BS: Food: Inflation

Subject: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Peace
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 04:19 PM

Before I split for a bit, I wanted to post this.

"Food inflation has emerged as one of the main issues at this weekend's meetings of the 185-member IMF, competing for discussion time with the global credit crisis. Food prices have soared 48 per cent since the end of 2006, a "huge" increase that threatens to erase the gains the international community has made in reducing poverty in recent years, IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said earlier this week."


This will be catastrophic for poor people.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: gnu
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 04:23 PM

It already is. And, I am talking about "middle class" Canucks.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Peace
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 04:24 PM

Some statements here make me think it would be best if people who are hungry should just put aside starvation and consider long-term development.

What type of person would suggest that to begin with?

There are some days I wish my bloody heart would just give out.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Peace
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 04:26 PM

I hear that, Gnu.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: maeve
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 06:05 PM

Food is out of the budget for folks here too. We'll be trying to raise enough fruits and veggies to share with neighbors this year.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 06:11 PM

Among the reasons for food inflation is...we are using food for fuel additives to make the oil we use burn cleaner and/or go farther, rather than actually having a real and realistic energy policy. While it is debatable whether using corn for cars really works, there is less corn available to eat.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: GUEST, Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 06:15 PM

I note that some commentators are starting to say that the food-poor need to invest in agriculture - something that their obedience to IMF policy prevented...

Ho hum

It's capitalism, innit?

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Peace
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 06:20 PM

Read that rice is in short supply. Heard anything about that?

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 06:39 PM

Rice is in very short supply. Wheat and corn (maize) are also going to be short this year and for a while into the future. Likewise barley, oats, and other grains.

Part of it is because "developing nations" like India and China are buying more grain, part because the US government has decided that ethanol from grain can help solve the so-called energy problem. Another part is that grain is used to "finish" cattle before they are shipped to slaughter. The grain is being harvested -- it's just not being used for food.

The solutions are inherent in the statement of the problems. If you want to eat cattle, feed them and "finish" them on grass, as was done up to about 1945 (in the US) -- they'll require a different type of cooking, but we already know how to do that AND the meat will be healthier for you (you can also cut back on red meat). Push other sources, such as biomass (switch grass, dead leaves, etc.) as sources of ethanol; yes, it will take more research -- and start developing the more difficult sources of petroleum, like oil shales and oil sands (anyone know of a country just north of the US who might be doing this right now?). And let's start, all of us, working for people instead of for stockholders.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Peace
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 06:42 PM

Man, am I outta the loop. I wondered why the price of bread rose 25% of late.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 06:45 PM

"We're all going to be a little hungrier by and by." -- Robert Heinlein.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Peace
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 06:48 PM

Yeah. But some folks in this world are going to starve.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 07:58 PM

I think this is a seriously important thread. As populations grow, as arable land is taken out of agriculture and as staple grains are used for more and more non-food purposes we'll keep seeing food prices spike. An irony is that as food is used for fuel (as noted above) food prices go up. And fuel prices, using these foods as additives, go up causing the transportation of food to also go up. I'd call that a real double whammy.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 08:06 PM

Another thing pushing up prices is the cost of diesel. This runs the food distribution system, at least in most of the "developed" world. Diesel-powered ships move food, jet fuel is close to diesel, home heating oil is also....

Back in the bad ol' 70s there were all sorts of ideas put forward to help reduce "our dependence upon foreign oil" (pick your country, I was in Ireland when the Whidee Island disaster instituted rationing). I had a problem with, for example, home methane digesters (although they might still be feasible for a family farm), but research into such areas as biomass conversion, tidal power, wind power, and many other all but ground to a halt when the price of oil went down.

Now we pay the price for complacency, and for forgetting that R&D is basic to any economy.

I think I'm going to plant a fairly serious garden this year....

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Rumncoke
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 08:48 PM

This has been developing for some time now - landlords in several countries have been pushing tenant subsistance farmers off land to use it for cash crops, paying for labour only a few months of the year.

What is really required is that the bio fuels are an extra either made from the waste of a food crop, or that marginal lands unable to sustain any sort of life are worked on and used for bio fuel crops - so that there is a net gain in arable land over time as the value of the crop makes it worthwhile bringing in clean water, doing what it takes to get the soil fertile, even fighting the deserts where they are expanding.

People are already starving, yet my local supermarket can afford to import food and then trash it if it stays on the shelves too long because people here can't afford to buy it all. Supermarkets don't care about anything but profit, they don't have to, food is just incidental in the moving of money from the general public's pocket to their tills.

Food is actually still quite cheap to aquire in bulk, it is all the moving, processing, packaging and storage which costs, and that means that the people who are tending and harvesting what used to be exotic foods for export can't afford to feed themselves on their basic diet, and there isn't enough to go around anyway.   

It's not as though no one knows what the IMF has done to the fragile economies of various nations - the rules they have imposed have been death sentences to some of the poorest workers there used to be.

The sad thing is that the IMF regards their work as improving things generally, when it is often raising standards of living in one area by devastating the lives of those working in another.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 09:06 PM

Although there are other problems there, one of the nations worst hit by food price (and other) inflation would likely be Zimbabwe.

The article is a little out of date. A more recent report is that Zimbabwe has just created a new "fifty million dollar bill" with a value of about ONE US dollar.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Peace
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 09:09 PM

We live in a world with sufficient food for all people.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 09:12 PM

A "survey article" from about a month ago:

Food prices are rising all over the world

If anything, this article "glosses over" some of the worst-hit people who are suffering from food price increases.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 09:19 PM

Yes, we do, Peace. The problem is not in the amount available, but in the distribution of it. It's just another side of what ol' Tom Malthus predicted back in the 18th Century.

We could use the corn stalks (maize) left in the fields for biomass for fuel. We could stop burning fields (as is done right here in Idaho) and use the stubble for biomass. We could do a lot of things.

But that requires changing the way we think: about nature, about the world, about food production, about food distribution, and above all else, about each other.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 09:25 PM

Bill Moyers Journal this week took on the farm subsidies and the ranch subsidies and the billions in inappropriate payments (while at the same time production is forced down because of this system). Cash Cows and Cowboy Starter Kits was one of the stories. All of them pertain to this discussion of hunger in the world. Bill Moyers Web Page.

Last year at this time I acquired a used upright freezer at an estate sale. This year I'm planning to fill it with garden produce, and I'm also going to start canning. My mother used to do it, and I have several freinds who have encouraged me to take it up again. This is the year for it.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 09:27 PM

"While it is debatable whether using corn for cars really works, there is less corn available to eat."

