push back, and force a change in evidence of the harms being done by GE contamination: the language again. Instead of accepting the term ge- Canada is at the leading edge of trying to work around netically modified organisms, we should be speaking of the inflexibilities in regulations, citizen perceptions genetically imperialist organisms to reflect their ac- and industry by developing a national co-existence tual function in the real world.

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policy. In a perfect world, we would have the processes in place to allow GM crops to co-exist with conventional, organic, industrial and other differentiated crops. That would be Phillips version of a perfect world, where, lets see, there would be no pollinators or breezes to crosscontaminate crops . . . Phillips concludes with this moralism: If Canadian producers, industry, consumers and governments are able to construct such a system, they may finally open up the global market to the optimal production and consumption of food, perhaps banishing food shortages forever. WP, 9/2/12 At least he does not claim, directly, that this will end hunger and malnutrition.

vincial level that dictate ethanol usage in gasoline. Finally, the industry is protected from foreign competition through a tariff. This industry . . . results in a stimulant to local Canadian grain demand and higher local grain prices than would have otherwise been the case. In addition, due to government subsidies, the ethanol industry has an advantage in the competition for feed grains relative to other buyers, such as the livestock industry. Most importantly the government mandated use of ethanol, currently at 5% of gasoline, creates an inflated demand for the product. The bottom line is that ethanol has already contributed to the downsizing of the Canadian livestock industry through its impact on margins and livestock prices. Expansion of the ethanol industry will amplify the negative consequences.

Ethanol: a government baby

The George Morris Centre at the University of Guelph has consistently been one of the most conservative, not to say right-wing, agricultural research organizations in Canada. It recently published a study on the Impact of Canadian Ethanol Policy on Canadas Livestock and Meat Industry. Its negative findings carry particular weight coming, as they do, from a market-oriented organization more apt to argue for increased industrialization (including biotech) than to criticising an industrial lobby such as the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association. But as Kevin Grier, lead author of the report, succinctly put it, This [biofuel industry] is an industry that exists for, of and by the government. There is nothing market oriented about it. From the report: To date, the anchor of biofuel policy initiatives has been ethanol made from corn in eastern Canada and made from wheat in western Canada. At least $250 million is spent annually by federal and provincial governments to provide financial support to the ethanol industry. The financial support takes the form of capital and operating subsidies to ethanol operations and firms. In addition, the industry is supported by mandates at the federal and proThe Renewable Fuels Association, the very aggressive lobby of the biofuel industry in Canada, responded to the Geo. Morris Centre report in predictable fashion. Gordon Quaiattini was president and bigmouth of the CRFA until last July, and I recall listening, on more than one occasion, to one of the boldest fabricators of facts Ive ever heard. Quaiattini never tired of repeating (often with Ag Minister Gerry Ritz joining in), such completely unsubstantiated claims as: Canada is now a frontrunner in the worldwide effort to create clean, renewable sources of transportation fuel. The benefits of this approach are many. From an economic standpoint, our industry generates $2 billion in economic activity each and every year and has created more than 14,000 jobs in total most of those in rural Canada. At the same time, renewable fuels production will help to reduce GHG emissions by over 4.2 megatonnes. This is the equivalent of taking over 1 million cars off the road each and every year. greenfuels.org

TAKING 1 MILLION [FARM] VEHICLES OFF THE ROAD

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Whos Who: Deborah Elson is currently Director of Member Relations and Industry Promotions for CRFA. Ms. Elson worked previously in a similar capacity in a number of political offices including the role of Press Office Manager in the Office of the Prime Minister of Canada. greenfuels.org

