Timothy A. Wise, Author at Food Tank

Timothy A. Wise

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Timothy A. Wise directs the Land and Food Rights Program at Small Planet Institute. He is a Research Fellow in the Globalization Program at Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute. With a background as an economic journalist and an international development practitioner, Wise’s research and writing have covered U.S. farm policies, trade and agricultural development, agricultural biodiversity, food prices and biofuels, and Mexico’s maize economy under the threat of genetically modified maize. Following a research fellowship from the Open Society Foundations, Wise’s book, Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food, is forthcoming in late 2018 from The New Press. He examines small versus large-scale agriculture in the battle to feed the world, drawing on field work in Mexico, Malawi, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia, India, and the United States.

Farmers expected to mobilize in rural Mexico after López Obrador’s victory with the hope to bring more sustainability to agricultural practices.

Opinion | Why Mexican Farmers Are Hopeful About López Obrador’s Win

López Obrador’s victory in Mexico brings hope for Mexican farmers expecting more self-sufficiency through a reduction in dependence on imports, chemical-intensive production methods, and GMOs. Promises of support for sustainable practices on small and medium-scale farms are on the horizon.

Emerging frontrunner in the Mexican presidential election campaigns on a platform of rural revitalization that speaks to farmers and challenges NAFTA

Making Rural Mexico Great Again: Leading Candidate Endorses Farmers’ Reform Program

Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the National Regeneration Movement leads the political race to be the next President of Mexico and has endorsed a far-reaching set of reforms to improve Mexico’s rural sector. The program centers on the idea of “food sovereignty” and is sharply critical of NAFTA.

India’s National Food Security Act (NFSA) is an effective way to provide basic food rations to the majority of Indians who struggle to feed their families.

India’s Public Stockholding: “Much more than a welfare program”

India’s food security and stockholding program uses precisely the same policies that the U.S. used in its early farm policy coming out of the Great Depression. Exactly the same: price supports, food reserves, administered markets, subsidies. The U.S. government used them because they work. India and

In 2013, the U.S. government accused India of unfairly subsidizing its farmers by paying a support price above market prices, creating global controversy around India’s National Food Security Act (NFSA).

WTO and Food Security: Biting the Hand that Feeds the Poor

India’s National Food Security Act (NFSA), is one of the most ambitious food security initiatives in the world, planning to buy food grains from small-scale farmers to distribute to some 840 million poor Indians, two-thirds of the country’s people.

Farm Radio Trust (FRT) broadcasts a weekly show nationally via Zodiak Broadcasting Station, one of the largest commercial radio stations in Malawi.

Tuning in to Farmers’ Water Needs: Radio broadcasts aid Malawi irrigation efforts

Farm Radio Trust’s is organizing farmer “listening groups” and developing local radio broadcasts on agricultural development issues in Malawi, a country in East Africa.

Tim Wise exposes a drastic conflict of interest in the most recent draft of Malawi's National Seed Policy.

Did Monsanto Write Malawi’s Seed Policy?

Malawi’s new draft seed policy, crafted in part by a Monsanto official, defines ‘seed’ as one that is quality certified, overriding the common cultural understanding of the term seed, and preventing local farmers from selling or displaying farm-saved seed at local seed fairs.

Land and the Right to Food in Zambia: U.N. Envoy Urges Shifts Away from Large-Scale Projects

With nearly four-fifths of rural Zambians living in poverty and 40 percent of children—more than one million—suffering stunted growth from malnutrition, Zambia has become one of Africa’s most impoverished countries.

Seeds of Climate Resilience in Mozambique

U.S. President Donald Trump may still deny the harsh realities of climate change, but no one in southern Mozambique has any doubts. They don’t have much food either.

Traditional leaders are seeking to construct a middle ground in a battle over Zambia’s new land policy—Tim Wise

Securing Land Rights in Zambia

Traditional leaders are seeking to construct a middle ground in a battle over Zambia’s new land policy, one that rejects efforts to privatize customary land through formal titling but improves tenure security by granting villagers traditional landholding certificates.

What Value are Value Chains for Small-Scale Farmers?

A new report on Mozambique and Zambia shows even smaller, less egregious land acquisitions are undermining food security in some of the world’s hungriest countries.