A recent TV doco here in Oz pointed out that the mash left from the fermenter is suitable for feeding to livestock, so 2 lots of output CAN be got from it. The problem with that though is that the grain cannot be eaten directly, and the 'multiplication factor' for eating the meat involves several times the energy input for eating the grain directly.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Peace
Date: 13 Apr 08 - 09:36 PM

That multiplier used to be between 12-20 pounds of edible grain to one pound of beef. Don't know where that's at now. But for any folks who see this thread and acre to, I do know about mix/match proteins if you need some decent recipes that are both good tasting and meat free.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 03:27 AM

A calculation of the greenhouse gas burden for meat production is at Newscientist (18 JULY 2007).

This calculation has little direct relationship to the increases in the price of food.

There is pretty general agreement that the diversion of massive amounts of corn to ethanol production has driven up the price of corn. This has had an immediate and direct impact on the price of tortillas in poor districts in Mexico.

Diversion to corn production of fields previously used for other crops has resulted in lessened availability, and hence higher prices, for a number of other crops. Soy bean production in the US was down quite significantly last year. (The impact of diversions to corn on silage crops (alternative cattle feeds) has not been reported where I've seen easily cited numbers, but has apparently been "noticed.")

Increases in the price of corn have led everyone from livestock feeders to pet food manufacturers to look for other substitute grains, which of course has driven the price of other grains upward.

Widespread crop failures, partly due to localized drought, and partly from rice-virus "epidemics" in a couple of major rice producing/exporting countries, have resulted in very real shortages - regardless of price. Of course, when there's an actual shortage, the price goes up so that the well-off part of the population can get what they want, by outbidding the poor.

US Ag Dept estimates for the crop season just now begining are optimistic about a slight reduction in corn planting, with some re-diversion of land back to other food/feed crops; but at present it's just an estimate.

The increase in corn-based food costs is most critical in Mexico and other places where corn is the dominent staple food. Increases in rice price, and shortages at any price, likely affect greater numbers of people in SE Asia. It's difficult to say, from published reports, where the likelihood of (life-threatening) malnutrition is currently most critical; but many of the "humanitarian" agencies are reporting that price increases already have brought them to zero-fund status, unable to purchase food stocks to distribute.

Isolated reports (in media I was seeing) began been popping up about a year ago, ramping up pretty linearly as time goes by. Reports describing shortages as "critical" are perhaps 4 to 6 months old now. (There is no indication that the number of people having difficulty buying the food they need has reached a peak.)

John

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 05:36 AM

Was it really only 2 decades ago we had a grain 'mountain' and a butter 'mountain' in the EU, just begging to be distributed and eaten?

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Rapparee
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 02:07 PM

My brother has Grandpa's old still, so we can make our own ethanol. And drink it, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Peace
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 02:09 PM

"She was only a moonshiner's daughter but I love her still."

(Homer and Jethro I think.)

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Ebbie
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 02:59 PM

I think I asked this question somewhere previously: Is it 'field' corn as opposed to 'sweet' corn that is being used for fuel? Field corn has always been used for livestock, sweet corn for human consumption.

Has the price of both types gone up?

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Rapparee
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 03:10 PM

Ebbie, "field corn" is "sweet corn" after it's been allowed to fully ripen and dry in the field. There are different varieties, of course, but basically you can cook and eat "green corn" regardless of the variety. It's the end use, not the grain itself, that makes the difference.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 03:20 PM

I estimate 900 million people will starve to death over the next 2 years due to the price and unavailability of rice.



As for bio fuels...consider this.

The amount of corn needed to fill the tank of 1 Ford Expedition would feed 1 poor person 1 year.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Rapparee
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 03:22 PM

There are lots of Expeditions, Excursions, and similar things on the Used Car Lots around here...seems to do with the gas mileage. If you want one you can get one sweet deal....

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Ebbie
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 04:10 PM

Actually, Rap, there is quite a lot of difference between the two. I agree that young field corn is often eaten by humans but it doesn't have the same taste or even texture as the sweet corn most people plant.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 04:30 PM

There was a big article in the Washington Post the other day about problems with enough rice in The Philippines. Rice farmers are getting good prices, but the country still has to import rice...and it's getting hard to find.

   Most countries and, evidently, their leaders, just can't face the reality of overpopulation.


Soylent Green, anyone? (he asked facetiously)

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 04:30 PM

Don't forget about the coming popcorn shortage.

Most corn varieties used for popcorn are pretty much inedible by anything (except perhaps chickens who also eat lots of gravel) until "popped."

The "shortage" of many products is largely due to the diversion of land to growing the kinds of corn favored for ethanol production. While this may be a fairly widespread problem, it's largely a US phenomenon at present.

If a field that used to produce beans is used to produce corn, then there ain't as many beans.

If the corn is all sent to the ethanol plant then there's less corn, regardless of what kind of corn it is.

If people substitute rice for corn, then other people see a shortage (and higher price) for rice. The real problem with the rice supply though is largely due to crop failures and disease (compounded by greedy marketers?) - apparently.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Rapparee
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 04:45 PM

And while we're at it -- soy beans are also being used as a source for biofuel and ethanol.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 04:50 PM

A study published in Science, as reported on NPR:

Study: Ethanol Worse for Climate Than Gasoline

All Things Considered, February 7, 2008 · At first blush, biofuels such as corn ethanol and soybean diesel seem like they would be great from the standpoint of global warming. The crops soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow, and that balances out the carbon dioxide they produce when they're burned. But until now, nobody has fully analyzed all the ripple effects of this industry. And Tim Searchinger, a visiting scholar at Princeton University, says those effects turn out to be huge.

"The simplest explanation is that when we divert our corn or soybeans to fuel, if people around the world are going to continue to eat the same amount that they're already eating, you have to replace that food somewhere else," Searchinger says.

Searchinger and his colleagues looked globally to figure out where the new cropland is coming from, as American farmers produce fuel crops where they used to grow food. The answer is that biofuel production here is driving agriculture to expand in other parts of the world.

"That's done in a significant part by burning down forests, plowing up grasslands. That releases a great deal of carbon dioxide," Searchinger says.

In fact, Searchinger's group's study, published online by Science magazine, shows those actions end up releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide. The study finds that over a 30-year span, biofuels end up contributing twice as much carbon dioxide to the air as that amount of gasoline would, when you add in the global effects.

---

There's also the story about how excessive dependence on biofuels will make us particularly vulnerable in the case of droughts...

For many reasons, it's a bandwagon jumped on prematurely by the powers that be.

What's new?

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 04:53 PM

But, with a little more thought... (as opposed to bandwagon jumping) (and from the same report):

But the new study concludes that even vast efficiency improvements in ethanol production won't change the equation. As long as the starting material is grown on farmland, Searchinger says, biofuels will be bad for the planet.