mentally sound, socially responsible and economically viable, a purpose which many see as a contradiction in terms. The founding members include Cargill, JBS (Brazil), McDonalds, Merck Animal Health, Elanco, AllFlex, Grupo de Trabalho da Pecuaria Sustentavel (GTPS), National Wildlife Federation, Rainforest Alliance, Roundtable for Sustainable Beef Australia, The Nature Conservancy, Wal-mart and World Wildlife Fund. The Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef will now be registered under Article 60 of the Swiss code, allowing it to support local, regional and national roundtable members who propose new innovations, technologies and share best practices in beef production systems. It will also be a conduit to several million Euros the Dutch government has already pledged for new trainings and technologies to improve the efficiency and productivity of smallholder and frontier farmers. World Wildlife Fund, which describes itself as the worlds leading conservation organization, has used the roundtable approach to bring global commodity stakeholders together to identify measurable, scientific ways to reduce environmental impact while enhancing the bottom line. They are typically comprised of representatives from industry, non-profit organizations, associations, academia and think tanks, and their twin goals are to improve the environmental and social impacts of production while maintaining profitability for commodities such as seafood, soy and timber. We are encouraged that these major stakeholders in the beef industry are committed to work together to create a more sustainable beef supply chain, said Jason Clay, World Wildlife Funds Senior Vice President for Markets Transformation. At World Wildlife Fund, we recognize that these collaborative efforts are instrumental to our goal of preserving the most important biological places on earth and, ultimately, living in harmony with nature. sustainablelivestock.org, 22/1/12

Cargill and Food Quality

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency may not be interested, but Cargill Meat Solutions the name of Cargills BIG meat packing plant in High River, Alberta and its smaller plants scattered around the country is quite concerned about the effect of hormones injected or implanted in beef cattle to make them grow faster. Steve Molitor, head of procurement for Cargill Meat Solutions, says What double A and Select [grades] were ten years ago is not what they are today, and the eating experience is not near what it used to be. The reason, Molitor says, is the growth promotants that can toughen beef, adding that beef will fail to deliver on taste and tenderness if growth promotants are used too aggressively. When one feedlot operator asked how feedlots could compete without using growth implants, Molitor said, I dont have an answer for that one. (WP, 16/2/12) Apparently the prices Cargill pays for the beef it processes is the responsibility of other departments. The Western Producer article concludes: Production efficiency is a major driver in using growth promotants. So beef cattle are denied a natural life and put on drugs that force them to be more productive and efficient, which lowers the quality of their meat. Along with the relentless drumming about innovation and competitiveness coming from the Harper regime and its corporate bosses (or should we just say energy sector bosses) there is this widespread campaign on productivity a term which is, of course, terribly difficult to actually define, much less measure. How is the productivity of a school teacher to be measured? Or a nurse-practitioner? A farmer? Musician? City councillor? Soldier? Or, think of it, a prime minister!

Greenwashing the beef industry

Leaders of the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef have formed an independent, non-profit organization to advance continuous improvement across the global beef industry, thus formalizing the organizations commitment to a global beef supply chain that is environ-

RED MEAT ISNT BAD FOR YOU. GREEN MEAT IS BAD FOR YOU.

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Global Health Watch 3: An Alternative World Health Report

Zed Books, 2011
Global Health Watch 3 is a refreshingly well researched and written collective volunteer effort none of the authors received payment for their contributions. This is important to note because of the conflicts of interest that permeate the pharmaceutical industry and medical research. It was supported by a co-ordinating group of five civil society organisations Peoples Health Movement, Medact, Health Action International, Medico International, and Third World Network; the funding partners were Oxfam-Novib, ICCO and Medico International. Global Health Watch 3 provides a much needed, full discussion (its 391 pages) of UNICEF and the medicalisation of malnutrition in children, with particular attention to Ready to Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTF) and the imperial practices of the drug industry. Below are some excerpts from pages 250-256:

There has been a relatively recent global focus on Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM); it has engaged the energies and funds of the most active institutions working in this area, especially led by UNICEF. . . Some have called it a medical emergency, thus linking it to medical interventions such as hospitalisation and foods-given-as-medicines, i.e. standardised, commercial, Ready to Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTF). RUTF are basically energy-dense foods with added minerals and vitamins, and are recommended for the short-term management of SAM (for about six to eight weeks). They lend themselves well to community-based treatment a major advance over earlier practices, where those suffering from SAM needed to be hospitalised. The debate on the use of RUTF has centred primarily around the introduction of the proprietary product called Plumpynut, which was developed in the 1990s by a French paediatrician, Andr Briend. Briend was later to transfer the know-how to a French company called Nutriset, which now holds all intellectual property rights related to the product. The product came to prominence when it was used in 2005, by the international relief NGO Mdecins sans Frontires (MSF), in famine-ravaged Niger. MSF distributed Plumpynut to 60,000 children and MSFs data showed that 90 per cent of the children who were fed Plumpynut completely recovered, and only 3 per cent died. In 2007, the World Health Organisation and UNICEF declared that this kind of treatment was the best for severe and acute malnutrition in children aged between six months and two years. Plumpynut was soon being aggressively distributed by UNICEF. In 2009, it bought 10,500 tonnes compared with 4,000 tonnes in 2005. In 2009/10, UNICEF procured 14,500 tonnes of RUTF from Nutriset, France 63% of its entire procurement of RUTF. Consequently, Nutrisets profits ballooned in 2009, Nutrisets sales were 52m compared with 16m in 2005. While Plumpynut quickly emerged as the next big thing in child nutrition, so did the controversies.

