Soaring Food Prices Unleash Chaos

Europe April 10, 2008, 1:38PM EST

Soaring Food Prices Unleash Chaos

The World Bank calls for leaders to take action as violent protests against the high cost of grains and other foods are seen around the globe
The scenes in Haiti have been dramatic. Gunfire on the streets in the capital Port-au-Prince; thousands parading through the streets; and 9,000 United Nations peacekeepers powerless to stop the violence and the widespread looting. Five people have been killed in the violence since last Thursday, according to unofficial reports. Even an impassioned plea by the Caribbean country's President Rene Preval on Wednesday failed to restore order.

"The solution is not to go around destroying stores," he said. "I'm giving you orders to stop."

Haitians, though, are reacting to problems that cannot simply be wished away. Food prices across the globe have been skyrocketing in recent years. Rice prices in Asia have spiked as has the price of bread in Egypt, milk products in Europe and pasta in Italy. The result has been unrest in a number of countries and many more concerned that a mass protest is but a price hike away.

Now, World Bank President Robert Zoellick has called on world leaders to act to ease the global food crisis. Zoellick urged the United States, the European Union, Japan and other developed countries to help plug a $500 million (€319 million) shortfall in the United Nations' World Food Program. In a speech given in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, Zoellick said the money was urgently needed to meet emergency demands and warned that if politicians did not act now, "many more people will suffer and starve."

Unrest triggered by the higher food and fuel prices has been gaining steam across the globe in recent weeks. During a two-day riot in Egypt earlier this week, one person was killed. Cameroon has also seen street violence. In the Philippines, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo warned on Tuesday that rice shortages were exacerbating political and social tensions in the country.

Zoellick, who was speaking in the run-up to the World Bank's spring meeting this weekend, said world leaders needed to develop a new mechanism that focused not only on hunger, malnutrition and access to food and its supply, but also on the connections between energy, crop yields, climate change and other factors.

According to the World Bank president, as financial markets have tumbled, food prices have soared. The prices of some basic staples, such as rice and wheat, have shot up by as much as 80 percent in some places.

The UN estimates that global food prices have risen 65 percent since 2002, with grain rising 42 percent and dairy products 80 percent last year alone. Jacques Diouf, the director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation warned Wednesday that unrest linked to food and fuel prices, which has been seen in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal, could spread to even more countries.

Zoellick said the World Bank, whose main task is to fight poverty in developing countries, estimated "that 33 countries around the world face potential conflict and social unrest because of the acute hike in food and energy prices." In countries where food made up half to three-quarters of consumer spending, "there is no margin for survival," he said.

According to Zoellick, high and volatile food prices will continue for years, because of growing populations, changing diets, rising energy prices, the emergence of biofuels that force farmers to choose between lucrative fuel crops and foodstuffs, and climate change.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown also urged world leaders to intervene to tackle rising food scarcity. In a letter released Thursday, he writes about the urgent need to address rising food prices and the impact of biofuel production on agriculture. "Rising food prices threaten to roll back progress we have made in recent years on development," Brown wrote. "For the first time in decades, the number of people facing hunger is growing."

http://www.businessweek.com/print/globalbiz/content/apr2008/gb20080410_123589.htm

Rice shortage
Mohammad Ataul Hoque, On e-mail



An ominous shortage of rice globally is looming large over the rice consuming countries of South Asia, of which Bangladesh tops the list. It appears the rice producing countries of this region are no longer capable of producing the quantity of rice required for feeding the ever increasing population, forcing them to stop their rice export. Re-fixation of the export price of rice at $1000 per ton abruptly, instead of $500, by India is a glaring example of how alarming the situation is. The cost of rice if imported at this rate will be not less than Tk.80 per kg. which the people of this country will never be able to buy. Undoubtedly, Bangladesh is going to be the worst affected country as it needs to feed over 150 million people whose staple food is rice, a large portion of which is imported. Therefore, it is high time short and long-term strategies are formulated and measures adopted to tackle the situation before it is too late.

Let us not forget our failure in taking timely action to meet the shortage in our future electricity and gas requirements during the last 37 years, for which the country has to pay very dearly now. The policy makers and the leaders of the previous governments neither had the foresight and capability to understand, nor the will to take necessary steps to meet the challenge of future shortage in the energy sector. Let us learn from our past mistakes. Procrastination will not solve our problems.

Therefore, the issue of food security at present and in future demands immediate attention to obviate the impending famine like situation. Everybody realizes the adverse impact of food shortage on the economic, social and political situation of the country which may drive the nation completely overboard. Building a buffer stock of at least six months is needed to meet the present requirements based on correct statistics to avert a crisis. As suggested by the Bangladesh Bank Governor, foreign currency reserves could also be utilized to import food grains without any further delay. Import of all luxury goods, non essential items including cars and expensive vehicles for personal use should be discouraged to make foreign currency available for import of food grains. The people should also change their food habits.

Proper publicity, particularly at village level, by the government may prove effective in changing our food habit. There is no alternative to boosting production of food grains in the country and for this purpose supply of fertilisers and uninterrupted supply of electricity for irrigation are essential. The entire agriculture department should be restructured to provide all kinds of assistance to the farmers.

The population control department appears to have gone into hibernation with 'zero' activities in the last so many years. With accurate and reliable data, a plan should be drawn up to control the population boom. We must get rid of this curse-- the sooner, the better.


http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=31642

In nature, this would be a self-limiting problem. Maybe animals are smarter than we are...