But Alex Farrell at Berkeley sees a way out of this. He says the focus of the biofuels industry needs a rapid change of direction, away from using cropland — which is where most U.S. biofuels come from today — and toward other sources of starting material.

"We could replace all of the ethanol that we consume in California just using waste that goes to the landfill today, and turning that into ethanol," Farrell says.

Environmentally friendly biofuels could also be made from agricultural waste or grasses grown on land that's not suitable for crops. The biofuels industry is heading in that direction, but the technology to make use of fuels other than corn and soy is still in its infancy.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 05:10 PM

Bio Fule no wonder that George the antichrist was so pround and excited about pushing farm subsidies for biofuels.

John I saw a car commercial where the Mazda was so "hot" that it popped corn as as it drove past huge fields of corn.
Pop corn shortage, this is the last straw (among many). It is a good treatment for acid reflux. It acts like a plug to keep the acid in the stomach.

Science friday on npr traced 2 methods of using weedy waste bio mass instead of food crops. One method uses a catlyst and heats the biomass to produce alcohol most efficently.
Another method used an enzyme.
Still another invention mimics the action within the Second stomach of a ruminating animal.

There is no room for food crops to be wasted. PERIOD.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 06:30 PM

At present, none of the methods using cellulosic plant wastes is close to being cost-competitive with petro fuels. The few plants using them survive only with substantial subsidies, and are pretty much "developmental" efforts with some hope that efficiencies can eventually be improved.

Even the "sugar plants" require modest(?) subsidies to be barely cost-effective.

Work is being done at coming up with a single "bio-agent" that can digest the cellulose and ferment to alcohol without having to pump between vats and change the bugs for the two separate steps. "Commercialization" has been promised "within a year" (for about the last four years) by a couple of the labs.

There has been some progress, but not enough to realistically justify the few million bucks each to build plants to use different plants.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: pdq
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 06:46 PM

It is not really necessary to refine biomass into a sophisticated fuel such as methanol to get energy (or some other positive) use from it.

California had a large number of cogeneration plants at one time, many located in the Central Valley farming area. Essentially, these were electricity-producing plants and burned natural gas. However, at some point in the prosess, when the burners were hot and able to burn such things, organic waste was fed in. The quantity could be as much as 15% of the total fuel used with no significant loss of power.

Some of the organic material delivered were walnut shells, moldy hay, sawdust and wood chips, dry corn stalks, etc. A savings of 15% in fuel at every natural gas-poweded plant would be a huge savings and such material would not go to the landfills. No downside I can think of unless the people pushing the Global Warming myth get in power.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Rapparee
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 06:47 PM

A college classmate of my wife's was working on biomass conversion back in the late 1970s. Naturally, after she died (and it was a great loss to biology) her work was shelved and has probably been lost.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 03:28 AM

For those who've missed the coming of the real problem, a new Newsweek article summarizes what's been hidden in the corners of news reports for several months. It's NOT ABOUT ALTERNATE FUELS. The problem is simple starvation of many people.

Apologies for the length of the post, but I couldn't find much of anything to cut out.

Hand to Mouth

The world is consuming more food than it produces.

Jeffrey Bartholet
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 2:38 PM ET Apr 14, 2008

While wealthy countries worry about a spreading credit crisis, the world's poor have a more basic concern: food. The overall cost of staples like corn, wheat and soybeans has jumped by more than 50 percent since last June. Riots related to food prices have broken out in many countries, including Egypt, Indonesia and Haiti. Josette Sheeran, the executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme, has referred to a "perfect storm" of conditions driving prices up: surging demand for agricultural products as an alternative fuel source, the growing food needs of developing countries like China and India, higher transportation costs, droughts and floods. But for the first time, Sheeran says, the WFP is making an emergency appeal based purely on adverse market forces. In March Sheeran appealed for an extra $500 million from donors to help cover rising costs. Then, within weeks of making the plea, food prices jumped another 20 percent.

Sheeran, an American who previously served as Under Secretary for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs in the U.S. State Department, spoke to NEWSWEEK's Jeffrey Bartholet. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: You issued an appeal in March to fill a $500 million shortfall. What has been the response?

Josette Sheeran: All these food prices had gone into an aggressive pattern starting in June, after years of climbing up. So in February we felt we needed to stop and say, "What's the [financing] gap?" We established the $500 million figure. Since then the gap has grown another 20 percent.

So you're up to $600 million?

Or $700 million, depending on where things are on a particular day.

Has anybody ponied up?

Yes, I think we're going to see some major support throughout the world. And we've already had some contributions, which are extremely helpful and significant for what they symbolize. Brazil has contributed to help Haiti; we had a very nice contribution from Spain. But the United States, Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia—we're looking at what [their donations] will look like. We've had a very serious, roll-up-our-sleeves reception from everyone to try to help us do this.

What is the primary factor driving this surge in prices?

The number one factor I look at is the price of oil. It may seem a strange thing, as I'm in the hunger field, but I wake up every morning and start in the back of the paper and I look at the price of oil, because if the price of oil stays high or goes higher, I know that the energy buyers in food markets will be buying food as an energy input at a very expensive price. That is the world we are in now that is new.

Are you saying that because people are buying ethanol—

The demand for food as an input into energy production, whether it's biodiesel or bioethanol or any of these, is a global phenomenon. And it affects everything from palm oil to cassava to everything else … There isn't much marginal room in the global food supply system.

We've been consuming more food than we produce for the last three years.

"We" meaning the world?

Yes, we the world. Now, there's a point at which it doesn't economically make sense to buy food as an energy input. It's pretty low; it's apparently when oil hits about $70 a barrel. So anything above that makes food a very viable energy production input.

So the people here in the United States who are putting corn-fed stoves in their homes or running cars on ethanol—perhaps thinking they're saving the planet, preventing global warming and so forth—are they in fact contributing to global hunger?

Right now I have a concern about the actual amount of food available for food supplies. And use of food as a fuel source is helping drive up prices and putting people in the hunger category.

Who is benefiting from the high prices?

Many farmers are, and that's good news. But for us, half of the hunger we address in Africa, for example, [is experienced by] farmers who can't produce enough for their own families. So there's been a sense of giddiness in the world that the poor farmer's day has come … but there are indications that poor farmers have not been able to access this boom, mainly because of the high cost of doing farming. If you're not producing enough for your own family, you're not actually going to make any money from high food prices. You're going to get hurt when you go to market [to buy seed or fertilizer, for instance]. In many places these poor farmers are actually planting less now than they were a year ago. So in Kenya fertilizer has gone from 1,700 Kenyan shillings for a bag in December to 4,000 now. They can't afford the diesel to till; they can't afford the fertilizer or the seeds. We haven't done a systematic, global look at this, but early anecdotal evidence [suggests] a new concern.