The global food crisis has brought about a slowing in the improvements of the nutritional status of under-fives, increasing inequalities (including those in gender), as well as threats to the livelihoods of poor and marginalised groups across the developing world. Once and for all, it becomes imperative to think in terms of much more comprehensive strategies to address child malnutrition. . . . Therefore, while one end of the debate focuses on technical interventions, the other end emphasises decentralised social interventions that allow for community control. Most people would argue for a judicious mix of these elements. Recent trends, unfortunately, point to a shift in the balance in favour of technical interventions and a neglect of other community-based and social interventions.

However, some country governments have refused to go along with UNICEFs aggressive promotion of Plumpynut. In 2009, UNICEF ordered a shipment of Plumpynut for use in India without any consultation with concerned Indian ministries. The Indian government reacted by asking UNICEF to send back the entire consignment. A Health Ministry official in India commented: RUTF is used in war-torn countries like Africa. We do not approve of the strategy as there are other low-cost alternatives available in the country itself . One of the concerns that have accompanied the vigorous promotion of RUTF is that centralised manufacture of packaged RUTF threatens to replace local foods (and thereby livelihoods). As a response, it has been counter-argued that RUTF are meant only for a small percentage of children who

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are affected by SAM, and even for them, it is recommended that it be used for a brief period, till the affected children overcome the acute phase of malnutrition. However, there is now a discernible push for RUTF to be distributed and used freely as a food, thereby enabling the emergence of a mass market. This fooddrug confusion has been successfully exploited by commercial interests to promote the production and adoption of RUTF and has been expanded to the use of Ready to Use Foods (RUF) for all degrees of malnutrition, as well as for its prevention! Therefore, a huge market is being envisaged by the food industry in the management of malnutrition. While introducing another Nutriset product, PlumpyDoz, to very young children in Somalia, UNICEF has asserted: The brown paste supplement is made from vegetable fat, peanut butter, sugar, milk, and other nutrients, and is designed to taste good to kids. Critically, it also has a longer shelf life than previous diet supplements and doesnt need to be mixed with water (just like PlumpyNut). Three teaspoons of PlumpyDoz three times a day provides each young child with additional energy, including fats, high-quality protein and all the essential minerals and vitamins required to ensure growth and a healthy immune system.(UNICEF 2008) The World Food Programme and MSF also use this supplement, not to treat SAM, but unfortunately to provide supplementary nutrition to prevent severe acute malnutrition from developing. Such an approach, clearly, does not address the underlying structural causes of chronic hunger. Malnutrition has complex roots and any long-term, sustainable solution absolutely needs to address these. In the past, malnutrition was wrongly viewed as a function of shortfalls in agricultural production. However, over the years, it has become clear that, in many situations, access to food in sufficient quantity and quality is not related primarily to agricultural production, but to poverty, i.e. a lack of economic access to food. Equally important as causes are a) the promotion of trade in staple foods over its use for domestic food security, b) the role of futures trading in food commodities, i.e. dealing in food for profit, c) political instability, and d) the lack of political resolve on the part of states to tackle the problems of malnutrition. These causes have led to a spiralling rise in food prices across the globe.Therefore, the overriding priority for programmes aiming to prevent and treat moderate malnutrition has to be to ensure access to the already existing food supply. Without such a focus, no amount of dependency-creating feeding programmes can prevent the disastrous slide into malnutrition.

