Thin from Thin Ink

... and a blatant lack of oversight to ensure good labour practices among its beneficiaries

Full credit to @eoghangilmartin.bsky.social, @simonguichard.bsky.social, @silvialazzaris.bsky.social, @meriemm.bsky.social, Pascale Mueller, @frnzskschwrz.bsky.social, Hélène Servel & @joseuf.bsky.social.

2. For real change to happen, we need to keep banging on about these issues, over time, across multiple platforms & through a variety of formats, styles & intermediaries.

This is a story about shocking disconnect between one of world’s largest & most entrenched agricultural subsidy programmes...

But I’m writing about it because:

1. It powerfully exposes how Europe’s food system runs on invisible labour, and a personal aim of mine is to encourage more journalists to investigate forces that shape our food and champion those who do it well,

How Europe’s Farm Subsidy Scheme Fails Workers As lawmakers concentrate on meat bans, the CAP continues to bankroll exploitation in the fields

This week's issue is about a very timely cross-border investigation that illustrated the shortfalls of the current system in protecting a crucial asset of European agriculture: farm workers.

Full disclosure: I played a small role mentoring the team behind this.

news.thin-ink.net/p/how-europe...

- The recommended diet, however, remains largely consistent with the 2019 version.

I've framed the key findings into 3 buckets that I now use when I talk about food systems challenges: how to make them healthier, greener, & fairer. It's all in the newsletter.

news.thin-ink.net/p/the-planet...

The 2025 version it here! What's new?
- Food justice plays a central role.
- Better & more detailed modelling & data analysis to project potential outcomes of a transition to healthy & sustainable food systems.
- An expanded membership: 70 experts (from 37), including on justice & livestock systems.

The EAT-Lancet report made a big splash & also attracted a big backlash. Some criticisms - too costly, too unrealistic - were legitimate but others seemed to have been due to a highly coordinated campaign by vested interests. Still, it brought the planetary health diet (PHD) into the mainstream.

The Planetary Health Diet, Revisited The wealthiest 30% drive 70% of food-related environmental impacts. Can we change how we eat, farm, and share power?

In Jan 2019, a group of eminent scientists, unveiled, for the first time, an ‘ideal diet’ for both a healthy population & a sustainable food system. It recommended a doubling of consumption of nuts, fruits, vegetables & legumes, & a halving of meat & sugar intake.

news.thin-ink.net/p/the-planet...

Not Now, But Soon: The Food System is Rigged Thin Lei Win discusses growing up in Myanmar, and how that has shaped how she sees the intersection between food, climate, and disasters.

Listen to the latest episode of my new @issuesinst.bsky.social podcast, NOT NOW BUT SOON, in which I talk to @thinink.bsky.social about global food systems, the authoritarian takeover of Myanmar, and other disasters. Search "The Ongoing Transformation" wherever you get your podcasts!

Not Now, But Soon: The Food System is Rigged

It's not up on the website yet, but the new episode of my podcast, NOT NOW BUT SOON, is already up on spotify and probably other podcast platforms! In this edition, I talk to the amazing @thinink.bsky.social about the disasters including global food systems and the authoritarian takeover in Myanmar

A Yangon journalist, who stayed on after the coup, wrote of feeling "like a trapped rat" & finally making the heartbreaking decision to leave her home.

"As the plane takes off, I look out the window. The sight tugs at my heart. This is the city I grew up in."

kite-tales.org/en/article/h...

And about whether, and how, they might be revived.

Our conversation reminded me of a phrase that has become a rallying cry in Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement, which is waging its own uneven struggle against a brutal military: “They tried to bury us, they didn’t know we were seeds.”

But what does that work mean when famine has been declared in Gaza, when only 1.5% of land is accessible+not damaged & when a people already denied freedom of movement are also being starved? We spoke about the past, present & future of Palestinian food systems...

www.instagram.com/paliheirloom...

Palestine Heirloom — Vivien Sansour PALESTINE HEIRLOOM SEED LIBRARY مكتبه‭ ‬البذور ‬البلدية‭ ‬الفلسطينية Part of the Fertile Crescent,...