Video available of the Haitian situation here on the right side of the page:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7337792.stm

The situation in the philippines has gotten worse per the availability of rice. Better quality tonner is now 33pesos a kilo when it was just 24 a month ago. They are predicting 70 pesos a kilo by June. The NFA government rice is being limited to 2Kilos a family right now. TEOTWAWKI anyone?

Yupper, its a crisis alright.

We should hurry up and throw lots of money and power at the UN, that'll make right won't it??????

Either way they can just wait a month or two till the fed takes over wall st, then they'll get all they want.

BrSpiritus said:

TEOTWAWKI anyone?

Click to expand...

It's scary how we're watching it unfold, right here on TB every day.

susie0884 said:

Video available of the Haitian situation here on the right side of the page:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7337792.stm

Click to expand...

Some text at that link:



Hungry mob attacks Haiti palace (April 8th)

Crowds of demonstrators in Haiti have tried to storm the presidential palace in the capital Port-au-Prince as protests continue over food prices.

Witnesses say the protesters used metal bins to try to smash down the palace gates before UN troops fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse them.

Several people are reported to have been injured in the clashes.

At least five people have been killed in Haiti since the unrest began last week in the southern city of Les Cayes.

The demonstrators outside the presidential palace said the rising cost of living in Haiti meant they were struggling to feed themselves.

"We are hungry," they shouted before attempting to smash open the palace gates.

In recent months, it has become common among Haiti's poor to use the expression "grangou klowox" or "eating bleach", to describe the daily hunger pains people face, because of the burning feeling in their stomachs.



Folks, there but for the grace of God go we.

FLF

.

Martin said:

T... World Bank President Robert Zoellick has called on world leaders to act to ease the global food crisis. Zoellick urged the United States, .... to help plug a $500 million (€319 million) shortfall in the United Nations' World Food Program. http://www.businessweek.com/print/globalbiz/content/apr2008/gb20080410_123589.htm

Click to expand...

Maybe someone should tell Robert Zoellick and the world leaders that the United States is bankrupt and sooner or later China will cut off the credit so we won't be able to continue borrowing millions of dollars to play nanny to the world.

I've always heard that when you find yourself in a hole you should STOP DIGGING!

Yupper, its a crisis alright.

We should hurry up and throw lots of money and power at the UN, that'll make right won't it??????

Click to expand...

Indeed. By crackee, I bet they'll even give the white farmers their land back in Ximbabwe.

Upheaval from rice crisis parallels turmoil in credit markets




By Marianne Stigset and Tony Dreibus

Cairo - From Cairo to New Delhi to Shanghai, the run on rice is threatening to disrupt worldwide food supplies as much as the scarcity of confidence on Wall Street earlier this year roiled credit markets.

China, Egypt, Vietnam and India, representing more than a third of global rice exports, curbed sales this year; Indonesia said it might do the same. Investigators in the Philippines, the world's biggest importer, raided warehouses last month to crack down on hoarding.

The World Bank said 33 nations from Mexico to Yemen might face "social unrest" after food and energy costs increased for six straight years.

Rice, the staple food for half the world, rose 2.4 percent to a record $21 (R163) per 45kg in Chicago yesterday, double from a year ago and a fivefold increase from 2001.

It might reach $22 by November, said Dennis DeLaughter, the owner of Progressive Farm Marketing in Texas.

"Rice will gain substantially over the next two years," said Roland Jansen, the chief executive of Swiss-based Mother Earth Investments, which holds 4 percent of its $100 million funds in the grain.

Governments would likely maintain curbs on exports "because those countries want to be able to continue to feed their own populations", he said.

The upheaval parallels the turmoil in global capital markets that seized up nine months ago, when subprime mortgages collapsed.

"Just like in the credit markets back in the first quarter of this year, where people were not lending money to each other, they're not giving rice to each other," David Darst, chief investment strategist at Morgan Stanley Global Wealth Management, told Bloomberg Television.

Rice-growing nations are driving up prices for producers that want to sell abroad. The Vietnam Food Association said it had asked members to stop signing export contracts through June, following China, which imposed a 5 percent tax on exports as of January 1.

Egypt banned rice shipments through October.

Prices "are not coming back to the levels we came from", said Mamadou Ciss, the head of Singapore-based rice broker Hermes Investments. Vietnam's 5 percent broken grain rice might be 40 percent higher within three months, he said.

Record grain prices are stoking inflation.

Wholesale costs in India rose 7 percent in the week to March 22, the fastest pace in more than three years, underscoring the threat from rising food costs, said the ministry of commerce and industry in New Delhi.

The increase may boost profits for suppliers. Padiberas Nasional, Malaysia's only licensed rice supplier, rose the most in seven years in Kuala Lumpur stock exchange trading last week.

Goldman Sachs Group forecasts that all the agricultural commodities it covers will rise during the next six months, except for sugar. Global cereal demand would expand 2.6 percent this year, 1.6 percentage points above the 10-year average, said the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome.

World rice stockpiles are at their lowest levels since the 1980s. The UN forecast that exports would drop 3.5 percent this year.

Demand would increase 0.6 percent this year to 422.5 million tons, while production would rise about 1 percent to 422.9 million tons, said the US department of agriculture.

Global rice yields expanded more than 40 percent from 1980 to 2000, according to data compiled by the department. They have increased only about 5 percent since then.

Stockpiles will fall to 75.2 million tons, about half of where they were at the start of the decade, the data show.

There had been no significant advances in rice seed technology in at least four decades, said Mehdi Chaouky, an agricultural analyst with Diapason Commodities Management in London.