The attempt to use Plumpynut or Plumpydoz to prevent malnutrition is not an isolated misguided case. Rather it is part of a much larger design to mystify malnutrition and create spaces of profit-making opportunities for the food industry. Rather than looking at malnutrition as a result of chronic hunger, corporations are reducing it to deficiencies of small quantities of nutrients such as vitamins and minerals. Doing this provides them with several means of making profits by marketing these micronutrients as supplements. What is never mentioned is that these nutrients would also be available to the child if s/he were exclusively breastfed and, after six months of age, continued to breastfeed and got enough variety of locally available foods (fats, animal protein, green and yellow vegetables, fruits, etc.). Instead of working to ensure that such diverse foods are indeed available and accessible to every household, the solutions being offered are narrowly based on food fortification and micronutrient supplementation. These processes and technologies promote centralised production and procurement of foodstuffs and detract from local control and autonomy over diets. Sometimes, they even displace local livelihoods such as milling. They promote the notion that special and expensive food, sold as a medicalised solution, is required to deal with micronutrient deficiencies. While governments and global agencies do not hesitate to spend large amounts on micronutrient supplements of this variety, they choose not to spend on promoting fair employment, kitchen gardens and the raising of small domestic animals, which would serve the same purpose as a non-dependencycreating and sustainable alternative solution. Several groups, such as the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), which are linked with food and baby-food corporations (the GAIN Business Alliance (BA) is currently chaired by Unilever), are lobbying governments to introduce micronutrients distribution into national nutrition policies and programmes. The annual report of GAIN (2005/ 06) highlights that GAIN (along with food giants such as Groupe Danone, Unilever, and Cargill), unlike traditional aid providers, is working to fight hidden hunger (a term used for micronutrient malnutrition) by building new markets for nutritious foods. There is evidence that UNICEFs focus on quick-fix solutions not only does not promote long-term sustainable solutions, but also fails to achieve the stated goals of ensuring the best interests of the worlds hungry children.

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The balancing act between providing life-saving nutrition in an emergency and ensuring long-term food self-reliance and food sovereignty is never simple. But when pharmaceutical companies and market development strategies become part of the picture it is murky indeed, even when the major protagonist is clearly a positive force in the community, as in the following:

peanut-based products used to fight malnutrition, in 2006. Production was quickly ramped up after the 2010 earthquake. In the first 18 months after that devastating event, Zanmi Agrikol (ZA), PIHs agricultural sister organization in Haiti, produced more than 570,000 pounds nearly 260 tons of nutritional supplement. This effort brought food to tens of thousands of Haitian children. ZAs farms employ 46 farmers and 72 day laborers, but beyond its own farms, ZA supports 300 farming families throughout the Central Plateau in running their own farms. Families receive seeds, the use of a tractor, and a guaranteed market price in exchange for growing crops of peanuts for Nourimanba. Now, on Haitis Central Plateau, Partners In Health, in partnership with the drug company Abbott Laboratories, is building a manufacturing plant which, when completed in late 2012, will increase PIHs production of Nourimanba more than ten-fold. The new venture will employ local Haitians, expand PIHs existing sustainable agricultural system, and, most importantly, offer life-saving nutrition to thousands of undernourished children. As construction begins on the new manufacturing plant, ZA is working to expand its agricultural programs. To meet this need, ZA is enrolling 1,240 families in its family assistance program, which provides seeds, training, and support to aid the families in establishing farms that will support both the production of Nourimanba and food for local communities.

Peanuts in Haiti
The production of a peanut-based RUTF in Haiti illustrates some of the possible benefits for both nutrition and small-scale agriculture. But it also raises questions, as in the previous article, about the role and interests of the drug industry. Partners in Health (PIH) was founded in 1987, to deliver health care to the residents of Haitis mountainous Central Plateau. PIH co-founders had been working in the area for years. The Clinic was just the first of an arc of successful projects designed to address the health care needs of the residents of the poorest area in Haiti. Since then, PIH has expanded its operations to eight other sites in Haiti and five additional countries.
pih.org

Peanuts are a natural crop for Haiti, they can be grown on any scale and processed at home or in a factory. Partners In Health began producing Nourmanba and Nourimil, described as therapeutic

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