"about 75% of the world’s industrial fishing vessels are not publicly tracked, with much of that fishing taking place around Africa and South Asia. More than 25% of transport and energy vessel activity are also missing from public tracking systems"
The UK Govt. is (likely correctly) warning UK #business that #supplychain disruption will likely worsen in 2024 & there's little the Govt. can do to help.
This suggests we will see both mounting inflationary pressure as disruptions push up costs & an increased exploration of 'restoring' or at least 'near-shoring' as companies to shorten & localise their supply chains.
For some this will look like good news, but for those countries losing valuable export business the transition may be painful!
The #GitLab#vulnerability allowing trivial account hijacking (CVE-2023-7028) will lead to ton of problems: It will allow malicious actors to perform #supplychain#attacks - something that will allow attacker to gain access to 3rd party who don't themselves run GitLab but just include from projects that do. I would suggest great caution regardless if you run GitLab yourself or not.
Naturally anyone using GitLab themselves must update as soon as possible. I would also suggest performing forensic investigation to find out if you have already been compromised, and take further action in case compromise has already occurred. Check "Were any accounts actually compromised due to this vulnerability?" section in this post for details: https://about.gitlab.com/releases/2024/01/11/critical-security-release-gitlab-16-7-2-released/
I recently discovered the Farm to Taber podcast, which I highly highly recommend-- people really digging in and talking about the real nuts and bolts of food supply logistics, and the nasty corporate problems in the industry. Knowledge, experience, insight, brilliant stuff.
Thanks for boosting her into my feed, @passenger !
"In dozens of interviews, auditors said that sometimes their firms provide little more than a veneer of compliance for global corporations, which overstate how rigorously they review sprawling supply chains"
ICYMI: rampant child labor violations in all 50 states (NYT, gift link)
📦 🚢 Wow, Supply Studies curated by @dochock has some neat stuff coming up in the spring!
"a speaker series bringing together scholars & organizers to discuss logistical justice & examine the possibilities of reconciliation in an era of #SupplyChain#capitalism"
Featuring not only me & @athena (a very special event for all you Union.Place fanpeople out there), but also @tamigraph, @bierjess & @miriamkp! Free to register & attend
“If you like Walmart, then you ought to love the U.S. Navy. It’s the Navy that makes Walmart possible." One doesn't have to agree with the conclusions of the author to find the topic and history (US naval power and maritime order) interesting:
"one of the most outstanding recent investigations into the hard-to-narrate infrastructure of modern #ports and their place in the patterns of global conflict and commerce. Much of her book concerns the post-World War II development of tanker, bulk, and container #shipping along the coastlines of the Arab Peninsula, and the fantasy futures authored by the speculators, emirates, empires, and mercenary #logistics companies that profited from it"
Ports of LA/Long Beach stand ready to absorb cargo disrupted by Red Sea fighting related to #Gaza conflict:
“Very few people had Houthi rebels disrupting the global supply chain on their bingo card,” said Salvatore Mercogliano, a maritime historian and host of a YouTube channel called “What is going on with shipping?”
Contrary to popular dogma, industrial agriculture cannot "feed the world." Below are seven key takeaways from a report comparing the industrial food chain to the smallholder peasant food web.
Peasants are the main or sole food providers to more than 70% of the world’s people, and peasants produce this food with often much less than 25% of the resources — including land, water, fossil fuels — used to get all of the world’s food to the table.
The industrial food chain uses at least 75% of the world’s agricultural resources and is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, but provides food to less than 30% of the world’s people.
For every $1 consumers pay to industrial food chain retailers, society pays another $2 for the industrial food chain’s health and environmental damages. The total bill for the industrial food chain's direct and indirect cost is 5 times governments’ annual military expenditure.
The industrial food chain lacks the agility to respond to climate change. Its research and development is not only distorted but also declining as it concentrates the global food market.
The peasant food web nurtures 9-100 times the biodiversity used by the industrial food chain, across plants, livestock, fish, and forests. Peasants have the knowledge, innovative energy and networks needed to respond to climate change; they have the operational scope and scale; and they are closest to the hungry and malnourished.
There is still much about our food systems that we don’t know we don’t know. Sometimes, the industrial food chain knows but isn’t telling. Other times, policymakers aren’t looking. Most often, we fail to consider the diverse knowledge systems in the peasant food web.
The bottom line: at least 3.9 billion people are either hungry or malnourished because the industrial food chain is too distorted, vastly too expensive, and — after 70 years of trying — just can’t scale up to feed the world.
With the prospect (already) of a pre-Christmas slow down in consumption (and potential #recession in the new year), #manufacturers are now facing a #supplychain crisis....
not only is the #SuezCanal already at risk due to attacks on shipping approaching the canal ('encouraging' some shippers to take longer, more expensive & slower routes), now the #panamacanal has been hit be a drought that is severely constraining its capacity.
There's going to be a lot more friction in global supply chains
Interestingly, when looking at which #renewableenergy source to prioritise governments might be well advised to (for the moment at least) to pivot towards #solar.
It looks like both the ease of manufacture of components & the current post-Covid glut in the #supplychain are driving down the prices of solar components, while the more complex mechanical needs of #windpower are keeping prices high(er).
So a pragmatic policy right now would be to focus on ramping up solar energy...
Meanwhile at the other end of the #clothing#supplychain#workers in #Bangladesh are striking because even the most recent hike in the country's minimum wage (as elsewhere) has failed to keep up with #inflation.
Three companies account for around 85% of the country's garment exports - H&M, Zara & Walmart - and they stand accused of lagging their price agreements & so forcing wages to not keep up with inflation for these workers.
So clearly not wage-push inflation in clothing either then!
New article: Querying every file in every release on @pypi 📦🔍
Surveying an entire open source ecosystem is tough due to the scale and resources required. Using a new dataset and DuckDB anyone can get answers about ecosystem-scale questions! 🚀
Qualified good news on #groceries#inflation... although to be fair the drop is only down to a level that two years ago would have looked astronomical...
Still this may be a sign that inflationary pressures in the #food#supplychain are easing?
If so (and its a big if) we may seem some easing of the #costoflivingcrisis (for those who have managed to secure near-inflation wage rises, at least)
[also looks like the falls have been mainly in staples - milk etc. - not across all foods!]