How concerned are world leaders about the political ramifications of high food prices?

There is a growing awareness that we have a global challenge of fairly significant proportions … That leads to [another] concern: the actual availability of enough food. We've already had a couple of situations where it's been hard to secure food for our programs.

Is the distinction you're making here between food that can be bought at higher cost and your ability to secure food at any price?

WFP procures food in over 80 countries around the world. Half of our contributions are in cash; half are in-kind agricultural contributions. But even those are bought on open markets now. Even the U.S. contribution, which is given to us as wheat in a dollar amount, then has to be purchased on U.S. open markets. It has to be purchased here. But we're in a post-surplus world. It's not your grandmother's food aid, where we'd get a call saying, "We have a warehouse full of wheat. Do you have hungry people?" That era is done. WFP has been out of the surplus business for at least five years. In November the U.S. durum wheat supply for 2007-8 was already sold out. It was overbooked, done. If I get $300 million to buy wheat for Darfur [I have to ask], "Is there wheat to buy?" In the fall we were trying to buy wheat in Asia to produce biscuits for victims of the floods in North Korea. And for the first time in memory in our building, we couldn't initially find the wheat anywhere in Asia. It took a week or 10 days to identify enough wheat to produce the biscuits.

Looking forward, there's every prospect that oil prices will remain above $70 a barrel. Alternative fuels are being subsidized. Do you have a projection on where food prices will be a year from now?

I have seen no projections anywhere that over the next two or three years we'll see declining prices. In February we were told that prices had reached a platform, and then they went up another 20 percent for us. There are so many factors that determine this. Now a bad harvest could tip this in a very bad way.

To what extent are environmentalists and people like you getting together to think about a more holistic approach to environment and hunger issues?

We're in a world that is so interconnected that we can no longer look for solutions within silos of concern. Hunger and the environment and climate change and opportunity for growth are all interlinked, and you change one lever here and it impacts [another] over there.

Here in America people often don't get a sense of hunger unless they see pictures of starving kids. Is this an issue you face—that people do not really get the message until they see babies with distended bellies on their television screens?

Absolutely. The new face of hunger is angry riots around the world. And the new face of hunger is a quiet market change that undermines peoples' ability to buy basic needs. It's in this slum here and this village there. It's been very hard to put a face on this. Typically what we're seeing is that people who make two dollars or less a day are cutting out health care or education. Even at very abject poverty levels of two dollars a day, there's a little room before food starts being sacrificed. At one dollar a day we're seeing people giving up protein and vegetables. For people at less than 50 cents a day, if they were getting three helpings of a staple before, that may be down to two portions or one portion. If a child does not have adequate nutritional input at under two years old, that is something that has a lifetime impact.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/132013
© 2008

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Peace
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 04:27 AM

Was at the pump today for gasoline--I use about 50 liters a month. Diesel is $.15 a liter more expensive than regular gasoline. This is a very strange situation. There are some smart cookies here. WTF is going on?

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Peace
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 04:44 AM

This was posted by Teribus on another thread.



"From the linked BBC Article:

"The University of California team will report their work in the Journal of Environment Economics and Management.

They warn that unchecked future growth will dwarf any emissions cuts made by rich nations under the Kyoto Protocol."

"University of California report warns that unless China radically changes its energy policies, its increases in greenhouse gases will be several times larger than the cuts in emissions being made by rich nations under the Kyoto Protocol."

"The only solution is for a massive transfer of technology and wealth from the West" - Dr Max Auffhammer, Lead researcher.

"Dr Auffhammer told BBC News that his projections had made an assumption that the Chinese government's recent aggressive energy efficiency programme would fail, as the previous one had failed badly.

"Our figures for (Chinese) emissions growth are truly shocking," he said."


I hate to point it out to such an august "Lead Researcher" as Dr Auffhammer, but I fail to see why this news should come as such a surprise.

About eight years ago someone else pointed all this out by way of explanation as to how Kyoto would simply not work. He also explained how any international agreement on the environment had to include the burgeoning industrial economies of China, India and Brazil and that effective progress in reducing greenhouse gasses would have to be "technology lead".

Anybody care to tell the others who it is that I am talking about?"





The things going through my mind are pretty scary.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Peace
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 04:47 AM

Please, put your brains to this stuff.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Teribus
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 07:06 AM

Donuel on Bio Fuels:

"As for bio fuels...consider this.

The amount of corn needed to fill the tank of 1 Ford Expedition would feed 1 poor person 1 year."

"Bio Fule no wonder that George the antichrist was so pround and excited about pushing farm subsidies for biofuels."

"There is no room for food crops to be wasted. PERIOD."

Now if I'm reading you right here Donuel, are you advocating that we all buy Ford Expeditions, then all feed 1 poor person corn and then get them to push our Ford Expedition around for a year? Seems like a win-win situation all round.....;-)

Did like the other bit though:

"Science friday on npr traced 2 methods of using weedy waste bio mass instead of food crops. One method uses a catlyst and heats the biomass to produce alcohol most efficently.
Another method used an enzyme.
Still another invention mimics the action within the Second stomach of a ruminating animal."

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Peace
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 07:08 AM

Millions will starve to death in the coming two years. We are entering a new 'dark age' and it ain't gonna be pretty.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Rapparee
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 02:17 PM

Combine this with the coming water shortage.

I'm a-buyin' more cartridges as well as more bullets.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Kent Davis
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 12:11 AM

Price inflation for food has not been 48%, but less than 5%, in the U.S.

"Overall, food prices rose nearly 5 percent in 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That means a pound of coffee, on average, cost 57 cents more at year's end than in 2006. A 12-ounce can of frozen, concentrated orange juice now averages $2.53 — a 67-cent increase in just two years.

And a carton of grade A, large eggs will set you back $2.17. That's an increase of nearly $1 since February, 2006." http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hoh0EcX58dSG8oW_xU6nUxcwRfjAD8VOHOIG0

At the U.S. federal minimum wage, a can of orange juice and a dozen large eggs cost less than an hour's work. Food prices have been lagging behind general inflation for decades. Remember what a movie ticket cost when you were a kid? How much has that gone up? What about a ticket to a baseball game? What about the cost of a pair of sneakers? Remember what a house cost in the 1960s? Compare house price inflation to the inflation in the price of eggs and milk. In the U.S. (and I am NOT talking about any other country when I say this), food price inflation has been low, not high.