The so-called Green Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s introduced better seeds, technology and irrigation and chemical fertilisers to farming. That improved yields and buoyed food production, according to the FAO.

Some analysts said buyers in Thailand and Vietnam were hoarding grain and might release it in coming weeks, causing prices to drop. Another risk for speculators is that the increase will lead farmers to grow more crops.

For now, governments are limiting exports to ensure they have enough food at home. Vietnam, the third-biggest rice exporter after Thailand and India, will reduce shipments 11 percent this year to 4 million tons.

"Bread is losing its place as the main staple food and rice is replacing it, and this created the problem," said Ali Sharaf Eldin, the chairman of Egypt's Chamber of Grains.


http://www.busrep.co.za/general/print_article.php?fArticleId=4342282&fSectionId=561&fSetId=662

April 10, 2008
Editorial
The World Food Crisis
Most Americans take food for granted. Even the poorest fifth of households in the United States spend only 16 percent of their budget on food. In many other countries, it is less of a given. Nigerian families spend 73 percent of their budgets to eat, Vietnamese 65 percent, Indonesians half. They are in trouble.

Last year, the food import bill of developing countries rose by 25 percent as food prices rose to levels not seen in a generation. Corn doubled in price over the last two years. Wheat reached its highest price in 28 years. The increases are already sparking unrest from Haiti to Egypt. Many countries have imposed price controls on food or taxes on agricultural exports.

Last week, the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, warned that 33 nations are at risk of social unrest because of the rising prices of food. “For countries where food comprises from half to three-quarters of consumption, there is no margin for survival,” he said.

Prices are unlikely to drop soon. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says world cereal stocks this year will be the lowest since 1982.

The United States and other developed countries need to step up to the plate. The rise in food prices is partly because of uncontrollable forces — including rising energy costs and the growth of the middle class in China and India. This has increased demand for animal protein, which requires large amounts of grain.

But the rich world is exacerbating these effects by supporting the production of biofuels. The International Monetary Fund estimates that corn ethanol production in the United States accounted for at least half the rise in world corn demand in each of the past three years. This elevated corn prices. Feed prices rose. So did prices of other crops — mainly soybeans — as farmers switched their fields to corn, according to the Agriculture Department.

Washington provides a subsidy of 51 cents a gallon to ethanol blenders and slaps a tariff of 54 cents a gallon on imports. In the European Union, most countries exempt biofuels from some gas taxes and slap an average tariff equal to more than 70 cents a gallon of imported ethanol. There are several reasons to put an end to these interventions. At best, corn ethanol delivers only a small reduction in greenhouse gases compared with gasoline. And it could make things far worse if it leads to more farming in forests and grasslands. Rising food prices provide an urgent argument to nix ethanol’s supports.

Over the long term, agricultural productivity must increase in the developing world. Mr. Zoellick suggested rich countries could help finance a “green revolution” to increase farm productivity and raise crop yields in Africa. But the rise in food prices calls for developed nations to provide more immediate assistance. Last month, the World Food Program said rising grain costs blew a hole of more than $500 million in its budget for helping millions of victims of hunger around the world.

Industrial nations are not generous, unfortunately. Overseas aid by rich countries fell 8.4 percent last year from 2006. Developed nations would have to increase their aid budgets by 35 percent over the next three years just to meet the commitments they made in 2005.

They must not let this target slip. Continued growth of the middle class in China and India, the push for renewable fuels and anticipated damage to agricultural production caused by global warming mean that food prices are likely to stay high. Millions of people, mainly in developing countries, could need aid to avoid malnutrition. Rich countries’ energy policies helped create the problem. Now those countries should help solve it


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/10/o...login&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

So let me get this straight

There are NINE THOUSAND U.N. "peacekeepers" in Haiti and they are "powerless" to stop the violence. Then what in the name of Sam Hail are they doing there??? If they are not going to be given the power to do anything then withdraw them and send them home.

(not that I am saying we should empower a U.N. military arm, Gawds what a friggin nightmare that would be)

But if they are not able to do anything effectively then remove them to get THEM out of harms way...DUH

Besides the way unrest is spreading around the world I would think some of those countries that the soldiers belong to might want the additional manpower back at home for security!

Independent.co.uk
India's struggle to feed a billion people
By Andrew Buncombe In Delhi
Saturday, 12 April 2008


Vijender Vardhman knows a thing or two about rice. From his small family-run store in south Delhi he sells a remarkable 63 varieties, not to mention a multitude of pulses, grains and packaged goods squeezed tightly on to his shelves.


Over the past six months the price of India's most common staple, basmati rice, has increased by up to 70 per cent and ordinary rice by about 10 per cent. "The basmati rice is now between 80 to 100 rupees [£1-1.25] a kilo," he says.

If Mr Vardhman seemed relaxed as he sat behind his counter yesterday evening, the Indian government is certainly not. With a billion of the three billion or so people who rely on rice every day living within its borders, India was one of the first countries to take measures to protect its domestic supplies by halting exports of all but basmati, which sells at a premium.

India has been a major exporter of rice and its decision has forced other governments in the region to seek alternative supplies as the rice crisis continues.

Indeed, the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute has said the cost of rice, already at around $1,000 a tonne, will continue to rise as demand outstrips supply. "We have been consuming more than we have been producing and research to increase rice productivity is needed to address this imbalance," it stated.

Of all the countries in Asia where rice is a staple, it is the Philippines that is struggling most to deal with the crisis. As a big importer of rice, the country's government has been desperately trying to secure supplies in a bid to safeguard its stocks.

