food industry

FERNANDES Sujatha

Smelter Struggle: Trinidad Fishing Community Fights Aluminum Project

> CorpWatch

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php (...)

The roads that wander through the southwestern peninsula of Trinidad pass small fishing villages, mangrove swamps, and coconut plantations; they skirt herds of buffalypso and reveal sheltered beach coves. This February, Alcoa signed an agreement in principle with the Trinidad and Tobago Government that threatens to fundamentally alter this gentle landscape. Plans by the Pittsburgh-based manufacturing company to build a large aluminum smelter have sparked criticism from local residents and environmentalists.
The $US1.5 billion project slated for the Chatham/Cap-de-Ville area envisions a 341,000 metric-tons-per-year aluminum smelter, an anode plant, and a cast house. Alcoa, the world’s leading producer of aluminum, is promoting the project as a boon to local employment and other community benefits.  read

date of on-line publication : 16 November 2006

LYDERSEN Kari

Guest workers seek Global Horizons : U.S. company profits from migrant labor

> CorpWatch, November 3rd, 2006

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php (...)

« About 170 Thai migrants paid thousands of dollars to recruiters in Thailand for the opportunity to work in the bountiful orchards of Washington state. Their tale illustrates the pitfalls of the H-2A guest worker program which is a mainstay - along with undocumented labor - of the U.S. agricultural system.
According to the Seattle Times, the migrant workers said they paid up to $8,000 each to Thai recruiters. Global Horizons, a California-based company, works with recruiters abroad and obtains H-2A agricultural guest worker visas, flies workers to Washington and sets them up in housing, as required by the federal program. Global Horizons denies working with any recruiter who received payment from a migrant worker. »  read

date of on-line publication : 16 November 2006

SHARMA Devinder

The politics of farm technologies

> 9 October 2005, India Together

http://www.indiatogether.org/2005/oc (...)

Here the article questions the effectiveness of alternatives to traditional farming methods, in particular with regards to seed quality certification. The author debates the impact of favouring big industries commercial interests’ and calls for caution when pushing cost-intensive technologies on farmers.  read

date of on-line publication : 17 November 2005