It would be even lower if we weren't distoring the market with ethanol subsidies.

Kent

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Kent Davis
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 12:47 AM

And may I add that food prices in the rest of the world would also be lower if it weren't for the market distortion caused by ethanol subsidies. If you haven't read Joel Salatin, you might want to check him out: http://www.polyfacefarms.com/library.aspx

Kent

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: pdq
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 01:28 PM

Refresh.

Some of the discussion of feedlots and "carnivire v. vegetarian" probably fit here better than on that other thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 01:59 PM

On last night's 'Independent Lens', PBS, a documentary about two young men's experiences in raising one acre of corn, they made the point that we are paying far less today, proportionately, than we did decades ago. They also made the point that our food is far less benign than it was then.

After seeing that show, it does not appear surprising to me that there is such an epidemic of obesity and resulting diabetes.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 06:02 PM

Peace, take heart, the World Bank and Tri Lateral COmmision or on this mass starvation thing.

If you think about it, starvation really is safer and more humane than the disease model of genocide.

I know it sounds crazy but perhaps the Critical Solutions Commitee could look into models of survival instead of controled die offs.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 01:47 AM

Ethanol plant builder lays off 105
BY PHYLLIS JACOBS GRIEKSPOOR
The Wichita Eagle [Kansas, US]
Wednesday April 16, 2008
Page 6B

ICM Inc., the nation's leading designer of ethanol plants, has laid off 105 employees.

ICM officials blamed the layoffs on a sluggish economy that has weakened the U.S. dollar and made it difficult to find lenders to fund domestic projects.

The layoffs affect multiple departments at ICM, which had been on a rapid growth curve over the past several years. Before the layoffs, ICM had more than doubled the size of its headquarters in Colwich, [Kansas] building two new office projects. It employed 671 workers before the layoff.

Affected workers were notified Tuesday and were given information on extended benefits and severance pay.

"This is in no way a reflection of the valued work performed by our employees," said Dave Vander Griend, president and chief executive of ICM. "During recent quarterly employee luncheons, I have addressed the volatile market conditions that have persisted, such as commodity market concerns and the projects slowdown."

Ethanol companies have faced challenges over the past several months as prices for corn – ethanol's primary feedstock – have doubled. Construction costs also have risen rapidly, driven in part by higher petroleum products and transportation costs.

Several projects have had construction slowdowns and others have been delayed by difficulty in securing financing. One Kansas company, Orion Ethanol at Pratt, has closed amid fInancial problems.

The expansion of ethanol production, forecast to be more than 2 billion gallons in 2007, was actually only about half that.

ICM was founded in 1995 and has designed and engineered more than 75 ethanol plants in the United States and Canada. There are currently 25 projects under construction that use ICM technology.

/quote

(So maybe it means something and maybe not?)

John

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Peace
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 01:53 AM

Harbinger of things?

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Peace
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 01:57 AM

Y'll might wanna give this a read.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Barry Finn
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 04:08 AM

In the 3 super markets that I shop in the single pizzas that I used to buy for $1 on sale are now on sale for $1.75, the maple syrup has doubled, ceral has gone up half, rice is the same, all in a matter of months, chicken should be getting cheaper but,,,pork, lamb & beef just keeps climbing & fish is no better & getting worst in the types they'll sell to the public. With fish it's throw them the garbage at a cheaper price & they'll never know the difference.

Fish, that's a can of worms in itself. As a kid always living near the water in the northeast of the US, one wouldn't think of eating shark, monkfish, wolfish, mussels of course it was here that we also had the lobster revolts when fed to the slaves to often duning a weeks course. Farmed fish sucks in comparsion to fresh & so doesn't frozen. For me, I'd just as soon move back to the water's edge & get my own, till a good garden, hunt when I need to the hell with a job, oh, shit I'm retired. My wife forbids guns anywhere around the house. She had a boyfriend once who was shot through the head dead by a hunter. Really, we're gonna have to go back to a DIY society.
When I lived in Hawaii & worked with the locals they went spear fishing in the am before coming to work, every morning, that was part of their evening supper, they grew their own veggies & some hunted on weekend. Mostly because that the way they always lived but also because their islands went so upscale that that's the only way they could afford to live without cashing in on their oh so valuable land & houses. They considered themseves very lucky to live by the ocean & on a land still so wild. So what's wrong with this picture. Population explosion, polution of land, water & air, dwindling natrual habitats, waterfronts being developed for industry which discourages eviormentally friendly uses.
Hell, I'm all for a "Free the Graveyards" campaign. Use the grounds for community gardens. Stop buring bodies, chop 'em up, compost them & replenish the oceans & deserts with our feed, trun us into fuel!

Gotta go to bed, I'm gonna have some crazy dreams tonight, this morning, gee didn't even see it's so late. Goodnite

Barry

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: GUEST,Jim Martin
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 06:12 AM

Free market - traders - speculators! Should they not be wiped off the face of the earth, for they have one hell of a lot to answer for in the current crisis?

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Bobert
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 08:30 AM

Three short thoughts:

1. Gardens... We grow 25% of the food we eat...

2. Farm Subsidies to agri-business, some of which is to not plant, ahhh, food...

3. If the US would rethink it's value as food producers and retool toward realizing it's potential, much like the NASA in the 60's, the US could muscle it's way outta it's trade deficit, create lots of jobs and be looked upon as one of the good guys... I understand drought... I also understand that if Romans could divert available water hundreds of miles some 3000 years ago than a country that has put men on the moon has no excuse for not being able to convert and divert flood water into irrigation...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 08:41 AM

It's bloody hard to divert what is not there Bobert... :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Bobert
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 08:50 AM

I'm talking about the US, F-troupe...

Just about every year the Mississippi floods... There are reasons for this that can be traced to deforestation and developement... But we know that just about every spring there will be billions of gallons of water that will end up emtying into the Gulf of Mexico...

And these billions and billions of gallons of freash (not salt) water will flow less than 150 miles from millions of acres of farmland that 2 months later might have failed crops because of drought???

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Kent Davis
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 11:17 PM

Jim Martin,

You make an interesting, yet puzzling, comment regarding the free market. A substantial portion of current food inflation in the U.S. is due to the unfree (subsidized) corn/ethanol market, yet you appear to be advocating more bureaucratic interference.

South Korea has a free market; North Korea does not. South Korea is rich and North Korea is starving. South Africa has interfered relatively little with land ownership and is, by African standards, rich. Neighboring Zimbabwe has seized land owned by wealthy farmers and is starving. Switzerland is rich; Belarus is poor. Singapore is rich; Burma is poor. Hong Kong is rich; Taiwan is rich; China was much poorer; now that China has adopted an economic policy more like that of Hong Kong and Taiwan, moving toward more economic freedom, China is rapidly catching up. Russia has far more land and more natural resources than Canada, yet Canada has far more wealth and far more economic freedom. It could be just a coincidence, but somehow I doubt it.