Last week President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was forced to do a deal with Vietnam to buy 1.5 milion tonnes of rice at $708 (£360) a tonne, almost 50 per cent higher than the price in January. She is not the only one resorting to desperate measures in a region where for most people a meal consists of a bowl of rice and where the grain has considerable cultural significance. Cambodia, where food prices have jumped by around 40 per cent in the last year, has also imposed a ban on rice exports while Sri Lanka has been trying to negotiate a deal with the Burmese military authorities to solve a shortfall.

In Bangladesh, a paramilitary group has been given oversight of the rice markets to prevent price rises. In Thailand, where the phrase for "to eat" literally translates as "eat rice", there have been reports that people are hoarding rice, adding to the already increased prices. Stores have set limits on the number of bags they sell to individuals to deter this.

But hoarding is a comparatively minor reason for the dramatic rises of the last year.

Asia's rapid development, with a larger and wealthier middle class consuming more food, has been a big factor. At the same time, land that was once used for rice production was given over to housing development, industry and even golf courses.

Since 2006, an additional reason has been the growth of the biofuels market which has encouraged more farmers to grow corn rather than rice. As a result of all of this, global stocks are at their lowest in two decades.

There have also been local factors. In November, a cyclone in Bangladesh ruined the entire autumn crop of about 800,000 tonnes, forcing the country to import an extra 2.4 million tonnes to avoid famine. In Vietnam, which has also imposed a ban on exports, bad weather and crop-pest infestations have also lowered harvests.


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...ed-a-billion-people-808137.html?service=Print

Excellent thread, and alot to be learned from it, before we find the same situations on our shores. Like I said the other day, we as a country must rearrange our thinking on food and realize how precious it really is.

And, social unrest around the world just fomments into a further unstabilization of the globe just leads to more upheaval on the global front, inevitably affecting even the countries relatively stable.

Philippines Caught in Rice Squeeze
Complicated Blend of Economic Factors Requires Government Action, Experts Warn

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 12, 2008; A01



MANILA, April 11 -- More than anywhere else in Asia, the soaring price of rice has become a good-vs.-evil drama in the Philippines, one of the world's largest importers of rice.

Traders who fiddle with the price of the nation's all-important staple now face life in prison. Police are raiding warehouses in search of hoarders. Soldiers and police have been mobilized to help sell government-subsidized rice to the poor.

"Anyone caught stealing rice from the people, we will seek to throw in jail," President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo warned this week, as part of her high-profile crackdown on rice cheaters.

For all of Arroyo's theatrics in recent days, the fundamental reasons behind the recent spike in rice prices -- in the Philippines and across the world -- are neither new nor part of a morality play.

As experts have been warning for years, the cost of growing rice -- thanks to much higher fuel and fertilizer prices -- has been rising faster than the price paid by consumers. At the same time, yields on rice farms have leveled off, as spending on agricultural research has declined. And consumption of imported rice has increased sharply, especially in Africa.

Something had to give. The world price of rice has jumped by close to 80 percent since January 2007. Not all of that increase has yet been felt by consumers here, but retail rice prices are up by 20 to 30 percent, and prices paid to Filipino farmers for their spring crop have jumped by as much as 50 percent.

"The price of rice is going to stay high," said Robert S. Zeigler, director general of the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute.

Governments, though, can almost certainly guarantee an abundant long-term supply of rice in most of Asia, according to Zeigler and many other experts. "We can deal with these challenges, if we have good government policies and long-term investment," Zeigler said.

As explained by rice researchers and farm economists, the solutions are as simple as better maintenance of irrigation ditches and as complicated as developing a new generation of fast-growing rice.

But in the Philippines, at least so far, the government has made few commitments to long-term solutions. It is confronting the rice crisis with moves that grab headlines: threats of lifetime prison sentences, warehouse raids and troop deployments.

A Perverse Effect

In international trade, rice is an unusual grain. About 7 percent of world production is sold across borders, far less than wheat or corn.

In most Asian countries, the bulk of the crop is kept at home, because rice is much more than a mere food. It is a strategic, riot-preventing political resource -- an emotionally resonant symbol of plentitude and proud self-reliance.

Thanks to a research-driven surge in rice yields that was part of the Green Revolution of the 1960s, rice symbolism across Asia has never been so good, at least until last month.

The largest rice-eating nations -- China and India -- usually grow more than enough for domestic consumption.

Even the Philippines, which buys 7 percent of total world rice imports, produces about 90 percent of the rice its 90 million people need. The amount of land planted in rice is at record levels here, and the crop has increased annually for years.

The pan-Asian surge in rice yields, though, has had a perverse effect. It convinced many governments that they no longer needed to invest in research and extension services aimed at improving harvests.

As a result, spending on those programs has been stagnant or falling for 15 years. The International Rice Research Institute has lost half its funding over that time, Zeigler said. He added that the U.S. Agency for International Development has this year zeroed out its funding for the institute.

An Import-Export Divide

Membership in Asia's separate and unequal rice clubs -- importers and exporters -- is determined by relative amounts of land and water.

The standout exporters are Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia, which have fertile river deltas with land and climate that are nearly perfect for rice cultivation. At the other extreme are countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. These island nations have limited land area, transport complications, problems with typhoons and long histories as importers of rice.

Thanks to the recent surge in prices and the resulting alarm among Asian governments, rice researchers and farm economists say that long-term prospects for research-driven increases in rice yields in Southeast Asia as a whole are excellent, given the region's natural advantages.

But rice self-sufficiency in a nation such as the Philippines is a much taller order -- one that is defied by history, weather and a population growth rate that is among the highest in Asia.

