Just-in-time or Just-in-case ?
“Resilience requires buffer and buffer can look wasteful until the moment when it isn’t.“ These words were uttered by Sir Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of the National Health Service, England before the UK parliament’s Health Committee on 26 January 2021. He was referring to vaccines, making the point that a buffer stock of an essential… Read more
Read moreThe current danger of price volatility
According to the UK’s Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB), grain prices are on the way up in the world. Lack of rain has reduced yields in Argentina. Last month the country temporarily banned maize exports as a result, leading to to a rapid rise in global maize prices. The ban was changed to a… Read more
Read moreA distinguished pedigree
In January 1950 R.S. Porter published an article entitled ‘Buffer stocks and economic stability’ in the distinguished journal Oxford Economic Papers. Beginning with the remark that ‘the Chinese are said to have operated an “ever normal granary” system many hundreds of years before the birth of Christ,’ he moves on to the biblical story of… Read more
Read moreThe Fight Against Food Shortages and Surpluses – a summary
The book begins by identifying the problem, namely the fact that world prices of agricultural commodities are unstable. It is true that international trade helps to moderate this instability, but it cannot do so if there is a world-wide shortage or surplus. There is therefore a question of what other measures might be adopted. The… Read more
Read moreEuropean Citizens’ Initiative on Buffer Stocks?
The structure of the European Union is such that the European Commission has the ‘right of initiative’ in most policy areas, meaning that while it is for the other two most important institutions (the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament) to pass laws, it is for the Commission to propose them. This gives it… Read more
Read moreThe Fight Against Food Shortages and Surpluses
This blog has been quiet for three years while a great deal of research has been done. But we are now happy to report that John McClintock, Director of ACTION for Food Reserves, has published his book The Fight against Food Shortages and Surpluses: Perspectives of a Practitioner (Wallingford: CAB International, 2020). You can go… Read more
Read moreFood reserves in the Caribbean
We have been studying how to set up a food reserve in the Eastern Caribbean. John spent two weeks in May, at the invitation of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), at its headquarters in St. Lucia. The OECS brings together 10 small island states from the British Virgin Islands in the north to… Read more
Read moreACTION has been making progress on two fronts
We have been hard at work trying to get a resolution through EuroLat, the parliamentary assembly that contains both representatives of the European Parliament and of the various regional parliaments in Latin America (such as PARLACEN, PARLANDINO…..). The resolution will be voted on later this year, but we already have a statement of support from… Read more
Read moreThe love that dares not speak its name
January 26th 2017 in Brussels ACTION was delighted to have Dr Ricardo Lagos Andino, Representative in Europe of the Central American Parliament, to address our global lunch on January 26th in the l’Atelier restaurant in Brussels. Part of the pleasure of this meeting was the chance to hear from Ricardo Lagos about the great strides… Read more
Read moreGlobal lunch, Nov 2016
ACTION recently organised one of its ‘global lunches’ in Kitty O’Shea’s, a lively establishment next to the main EU institutions, named after the famous lady whose affair with the Irish nationalist politician Charles Stewart Parnell scandalised Victorian Britain. About a dozen people attended and the discussion was equally lively – perhaps ACTION manages to create… Read more
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