If you really want to do your bit to help the situation, shop at your local farmer's market. You'll get better food than you'll find in WalMart and you'll help that endangered species, the small farmer. While you're there, talk to the farmers. Ask them if they think the agricultural economy is suffering from too much freedom or from too much government interference in the form of burdensome regulations, high taxes, and subsidies to agri-business.

Kent

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 12:03 PM

Sorry about the above..Food prices have been rising for some time. I find that things that used to be cheap are now very expensive and feeding a family is starting to be a large part of our budget. However, I do not think that we are being realistic when we lay all the blame on big business, supermarkets and farmers, then expect the government to fix it all. A lot of our current global problem in terms of food supply is simply commuters vs. food. It is an uneven contest so long as we in the west continue to confuse convience with nescessity, which we often do. Rather than using farm land AND FOOD TO FUEL CARS, PERHAPS WE SHOULD CONSIDER USING LESS FUEL. lEAVE THE CAR HOME TWO DAYS A WEEK, GET A ROTARY MOWER, SELL THE ATV AND SNOWMOBILE.(sorry about the caps, error, not a shout). We cannot place all the blame on people who give consumers what they want, we have to stop wanting some of them. Just my opinion, but I think we do need to take some responsibilty.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 12:56 PM

Teribus might be on to somthing...get poor people to push your car.

In a way gasoline is cheap slave labor. A gas tiller can do a garden as well as by hand but human labor is more expensive. This country was built by slave labor. But I for one can not accept the Teribus solution of slave labor.




The great pyramid temples in southern India were built by elephants.
The fuel they consume is bio fule at its best and most direct use for projects that require great energy for hauling and lifting.
They even help build the ramps they need for construction.




The coming food holocaust will kill more people than the Nazi Holocaust which leads me to wonder the culpability of the Bush administration to the coming famine. What if the 4 trillion dollars he borrowed and spent (including the interest) had been put to energy conversiona and fresh water and food production.

I am sure there would be a lot of para military private contractor billionaires with a lot less money today.

starving children,,, hungery billionaires...

ITS SOO HARD TO CHOOSE.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 01:19 PM

years ago (in thread #34522), I posted this:

"Subject: RE: BS: Should fish be sought?
From: Bill D - PM
Date: 19 May 01 - 06:27 PM

when I was a kid, (in the 40s & 50s),we heard that we would one day "feed mankind from the inexhaustable seas"...now the Grand Banks are depleted, the salmon are threatened, there are limits on crabs & rockfish in Cheasapeake Bay, the whales are in danger...etc...etc...

The math is plain...you CANNOT take so much fish, lobsters, etc that they cannot be replaced. (You can't pollute so much, either.) In one generation of fishing, we have gone from seemingly plenty to not nearly enough. The immediate effect is rising prices, so that good seafood, once almost free for the taking, is a rare treat, unless you are well-to-do. The next effect is shortages and bans and panic, (both ecological & financial).

The ONLY real long term solution is fewer people, If there were only 1 billion people in the world, we could all have plenty to eat....fish, or grain or red meat...at 6 billion, we are hurting...at 12-15 billion it ain't gonna be ANY fun!

Some folks keep expecting technology, fish farms & vitamins to 'solve' it, but if I were you, I wouldn't hold my breath. "X" number of hungry mouths need "Y" lbs. of food...and the Earth has "Z" amount of resources.

No one wants to look directly at the solution, because it is counter to the way we have lived for countless generations...children & growth. This is both a cultural & economic problem....but it won't go away by denying it."

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: autolycus
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 04:13 PM

Kent

While you're there, talk to the farmers. Ask them if they think the agricultural economy is suffering from too much freedom or from too much government interference in the form of burdensome regulations, high taxes, and subsidies to agri-business.

Do you mean to say farmers apart from agri-business don't get farm subsidies?


Anyway, all the upthread situations being described are just the necessary consequences of the system we all subscribe to. Oncluding millions datrving to death worldwide. After all, Oxfam was founded more than 60 years ago.

Isn't the US pretty free-market, and isn't it suffering (?) a touch currently?

   Ivor

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Peace
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 04:16 PM

The price of 10 kg of flour has risen from about $6.00 six months ago to about $11.00 now. Canada is a wheat-exporting country, or WAS, anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Peace
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 04:25 PM

'The CWB's [Canadian Wheat Board] 2007-08 export target includes 10.9 million tonnes of wheat, 3.1 million tonnes of durum and three million tonnes of barley. Fifty-one per cent of the program was exported by December 31, 2007, with 90 per cent targeted for export by the end of May 2008. "Given this situation, we will need to have consistent delivery through the winter months and into spring," Weisensel says.'

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: pdq
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 04:56 PM

Last June the new Democrat-run Senate passed a bill mandating that we produce 36 billion gallons of alcohol per year by 2022. That is about seven times what we produce now, almost all of which comes from corn.

If we used all the corn we grow for ethanol, it would be about 28 billion gallons per year, less than the mandate calls for.

Also, corn is the most subsidised crop in the US.

One talk show host called this "the biggest food burning program in history":

                                    read more

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Kent Davis
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 11:58 PM

Autolycus,

The chances that a farm will be subsidized is inversely related to the size of the farm. The subsidy programs are designed for large monoculture farms that raise a few favored crops, corn in particular. Mixed farms, especially small farms that practice sustainable agriculture, usually either don't qualify or, if they do qualify, find that the "red tape" makes the subsidy unattainable. As far as I know, at our local farmer's market, none of us get any subsidies. (I'm not complaining about that - I don't want subsidies -my complaint is that our large competitors do get subsidies.)

Is the U.S. free-market? I grow organic food, but it is a crime for me to label it "organic" because I don't have certification. I don't produce enough to make obtaining certification worthwhile. My neighbors have a dairy. People want to buy milk directly from them, before it is pastuerized and homogenized. They can't, because it is a crime to sell raw milk in this state. Last summer, we considered selling watermelon halves at the market, because many customers can't eat a whole one. It is a crime, so we didn't. It would cost far more than our profits to get the necessary permits. Our potential customers get their watermelon halves at WalMart, which can afford the red tape. We are only partially free.