"Over the past 100 years, no matter what we do, we have almost always been importing rice," said Rolando Dy, executive director of the Center for Food and Agribusiness at Manila's University of Asia in the Pacific.

Imports for the Poor

To work toward the symbolically important but geographically unrealistic goal of rice self-sufficiency, the Philippine government has a long, costly and ultimately unsuccessful history of limiting imports.

The professed goal is to motivate Philippine farmers -- with higher prices in a protected market -- to grow as much rice as they can.

For nearly a century, this has meant that Filipino consumers have paid higher prices for rice than people in countries where the grain is grown more efficiently. Still, local farmers are falling further and further behind the rice-consuming demands of a country where the poor eat far more rice per capita than the rich or middle class and are by far the fastest-growing segment of the population.

To head off potential rice riots, the government reigns as the primary buyer of imported rice. Its official policy is to sell the imports to the poor at a price they can afford.

Jesus Foncardas, an unemployed father of five in Manila, was one of tens of thousands of Filipinos who queued up this week to buy subsidized rice from the National Food Authority. Its price is about 20 cents a pound, half the price of rice in stores.

"We used to ignore this government rice, but the price of rice in the stores has gone up so much," said Foncardas, 57. "I had to stand in line for a half-hour to buy from the government."

While government-imported rice is supposed to be for the poor, getting it to the poor at a price they can afford has proved difficult.

For decades, unscrupulous traders have bought this rice at the subsidized price, then repackaged and resold it at the higher market price, pocketing a handsome profit. "The system promotes corruption, with bureaucrats in the National Food Authority in cahoots with the traders," said Dy, the professor of agribusiness.

To end this pattern of corruption, Arroyo suspended the licenses this spring of thousands of retailers to sell subsidized rice in shops across the country. She ordered the National Food Authority to sell it, from government stalls and from churchyards across the country.

"I am leading the charge to crack down on any form of corruption," Arroyo said this week.

Her government has also instructed fast-food restaurants to halve servings of rice and advised Filipinos to save their rice leftovers.

So far, the most visible human consequences of Arroyo's charge are long lines of poor people standing in the hot sun in front of a limited number of the new government-run outlets, waiting to buy small quantities of the subsidized staple that the government insists is not now in short supply.

Televised images of poor people in lines "create the impression of severe shortage, consumer panic and an administration that seems to be losing control of the situation," according to an editorial Friday in the Business Mirror, the country's leading economic newspaper.

Farmers 'Making a Jackpot'

Outside of Manila, on the small farms where nearly all of the country's rice is grown and harvested by hand, the spike in rice prices has arrived in time for the April dry-season harvest.

"We are making a jackpot on this," said Sesinando Masajo, 74, who recently sold most of his crop at a price 55 percent higher than what he was paid in October.

He said he has begun buying fertilizer for the rainy-season crop in the fall. He is also considering planting a third rice crop this year.

"I would describe rice farmers as being very happy," he said.

Economists and rice researchers expect that higher farm prices should by autumn result in a sharp increase in rice production across Asia.

For the Philippine government to take maximum advantage of the market incentives, it should invest in irrigation maintenance, provide more farmers with hybrid seeds and repair potholes in farm-to-market roads, according to several experts at local universities and at the International Rice Research Institute. Whether the government, which has neglected these issues for years, will now invest in them is not yet clear.

Masajo, for one, applauds all these ideas. He would also like the government to get out of the price-regulation business.

"I don't like government control," he said. "It is like martial law. You can be pushed around."



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/11/AR2008041104162_pf.html

Fears of food shortage as rice prices keep climbing
LARRY JAGAN


Food prices are continuing to sky-rocket throughout Asia, causing many governments to intervene to try to stabilise their domestic rice prices for fear of acute shortages in the future and possible food riots. Many aid agencies working with the region's poorest people, including the UN's World Food Programme, are increasingly worried that food shortages and price rises will severely affect their food assistance programmes.

Rice _ the staple product across the region _ is the main concern, as it has doubled in price over the last two months, and continues to rise. Many exporting nations have implemented bans and restrictions on export to try to dampen local market prices.

Panic buying, rationing and hoarding are increasing alarmingly, fuelled by fears that rice and other foodstuff may run out soon in many Asian countries, despite repeated government calls for calm.

''I am worried about the price of rice _ if it continues to increase I won't be able to buy it because I just won't have enough money,'' said Pong Sothy, a 22-year-old waitress in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. ''Last month my money [salary] ran out halfway through the month because of price rises. So I had to borrow to survive. I just cannot keep doing that.''

''We are buying as much rice as we can now because we do not trust the government to make sure there is enough rice for the ordinary people to buy after Thingyan [next week's water festival that marks the new year],'' said Kyi Kyi, a retired civil servant in Burma's commercial capital, Rangoon. ''Already it's difficult to get enough for our family meals and donations to the monks during the Thingyan festival. We know for sure that the price is going to jump soon, it's already risen significantly since last month.''


Armed soldiers deployed as security escorts during rice distribution watch a large crowd waiting to buy cheap government rice outside the National Food Authority warehouse in Manila yesterday.


From the Philippines to Pakistan, from China to Indonesia, the fears are the same: food shortages and hunger. ''As prices go up in the world market many millions of people across Asia will face food shortages and possible starvation,'' said Paul Risely, WFP's regional spokesman.

Already in Pakistan several families have committed suicide because they could not afford to buy food for their children at the higher prices. Last month Abdul Shakoor, an unemployed labourer in Lahore, killed two of his daughters before committing suicide.

