MCA Youth

“Food sovereignty” is the notion that the people, rather than market forces, have the right to define their food and agricultural systems (by redistributing land to smallholder farmers, encouraging self-sufficient farming, and so on). It goes beyond “food security,” which is merely about ensuring that everyone has enough to eat. Food sovereignty looks at the [...]

If Ramadan is the supposed to be the month of fasting and sympathizing with the world’s hungry, then there is one country whose people take the cake (so to speak) for going through unimaginable starvation and suffering during the 1990s. The culture and spirit of North Korea, after the Korean War of the early 1950s, has [...]

For thirty years, Cuba was incorporated into the economy of the Soviet Union. Eastern Europe would export wheat and other foodstuffs to Cuba, as well as inputs for industrialized agriculture (such as tractors, pesticides, and fossil fuels); Cuba, in turn, would export sugarcane from her industrialized state-owned farms to Russia and East Germany. The collapse [...]

With Arizona having passed the draconian Senate Bill 1070, sections of which were blocked by US District Judge Susan Bolton last July, it is high time to seriously think about why so many migrants are coming to the US from Mexico and Central America in the first place, which is something most US policymakers don’t [...]

When it comes to eating, there has been a growing trend throughout the United States and Canada, and also Europe, to “buy local,” whether it be purchasing local, seasonal foods from farmer’s markets, or joining a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture, a model of food distribution that supports local agriculture). There seem to be roughly two main [...]

With flood waters providing a perfect breeding ground for waterborne disease in Pakistan (including typhoid, gastroenteritis, dengue, and malaria) I thought it was only appropriate to write a Ramadan article on the link between agriculture and water-based disease vectors – namely, the mosquitoes that transmit malaria. These days, malaria afflicts developing countries. Even with climate [...]

It affects more than three billion people worldwide, mainly in developing countries, and is a major cause of respiratory illness and lung cancer. It’s not tobacco or urban air pollution. It’s indoor air pollution which results from burning biomass (like wood or dung) in rural household cooking stoves. As we fast this Ramadan, we might [...]

Assalaam aleikum and Ramadan Mubarak to you all. Ramadan begins today, Wednesday the 11th of August, according to the Muslim Community Association’s website. Insh’Allah this post will be the first of more to come, one for each day of Ramadan. Since two of the most significant things we give up during the days of Ramadan [...]