Viven is the founder of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library (viviensansour.com/Palestine-He...) and a tireless advocate for food sovereignty, not just for her home country but also for the world. For years, she’s worked to preserve the seeds, crops, & stories that root Palestinians to their land.

"I don't see Palestine as an isolated story" On grief, land, and love in the struggle for Palestinian food and memory

I’ve been wanting to do an issue on food systems in Palestine for a while. I also wanted to do it with somebody who's very much deep in the food culture, storytelling, & preservation issues. This week, I finally managed to do it with Vivien Sansour.

news.thin-ink.net/p/i-dont-see...

Inside the Tony Blair Institute Who really benefits from the former PM’s tech evangelism?

Glad to have got this over the line

How Tony Blair is lobbying on behalf of Big Tech

His Institute (TBI) is pushing AI solutionism on Starmer’s govt, which is embracing it w open arms, as TBI donor & tech billionaire Larry Ellison is set to reap the benefits

www.newstatesman.com/politics/202...

Look to Myanmar for a vision of a world where authoritarians have unfettered power | Simon Tisdall The brutality and repression there highlight the failings of a dysfunctional world order. Unless we do better, this is the future, says Guardian foreign affairs commentator Simon Tisdall

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Please read and share!

Escape from the Tiger’s Jaw

Our fellow in northern Shan State wrote in vivid detail about the terrifying night when soldiers & police conducting house-to-house searches reached her home, & turned it upside down. They were looking for those responsible for bombing a local police station.

kite-tales.org/en/article/e...

Dam been writing a book about this and she just TikToked it in 90 seconds.

I chose this section because not only does it vividly illustrates the concentration of power in our food systems, it also showed how this skews markets and also entrenches inequities and systemic injustices. Hence the title.

Power & Prejudice An illuminating excerpt from "Titans of Industrial Agriculture"

Last week, I shared a wide-ranging interview with @jennifer on Titans of Industrial Agriculture. This week, I’m staying focused on this topic and sharing an excerpt from the book.

Thanks again @jennifer-clapp.bsky.social !

news.thin-ink.net/p/power-and-...

If you're on LinkedIn, you'll probably want to switch this toggle to 'off'.

Such an honour to be interviewed by the awesome and insightful @thinink.bsky.social about some of the big themes in my new book, Titans of industrial Agriculture. Link below!

So I sat down with Jennifer to discuss how corporate power structures in agriculture were entrenched far earlier than most of us realise, why past critiques went unheeded, & what that means for breaking free of the “lock-ins” shaping our food systems today.

Jennifer took us through some 170 years of agri history, charting the rise & rise of corporations that now dominate farm machinery, fertiliser, seeds, & pesticide sectors. It’s dense, detailed, illuminating & highly relevant. Striking too to see how many of today’s challenges are echoes of the past.

It’s About Power, Not Prices Jennifer Clapp on how decades of antitrust policy missed the real dangers of Big Ag consolidation & encouraged industrial agriculture’s lock-ins

Regular readers of Thin Ink know I’m a big fan of @jennifer-clapp.bsky.social's work. So of course when her latest book, Titans of Industrial Agriculture, came out earlier this year, I had to read it.

It's a bit of a magnum opus: 13 chapters nearly 500 pages.
news.thin-ink.net/p/its-about-...

It's a terrible tragedy that a young man was murdered in an act of political violence, which this absolutely was, and that his child is now without a father and wife without a husband. But if you think a line was crossed *just* today, well, you're part of the problem.

Scott Jennings, in an emotional moment with Tapper, mentioned a bunch of political violence directed at GOPers and Tapper had to remind him that Dem MN lawmakers were assassinated just three months ago. Jennings said a line was crossed today and Tapper had to remind him it was *already* crossed.

rarely have I more acutely felt the dynamic by which Dems are held responsible for the rhetoric of every random left-leaning person on the internet and Republicans are not even asked to answer for their own personal words