Just three days later, in another city in the same province of Punjab, Kurshid Bibi, the wife of an impoverished labourer, tried to drown her six children before trying to take her own life. She and four of the children were rescued. ''Death is better than slowly perishing from endless hunger and poverty,'' she told police.

It is the most vulnerable who are at risk of hunger and starvation. ''Malnutrition is almost certainly going to rise significantly in many of the poorest parts of Asia,'' said Jon Samuel, director of ActionAid.

The number of people at risk of hunger or starvation in Asia has more than doubled, according to the WFP.

''In Nepal alone the number of vulnerable people has jumped from four to eight million in the last six months as a result of the market price increases and related factors,'' said Tony Banbury the regional head of WFP. ''That's 30% of the population that are in acute need of assistance.''

Analysts fear that throughout Asia the poorest will suffer most and go hungry. In these countries many families spend more than 70% of their income on food. With the substantial increase in rice prices right across Asia, these people cannot buy enough food to feed their families. Government-subsidised rice or international aid programmes are their only saviour. But even these food assistance programmes are now at risk because of the price rises and shortages.

''Our school feeding programmes in Cambodia have been effectively suspended,'' said Thomas Keusters, the head of WFP operations in Cambodia. Schools are on vacation now because of the Khmer New Year holiday and will resume in two weeks' time. ''Effectively there will be no school feeding programme for the rest of the academic year, affecting 450,000 children in grades 1 to 6.''

Supplies of rice to WFP bought in the local market have stopped. Five suppliers have now defaulted and the WFP is short of 13,000 metric tonnes it needs for the programme over the next six months.

Rice importing countries are also particularly alarmed at the rising price of exports, and the increasing difficulty of securing stocks on the international market. World stocks of rice have fallen to their lowest since the early 1970s. Bangladesh, the Philippines and Sri Lanka are all desperately trying to buy fresh stocks of rice at a time when many exporting nations have banned or restricted their overseas sales. As a result, the export price for rice has soared to astronomic heights _ up to three times as expensive as it was three months ago.

The Philippines has only secured half its immediate needs from Vietnam, around 300,000 tonnes, and is expected to bid for more in the coming weeks.

Manila is expected to tender for up to a further million metre tonnes, according to one of Thailand's leading rice exporters, Vichai Sriprasert.

Bangladesh has managed to secure some 400,000 tonnes of rice from India, which has exempted some small quantities of rice for export on humanitarian grounds. Burma has also pledged to supply Dhaka with up to another 500,000 tonnes, though many agricultural experts suspect Dhaka will not be able to afford to pay for all of this.

Earlier this week Burma agreed to supply Colombo with 50,000 tonnes of rice shortly, at the very favourable price of US$400 a tonne, according to Anusa Palipta, a spokesman for the Sri Lankan government.

Sri Lanka is also getting 32,000 tonnes of rice from India and Pakistan in the near future.

But Asian governments remain nervous that the soaring rice prices will fuel political and social unrest.

''The massive food riots in the Haiti capital this week are a wake-up call for all Asian governments,'' according to ActionAid's Samuel.

''If immediate measures are not taken, like protective price and effective distribution mechanisms, there is likely to be food protests here, too.''

http://www.bangkokpost.com/printthis.php

Corn prices jump to record $6 on tight supplies

NEW YORK (AP)--Corn prices jumped to a record $6 a bushel April 3, driven up by an expected supply shortfall that will only add to Americans' growing grocery bill and further squeeze struggling ethanol producers.

Corn prices have shot up nearly 30 percent this year amid dwindling stockpiles and surging demand for the grain used to feed livestock and make alternative fuels including ethanol. Prices are poised to go even higher after the U.S. government this week predicted that American farmers--the world's biggest corn producers--will plant sharply less of the crop in 2008 compared to last year.

"It's a demand-driven market and we may not be planting enough acres to supply demand, so that adds to the bullishness of corn," said Elaine Kub, a grains analyst with DTN in Omaha, Neb.

Corn for the most actively traded May contract rose 4.25 cents to settle at $6 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade, after earlier rising to $6.025 a bushel--a new all-time high.

Worldwide demand for corn to feed livestock and to make biofuel is putting enormous pressure on global supply. And with the U.S. expected to plant less corn, the supply shortage will only worsen. The U.S. Department of Agriculture projected that farmers will plant 86 million acres of corn in 2008, an 8 percent drop from last year.

Moreover, cold, wet weather in parts of the U.S. corn belt may force farmers to delay spring planting, potentially sending prices even higher.

While corn growers are reaping record profits, U.S. consumers can expect even higher grocery bills--especially for meat and pork--as livestock producers are forced to pass on higher animal feed costs and thin their herd size.

"Higher corn prices is going to affect meat prices. If you're feeding with $6 corn, you'll definitely have some (cost) pressure," Kub said.

In addition, corn and corn syrup are used in an array of products, meaning the price of everything from candy to soft drinks will eventually go up, analysts say. It's the latest dose of bad news for U.S. consumers, who are already struggling with higher food costs from record increases in the price of wheat, soybeans and other agriculture products.

Another loser in higher corn costs is ethanol producers, who are struggling to squeeze out gains as corn's record-setting run outpaces the price of ethanol, currently at around $2.50 a gallon.

"For years, corn was cheap and fermentation processes for ethanol production came to completely dominate the biofuel industry in North America," Michael Jackson, president and chairman of Vancouver-based ethanol maker Syntec Biofuel, said recently. "Now, with corn prices well over $5 a bushel, corn ethanol economics have gone out the window."

