Timothy A. Wise

Timothy A. Wise is a senior advisor at IATP, where his work focuses on agribusiness, family farmers and the future of food, based on his recent book, Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food (The New Press). He was a senior advisor with the Small Planet Institute, where he directed the Land and Food Rights Program from 2016-2020. He is also a senior research fellow at Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute, where he founded and directed its Globalization and Sustainable Development Program.
Articles by this author
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Views Thursday, September 24, 2020 Africa at the Crossroads: Time to Abandon Failing Green Revolution As COVID-19 threatens farming communities across Africa already struggling with climate change, the continent is at a crossroads. Will its people and their governments continue trying to replicate industrial farming models promoted by developed countries? Or will they move boldly into the uncertain... Read more |
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Views Thursday, August 20, 2020 Replacing Hunger with Malnutrition It’s been nearly fifty years since Frances Moore Lappé reminded us in her seminal work, “Diet for a Small Planet,” that hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food, it is caused by a scarcity of power. Economist Amartya Sen won a Nobel Prize more than twenty years ago for showing that famine was... Read more |
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Views Friday, November 01, 2019 The Battle for the Future of Food in Africa Last month in Ghana, Agnes Kalibata, President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, congratulated an illustrious group of corporate and government leaders for “leapfrogging into the future” in their efforts to “modernize” African agriculture with high-yield commercial seeds,... Read more |
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Views Thursday, October 24, 2019 Rome Summit Takes Bold Step Toward Agroecology The Climate Action Summit at the UN last month was widely considered a disappointment, failing to garner the kinds of government actions needed to address the climate crisis. Sadly, the same can be said for actions on agriculture and climate change, despite a well-publicized commitment of $790... Read more |
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Views Saturday, August 31, 2019 Big Ag Is a Major Obstacle to Combating the Climate Crisis Climate experts have sounded yet another dire alarm, this time aimed straight at our stomachs. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest report, on "Climate Change and Land," warns that meeting the challenges of our climate crisis requires urgent changes in our food systems. Read more |
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Views Tuesday, July 30, 2019 Dear Democrats: We Owe Migrants More Than "Decriminalization" Like many citizens of the United States, I was pleased to hear the consensus condemnation of President Trump’s punitive migration policies from Democratic presidential candidates during the last debate. Granted, It does not take much courage to condemn “holding children in cages.” Still, it was... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, July 23, 2019 World Hunger Is on the Rise For the third straight year, U.N. agencies have documented rising levels of severe hunger in the world, affecting 820 million people. More than 2 billion suffer “moderate or severe” food insecurity. During the same period, the world is experiencing what Reuters called a “global grains glut,” with... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, July 10, 2019 Agroecology as Innovation Recently, the High Level Panel of Experts of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released its much-anticipated report on agroecology. The report signals the continuing shift in emphasis in the UN agency’s approach to agricultural development. As outgoing FAO Director General Jose... Read more |
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Views Thursday, September 13, 2018 'This Is Life or Death for Us': Mexico's Farm Movement Rejects New NAFTA Agreement The smooth ride to a new North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) may have just hit the bumpy roads of rural Mexico. On Tuesday, leaders of Mexico’s farm movement strongly condemned the new agreement announced between the United States and Mexico, calling on the new president they supported in... Read more |
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Views Sunday, December 10, 2017 WTO Summit to Ignore Price Crisis, Agricultural Dumping Crops are in across the U.S. farm belt, with record harvests filling farmers’ silos with grain and their hearts with pride. Yet persistent and punishingly low prices for those crops leave them no better off for their efforts. Net farm income this year is about half what it was in 2013. U.S. farmers... Read more |