Better half-free than unfree. We have enough economic freedom to make our prosperity the envy of most of the world's population. The economic migrants continue to pour in. Even in the current housing "crisis", 99% of American homes are NOT in foreclosure. Our highways remain crowded with gas-guzzlers and RVs. (Not surprising, considering that our gasoline is still cheap by European standards.) Though I am a physician, I have never seen an American child with marasmus or scurvy or kwaishiorkor or even rickets. Most of my poor patients have indoor plumbing, a phone, and a car. These items would mark them as middle-class in not a few countries. Many even have computers with internet access, cell phones, air conditioners, and cable tv, items which, not many years ago, were available only to the rich. We are "hurting" relative to the economy we would like to have and we are "hurting" relative to the economy we could have, but there are hundreds of millions who would love to have the prosperity that even our poor people have.

Kent

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: autolycus
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 01:36 AM

Thanks for that Kent. very clear

Ivor

Subject: not your average doom and gloom
From: Donuel
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 10:05 AM

This food crisis is being called the perfect storm.

Even if you are 80 years old, it is the worst food shortage in your lifetime.

Their are natural causes for this storm.
Partly due to the increase in population and climate challenges but mostly due to the loss of fresh water. When we ship grain we are really shipping the water it took to grow that grain.

There are political reasons as well, such as the total loss of US fortune to privately contracted oil wars perpetrated by the Bush regieme for 20 years.
\

It took Rome 250 years to fall into decline.
Our genius' needed only 50 years. The US empire will not be entirely marginalized. Like the UK we still have nuclear weapons to threaten the world...until one or two "accidently go off".



Is there a vast conspiracy to let the food shortage worsen in order to strategicly and politically control population? Is food still the greatest military weapon of all?

The official answer is no. The common sense answer is that food has always been and will always be the foundation of life and political power.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Peace
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 10:11 AM

I am of the opinion this is being done on purpose.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 12:55 PM

So, am I to understand hat we are respsible for NONE of this. Are we really in such denial that we assume no blame ?

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Peace
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 01:02 PM

If you're addressing me, say so. I am of the opinion that people can be led like sheep. Many people HAVE been 'fighting' this for years. I have no idea who the 'we' is you mention.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: autolycus
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 02:38 PM

Just discovered this for wwhat iw

http://nysun.com/news/food-rationing-confronts-breadbasket-world

Ivor

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 05:52 PM

The "we" is all of us, not just you, though you may assume that I am directed to you alone, I assure that no individual looms so large in my view. We must all cut back..that is my view. And until we do, it is both hypocritical and unfortunate that we continue to blame the servant when the hose goes awry.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 07:34 PM

I agree that we in the U.S. should cut back, conserve and be more conscious of our use of resources. But the blame can't be layed solely on our shoulders.

Higher oil prices are driving the move towards bio-fuels. The price of oil rising has been in part caused by the wars, Nigerian attacks on oil companies, Venezuela taking the private oil companies, pirates attacking the shipping companies and other factors not the least of which is speculation. Having the oil companies construct our energy policies probably had alot to do with it as well.

We are driven by the hope of getting away from the dependence on foreign oil, a reaction to terrorist attacks and not a little Islamaphobia.

But that isn't the whole story.

The rice shortage isn't coming from the U.S. and rice provides 20% of the calories consumed by the world.

There is also the fact that the "bread basket" of Africa, Zimbabwe, is still under the control of a tyrant who took the producing farms from white farmers and distributed them to cronies who haven't a clue about farming which has devestated any production from that country. People elsewhere on the continent are starving because food can't be delivered due to warring parties (Somalia/Ethiopia, Sudan, the Congo region).

Even though other countries have been suffering from higher energy prices for years, no one, anywhere, has come up with any practical solutions even in countries that traditionally use wind power and others that have thousands of miles of open coastline that could generate massive amounts of energy from waves and tidal action. Everyone seems content to sit and wait for the U.S. to solve the problem.

Seems to me this is a global problem that needs a global solution. It might be beneficial to stop playing the blame game and get down to some serious thinking.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Peace
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 08:14 PM

I agree with you, Hilo. No offense meant.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: GUEST,Jim Martin
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 07:29 AM

Nobody wants to cut back unless they are forced to, it seems to be getting very close to that point now, what do other people think?

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 08:25 AM

No offence taken Peace. I believe that we are now at the stage when we must cut down on our compsumtion of "stuff", I do also see that there are other factors at play, still we must assume some respnsibilty. I also agree that laying blame is not the answer, but accepting it may be of some use.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 09:15 AM

USA stores ration rice: http://nysun.com/news/food-rationing-confronts-breadbasket-world




http://www.rense.com/1.imagesH/starve_dees.jpg

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: pdq
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 09:51 AM

Here is the reason for the food shortage:

                         but you probably knew that already

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: kendall
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 05:03 PM

pdq I remind you that the Democrats have a very slim margin in the senate. There are enough shit sandwiches to go around in both parties.

If I remember my history, the final straw that started the French revolution was the food shortage. History repeats itself, eh?

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 05:23 PM

I think everyone accepting "some" of the blame is probably a good start.
I know that the U.S. has messed up big time over the years but it has become fashionable to bash us rather than figure out some answers.

Does anyone doubt that the current oil prices and the hostility of the nations containing the largest oil reserves are driving the push for eco-fuels? Where is the harsh words for the nations of OPEC that are causing some of the problem? It's not like tilling, sewing, and harvesting are done with beasts of burden anymore (aside from in Amish country). It all takes fuel! Then the transport of the grain from the farm to where it's needed again takes fuel. With rising fuel costs come rising food costs. It's not a one sided deal!

We are also using a fraction of the corn crop to develop biodegradable plastics to counter the problems caused by pollution.

Some of this crisis is also caused by the mistrust of the genetically altered crops which grow more abundantly (not taking sides here but there are millions of tons of grain going to waste because no-one will eat them).

The only way to stop the starvation in Sudan, Somalia and the Congo is to force the fighting to stop but no-one wants to do it and if the U.S. did we'd be condemned! The only way to get the farms of Zimbabwe up and running would be to get Mugabe out of power and get real farmers working the land. Who's going to do that?

I don't even know what to suggest for the rice crop failure!

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: pdq
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 05:38 PM

Sorry to tell you, Kendall, but I have said nothing about politics. My post show, in graphic terms, that we have built houses for 20 million uninvited people on the world's finest farm land, removing it from the production. That is tragic. Please book yourself a trip to either Madera or Fresno County and see for yourself. Your world in Maine is not changing much. California is being destroyed.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 05:47 PM

PDQ -

You have my condolences on California. I remember it as a very beautiful place. It's probably not wrong to say that those people in Madera and Fresno county use more water than any crops that might be grown there.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: autolycus
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 05:56 PM

GUest Chief Caos, it doesn't help your cause to blame all over the place - Nigeria, Venezuela, pirates, terrism, Zimbabwe, Congo, and so on - and then say we should stop the blame game.