The nation's 147 ethanol plants now have the capacity to produce 8.5 billion gallons of fuel a year, according to the Renewable Fuels Association. Corn is the basic feedstock for most of the plants and about 20 percent of last year's 13 billion bushel corn crop was consumed by ethanol production. That percentage is expected to increase to 30 percent for the next crop year, which ends Aug. 31, 2009, according to Terry Francl, a senior economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation.

There are still plans to build or expand another 61 plants, which will add about 5.1 billion gallons of capacity. However, as corn prices have climbed over the past year or so, construction of several plants has been halted or delayed, shaving about 500 million gallons worth of capacity off the original figure, according to Broadpoint Capital analyst Ron Oster.

At least one facility, the Alchem plant in Grafton, N.D., shut down late last year because of high prices.

A new plant hasn't broken ground over the past couple of quarters, Oster said, and while producers can have positive gross margins with ethanol at $2.50 a gallon and corn at $6 a bushel, that doesn't mean companies are profitable.

"Bottom line earnings are near break-even or modestly below break-even," he said.

Looking ahead, only the strongest ethanol producers will survive in an era of ever-rising corn prices, said Soleil Securities analyst Ian Horowitz.

"There are going to be some particular companies that definitely have the balance sheet and efficiencies that will be able to eke out a positive return in this kind of environment," Horowitz said. "And then there will be others that will suffer at the hands of $6 corn."


http://www.hpj.com/archives/2008/apr08/apr14/Cornpricesjumptorecord6onti.cfm

The G Effect: Rising Food Prices & Riots
by Elvis Manning
April 11, 2008 10:56 PM EDT (Updated: April 11, 2008 10:58 PM EDT) views: 49 | comments: 4
Bands of young men carry stick and rocks. The rebels set up burning tires for roadblocks. Mobs loot warehouses, stores and government offices. Gunfire rings out through upscale neighborhoods and slums alike. Helicopters circle in the air as black smoke fills the city from burning tires.
Welcome to a new effect of globalization and panic policy, the food war.

Global food prices are up 40% on average for the last nine months and people aren't happy. Nationals of Haiti are unhappy about food prices because they earn less than $2 a day. Similar problems with pricing exist worldwide.

U.N peacekeepers are on the scene in Haiti. President Preval has told Haiti citizens to go home. "The solution is not to go around destroying stores. I'm giving you orders to stop."

Haiti's U.S.-backed president, Rene Preval, urged the U.S. Congress to cut food taxes in his first public address about high food prices.

High prices are stirring unrest from Vietnam to Egypt. In Ivory Coast last week, women rioted with one person dead. Farmers have been arrested for hoarding surpluses. The UN International Fund for Agriculture predicts food riots will become common on the world scene. Rising food prices are acute in Asia and Africa, where the cost of food takes a chunk out of family income. The problem is more acute because more people live in cities than ever before.

The UN World Food Program feeds nearly 89 million destitute people. As usual, money is in short supply and will run out by May 1.

In Haiti, imports have decimated local production of rice which has compounded the food crisis. The same policies have damaged agricultural production in other countries. Farm subsidies in many nations have destroyed production values.

In the U.S. and Europe, a rush created by governments to devote more farmland to growing bio-fuels has simply fueled higher prices with little benefit otherwise. In the U.S. alone, 18% of grain production is being used to make ethanol, enough food to feed 250 million people. Meanwhile, less money has been invested in agricultural productivity.

The panic over global climate change has created additional pressure on the United Nations. The U.N. Secretary General is suggesting a review of climate policies to quell international anxiety. Freak weather has played into the crisis. The U.N. blames industrialization and urbanizing of nations as well as the need to create better irrigation and better grain seed. Through panic measures designed empower and create change, the U.N. is creating its own kind of "Soylent Green".

Dramatic changes in the global economy, i.e., globalization include higher oil prices and lower food reserves topped by growing demand in China and India.

A revolution of the hungry is in place with no solution in sight. This is worse than poverty.

TNTalk!

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977308809

Friday, Apr. 11, 2008
How Hunger Could Topple Regimes
By Tony Karon





U.N. peacekeepers patrol in an armoured vehicle during protests on a street in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.


The idea of the starving masses driven by their desperation to take to the streets and overthrow the ancien regime has seemed impossibly quaint since capitalism triumphed so decisively in the Cold War. Since then, the spectacle of hunger sparking revolutionary violence has been the stuff of Broadway musicals rather than the real world of politics. And yet, the headlines of the past month suggest that skyrocketing food prices are threatening the stability of a growing number of governments around the world. Ironically, it may be the very success of capitalism in transforming regions previously restrained by various forms of socialism that has helped create the new crisis.

Haiti is in flames as food riots have turned into a violent challenge to the vulnerable government; Egypt's authoritarian regime faces a mounting political threat over its inability to maintain a steady supply of heavily subsidized bread to its impoverished citizens; Cote D'Ivoire, Cameroon, Mozambique, Uzbekistan, Yemen and Indonesia are among the countries that have recently seen violent food riots or demonstrations. World Bank president Robert Zoellick noted last week that world food prices had risen 80% over the past three years, and warned that at least 33 countries face social unrest as a result.

