Press Release: Contact Ben Grossman-Cohen, Press Officer, bgrossman-cohen@oxfamamerica.org, 202-777-2907; 202-629-6018(m)

Interactive map shows food price spikes in poor communities around the world

A new interactive map published by Oxfam today shows how poor communities across the world are being hurt by high and volatile food prices. The ‘food price pressure points map’ provides a global snapshot of the impacts of the global food price crisis.

High and volatile food prices are one of the biggest political issues of 2011. The pressure points map can be embedded directly into any website to give audiences an easy way to raise their voice and take action on the food price crisis. The tool is part of Oxfam’s global GROW campaign to fix the broken food system.

The map available in English, Spanish and French can be found here: http://www.oxfamamerica.org/articles/food-price-spikes

Read more »

DATA: Number of Farms

The Atlas of Rural and Small-Town America is a great mapping application that provides a spatial interpretation of U.S. county-level, economic and social conditions along four broad categories of socioeconomic factors: people (using newly released demographic data from the American Community Survey, including age, race and ethnicity, migration and immigration, education, household size and family composition), jobs (using economic data from the

DATA: % of Farms with Direct Sales

Bureau of Labor Statistics and other sources, including information on employment trends, unemployment, industrial composition, and household income), agriculture (using indicators from the 2007 Census of Agriculture, including number and size of farms, operator characteristics, off-farm income, and government payments), and county classifications (using typologies such as the rural-urban continuum, economic dependence, persistent poverty, population loss, and other ERS county codes). Maps are interactive and also provided for download; raw data are provided for download.

A really fun, interesting, and sometimes surprising application to play around with!

Press Release: Belfast, NI. – September 4, 2010

From Alan Hooker; MSSB Consulting, N. Ireland; 028 90660884; alanhooker@mssbconsulting.com

Farm-file.com allows land owners to map and measure their land online. Users can quickly produce good quality working maps of their land and farm without the use of GPS or specialized mapping services.

Previously drawing and measuring land features such as field sizes and boundary lengths was a time consuming and often expensive business. The farm-file website is easy to use and the basic package, which is free, allows farmers to select from a range of features they want to map such as crops, boundaries or buildings.

Once mapped the site allows you to print maps showing both physical layout and calculations of area, length and size. The versatility of the tool allows for making maps and measurements on the ʻflyʼ for incorporation into planning, budgeting and other documents.

For further information: http://www.farm-file.com; support@mssbconsulting.com

I have recently heard from a number of farmers concerned about late blight infestation of tomato and potato crops, and wanted to share with you a valuable new tool available from USPest.org.

Simply go to http://uspest.org/risk/tom_pot_map to find a map of the US which tracks infestation risk in thousands of local areas (see example below).

It takes a little time to load, so be patient.

Information is regularly updated. And from this map you can zoom in on your particular area to get a more detailed analysis of the latest plant disease forecasts based on models which consider degree days and rainfall, to estimate spore formation.

USPest.org also has lots of other great information on identification, forecasting, and control of a wide variety of agricultural pests.

View of Late Blight Map - Northeast US, 6/24/10

The online magazine dwell is developing a Map of Small Farms Across the United States “…where dirt under the fingernails and sweat on the brow mean self-sufficiency, sustainability, and unbeatably delicious homegrown food.”

The map currently consists of almost 100 farms with descriptions contact information and pictures for each farm following it as you can see on the screen shot below.

The map is fully interactive, allowing you to zoom in and out, pan around, view it as a satellite image instead of a map, or as both.

They would also like your help in nominating local farms to build the map. The Map is available HERE

BELOW IS A PARTIAL SCREEN-SHOT FROM THE MAP PAGE