After you, Claude (British WW2 comedy character)


Ivor

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 06:10 PM

I was pointing out the causes behind the increase of oil prices (or the reasons given for the speculators jacking up the price of oil anyway). If I can't lay out the whole of the situation then what good is the debate? I'm not blaming them, they're all just pieces of this miserable little puzzle.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: pdq
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 07:10 PM

Chief Chaos,

Remember when New York had the most people of any state?

In the next 30 years, New York is expected to drop a bit, down close to 19 million. California, on the other hand, should exceed 50 million by that time. Hint: do not expect real estate in California to keep dropping in value much longer.

About the people in Madera and Fesno counties using more water (if you meant that seriously), that ain't the problem. We are removing from production, land that feeds many people per acre, and replacing it with land that demands food, sometimes 20-30 mouths to feed per acre. This cannot go on much longer and it is exactly why "America's Bread Basket" is having problems.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 07:27 PM

Actually I did mean that seriously. I've read for years about the water supply problem for that area and was wondering if we'd be better off just having the crops there just for the water usage reason. You're of course right, at least for that area, about the farm land being turned into housing tracts.
It's happening just about everywhere. There used to be farms outside of the beltway (in DC) now there are housing tracts all the way to the West Virginia border (and even there housing has been going in).
We of course still don't have the problems that other countries have or will have with food. We still export a great deal.
I wonder what kind of impact turning the Tobacco fields over to grain would have?

I thought it was rather hypocritical of Castro to talk about the bio-fuel causing problems with feeding the world when his number one cash crop is tobacco.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: kendall
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 08:19 PM

I will never forget my college Geography professor when he stated that, "Every problem mankind has on this earth can be traced to one thing; "Too many people."

"Sending tons of food to starving countries only postpones the inevitable, and in the end even more people will starve to death. So, in effect, we are contributing to the problem."

I thought that was harsh, but it's beginning to make sense. Think about it; the earth is 3/4 water, Salt water. much of it is desert and mountains, and only about 10% of the land can be farmed. The Great Spirit stopped building land 4 billion years ago, but we continue to make more people. We now number 6 billion. The tipping point is very near.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 09:12 PM

"I am of the opinion this is being done on purpose."

Never ascribe to malice what is more easily and adequately explained by mere mortal stupidity.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: GUEST,Jim Martin
Date: 29 Apr 08 - 07:57 AM

refresh

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: pdq
Date: 29 Apr 08 - 03:19 PM

On Monday I decided to give an older SUV a test drive. I had changed belts, hoses, starter, heater motor and alternator soon after buying it and wanted to see if it was reliable.

Wound up in a town with a Wal*Mart Super Store.

Hard to believe but most food items are less than half of what I pay at the local grocery store. One example, the exact same 16 oz pkg of pasta was $1.08 for which I have been paying $2.29!

A special trip will cost about $20, but break-even would be $40. I will probably spend $400 next visit. Go Wal*Mart!

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Peace
Date: 29 Apr 08 - 04:50 PM

Rice went from about (I read the figue and it was near) $250/tonne to $700/tonne.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 29 Apr 08 - 05:02 PM

Thanks for the Newsweek article, JohninKansas. It has some good information.
Some of the posts here show people aren't thinking.
A few points that come to mind.

Drought and crop diseases have been an important cause of shortages the past couple of years; stocks have been depleted.

Diversion of crop land to more profitable crops cuts into production of rice and grain. In Sumatra, fields have been planted into coffee and other non-foods. (No one wants that cheap Brazilian field coffee any more- only the best will suit us). Other mis-use of land (biofuels, etc.) has been mentioned above.

Futures markets. When the traders smell a shortage, the price goes up. Is this method of handling foods from rice to pork bellies obsolete? This is gambling for profit, it does not build economies.

Fuel- There are still large reserves of both oil and natural gas; the problems are greed on the part of producers, OPEC and non-members who use OPEC as a guide to set product price, shortage of refineries, lack of transport, the commodities markets (same gambling for profit as with basic foods), failure of governments to cooperate in establishing reasonable market guidelines and profit levels, tax levels maintained at same percentage when prices go up.
Fuel is perhaps the most mis-understood commodity at this time. Failure to get get together internationally hurts everyone, from the trucker who no longer can make a profit, to those in all forms of transportation, and those who manufacture most products, and everyone trying to heat their homes and cook their food....

Too many people. We condemn China for trying to control population, fail to condemn institutions that promote breeding and prohibit birth control.

Failure of education to prepare us for the globalized world, and protection of our world, the only home we have.

Many others, but the list is only begun.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: pdq
Date: 29 Apr 08 - 05:33 PM

The world population goes up over 1% per year. The world-wide production of rice is expected to be down 3.5% this year.

That doesn't sound too bad, but add hoarding and lack of reserves and we do have a problem. For over 6 billion people use rice as their staple food.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: pdq
Date: 29 Apr 08 - 05:35 PM

(sorry, that was supposed to be "half of the world's population or over 3 billion people")

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Bill D
Date: 29 Apr 08 - 05:45 PM

I know the oil problem is quite complex, but here is ONE of the reasons for $100+ barrels of it. (These are just projects on one country)

Palm Islands

World Islands

http://www.burjdubaiskyscraper.com/

What I do NOT understand is: when the price of a barrel of oil rises, due to trading & speculation, why does the pump price for fuel rise immediately? That oil the refiner had to pay more for will not be near my tank for many months.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: autolycus
Date: 29 Apr 08 - 05:48 PM

Bill, you really don't understand?

What's at the very very heart of out economic arrangement?

Ivor

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 29 Apr 08 - 05:53 PM

"What I do NOT understand is: when the price of a barrel of oil rises, due to trading & speculation, why does the pump price for fuel rise immediately? That oil the refiner had to pay more for will not be near my tank for many months."

The way I've heard it explained is that the folks at the stations have to raise their prices to be able to afford the next shipment that will be at a higher price. Of course this doesn't explain why when oil prices go back down it takes months to see the results at a gas station and it never seems to return to the low prices previously seen.

I can't understand the mathematics of it. Oil at $53.00 a barrel had gas at $1.35. Oil at double the price, $106.00 a barrel has gas at over $3.00 instead of $2.70.

Subject: RE: BS: Food: Inflation
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 29 Apr 08 - 05:55 PM

World population in millions-
1900- 1850
1950- 2521
1999- 5978
2050- 8909 est.

Growth rate of 1.14 percent represents a doubling every 61 years.