"We can and must re- imagine other food systems that take numerous social dimensions into account."

These are poverty, caused by trade policies that dump heavily- subsidised produce from developed countries on third world markets, thus rendering local farmers jobless; environmental degradation brought on by industrialised farming, which now accounts for nearly one-third of global green house gas emissions; and an epidemic of malnutrition caused by the colonising effects of mono-crops and a flood of processed food from the global north to the global south.

Agro-ecology, which includes systems that produce their own fertiliser using materials and waste from the surrounding environment, is being increasingly viewed as the only viable solution to the hunger crisis. Since prices of fertiliser doubled during the 2008 food crisis, continents like Africa that import 95 percent of their chemical fertilisers could see radically different outcomes in production by adopting agro-ecological techniques.

But as the U.S. continues to pare back its oil consumption, other economies will seek a bigger share of the pie from a near static world oil supply. With power shortages spreading in China and Japan, as well as India and Pakistan, demand for diesel fuel is soaring in power-starved Asia.

With little, if any usable excess capacity in OPEC, world crude demand is already on the verge of outpacing world supply. In the resulting zero sum world, conflicting trends in oil consumption between the world’s two largest oil consumers, the U.S. and China, will not be the exception but the norm.

If the Chinese economy is going to continue to increase its oil consumption by 10 per cent a year, another economy will have to cut back its oil consumption by a comparable amount to make room for the increase in Chinese demand. More and more, that place looks like America.

Canada would benefit just as much from the creation of a national electricity grid as it did from the development of the railway and the pipeline. As a nation-building effort, developing these grid connections would give provinces options to buy and sell power of all stripes. Unlike crude oil, it is a consumer product that can be used everywhere, and Canadian supplies of electricity are increasingly renewable in form. Such a project would increase the renewable power potential for Alberta and Saskatchewan by linking existing and future hydro development in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia to these markets. While the distances here are excessive, the challenge is not insurmountable.

Many Canadians may not realize this, but most of Canada’s long-distance, high-capacity connections for oil and electricity run north-south, not east-west. In these key industries, we have focused almost exclusively on serving the U.S. This is one of the great strengths of our nation -- the ability of each province to create its own best strategy for developing revenue streams. It’s also a weakness, because lack of access to other provincial markets has effectively siloed our energy strategies along provincial lines, leading to a patchwork of development across the country that does not take advantage of potential synergies across regions.

Japan may face a shortage of green tea as radiation leaking from the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi power station tainted leaves, spurring the government to restrict shipments from four prefectures.

The government decided yesterday to curb shipments of dried tea leaves containing more than 500 becquerel per kilogram of radioactive cesium and ordered a halt in shipments from the eastern prefectures of Ibaraki, Chiba, Kanagawa and Tochigi where tainted produce was detected. Japan’s tea production, including fresh and dried leaves, was worth 102.1 billion yen ($1.3 billion) in 2009, according to the agriculture ministry.

The decision came after Shizuoka prefecture, Japan’s largest growing region representing about 40 percent of total output, declared its green tea was safe. Governor Heita Kawakatsu said last month tests on fresh leaves and drinks showed they contained cesium amounts well below the government levels. Still, cesium levels in dried leaves could be about five times higher than fresh leaves, said Yasuo Sasaki, senior press counselor at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

Higher-than-expected oil and gas drilling activity in Western Canada led the Canadian Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors Wednesday to increase its forecast for the total number of wells to be drilled in 2011.

The forecast confirmed that more companies are drilling for oil, which has soared in price, and away from natural gas, where low price has stayed flat. Approximately 60 per cent of the wells being completed are directed at oil.

In the first three months of the year, exploration companies employed 68 per cent of the fleet of available rigs in western Canada, or 534 out of 788. That was 11 per cent higher than the Calgary-based CAODC's projection of 480 made last fall.