The sociology of the food riot is pretty straightforward: The usually impoverished majority of citizens may acquiesce to the rule of detested corrupt and repressive regimes when they are preoccupied with the daily struggle to feed their children and themselves, but when circumstances render it impossible to feed their hungry children, normally passive citizens can very quickly become militants with nothing to lose. That's especially true when the source of their hunger is not the absence of food supplies but their inability to afford to buy the available food supplies. And that's precisely what we're seeing in the current wave of global food-price inflation. As Josette Sheeran of the U.N. World Food Program put it last month, "We are seeing food on the shelves but people being unable to afford it."

When all that stands between hungry people and a warehouse full of rice and beans is a couple of padlocks and a riot policeman (who may be the neighbor of those who're trying to get past him, and whose own family may be hungry too), the invisible barricade of private-property laws can be easily ignored. Doing whatever it takes to feed oneself and a hungry child, after all, is a primal human instinct. So, with prices of basic foods skyrocketing to the point that even the global aid agencies — whose function is to provide emergency food supplies to those in need — are unable, for financial reasons, to sustain their current commitments to the growing army of the hungry, brittle regimes around the world have plenty of reason for anxiety.

The hunger has historically been an instigator of revolutions and civil wars, it is not a sufficient condition for such violence. For a mass outpouring of rage spurred by hunger to translate into a credible challenge to an established order requires an organized political leadership ready to harness that anger against the state. It may not be all that surprising, then, that Haiti has been one of the major flashpoints of the new wave of hunger-generated political crises; the outpouring of rage there has been channeled into preexisting furrows of political discontent. And that's why there may be greater reason for concern in Egypt, where the bread crisis comes on top of a mounting challenge to the regime's legitimacy by a range of opposition groups.

The social theories of Karl Marx were long ago discarded as of little value, even to revolutionaries. But he did warn that capitalism had a tendency to generate its own crises. Indeed, the spread of capitalism, and its accelerated industrialization and wealth-creation, may have fomented the food-inflation crisis — by dramatically accelerating competition for scarce resources. The rapid industrialization of China and India over the past two decades — and the resultant growth of a new middle class fast approaching the size of America's — has driven demand for oil toward the limits of global supply capacity. That has pushed oil prices to levels five times what they were in the mid 1990s, which has also raised pressure on food prices by driving up agricultural costs and by prompting the substitution of biofuel crops for edible ones on scarce farmland. Moreover, those new middle class people are eating a lot better than their parents did — particularly more meat. Producing a single calorie of beef can, by some estimates, require eight or more calories of grain feed, and expanded meat consumption therefore has a multiplier effect on demand for grains. Throw in climate disasters such as the Australian drought and recent rice crop failures, and you have food inflation spiraling so fast that even the U.N. agency created to feed people in emergencies is warning that it lacks the funds to fulfill its mandate.

The reason officials such as Zoellick are sounding the alarm may be that the food crisis, and its attendant political risks, are not likely to be resolved or contained by the laissez-faire operation of capitalism's market forces. Government intervention on behalf of the poor — so out of fashion during globalization's roaring '90s and the current decade — may be about to make a comeback.

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http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1730107,00.html

Hunger. Strikes. Riots. The food crisis bites

Across the world a crisis is unfolding at alarming speed. Climate change, China's increasing consumption and the dash for biofuels are causing food shortages and rocketing prices - sparking riots in cities from the Caribbean to the Far East. Robin McKie and Heather Stewart report on the millions facing starvation - and the growing threat to global security

Robin McKie and Heather Stewart The Observer, Sunday April 13 2008

It is the constant sensation of hunger that makes Kamla Devi so angry. She argues with shopkeepers in New Delhi over prices and quarrels with her husband, a casual labourer, over his wages - about 50 rupees (60p) a day.

'When I go to the market and see how little I can get for my money, it makes me want to hit the shopkeepers and thrash the government,' she says. A few months ago, Kamla - who is 42 - decided she and her husband could no longer afford to eat twice a day. The couple, who have already sent their two teenage sons to live with more prosperous relatives, now exist on only one daily meal. At midday Kamla cooks a dozen roti (a round, flat Indian bread) with some vegetables fried with onions and spices. If there are some left, they will eat them at night. The only other sustenance that the couple have are occasional cups of sugared tea.

'My husband and I would argue every night. In the end he told me it wouldn't make his wages grow larger. Instead we went down to one meal a day to cut costs.'

It is a grim, unsettling story. Yet it is certainly not an exceptional one. Across the world, a food crisis is now unfolding with frightening speed. Hundreds of millions of men and women who, only a few months ago, were able to provide food for their families have found rocketing prices of wheat, rice and cooking oil have left them facing the imminent prospect of starvation. The spectre of catastrophe now looms over much of the planet.

In less than a year, the price of wheat has risen 130 per cent, soya by 87 per cent and rice by 74 per cent. According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, there are only eight to 12 weeks of cereal stocks in the world, while grain supplies are at their lowest since the 1980s.

For the Devi family, and hundreds of millions of others like them, the impact has been calamitous, as Robert Zoellick, the World Bank President, warned at this weekend's G7 meeting in Washington. Brandishing a bag of rice, he told startled delegates from the world's richest nations that the world was now perched at the edge of catastrophe.

'This is not just about meals forgone today, or about increasing social unrest, it is about lost learning potential for children and adults in the future, stunted intellectual and physical growth,' he said. Without urgent action to resolve the crisis, he added, the fight against poverty could be set back by seven years.

Not surprisingly, these swiftly rising prices have unleashed serious political unrest in many places. In Dhaka yesterday 10,000 Bangladeshi textile workers clashed with police. Dozens were injured, including 20 policemen, in a protest triggered by food costs that was eventually quelled by baton charges and teargas. In Haiti, demonstrators recently tried to storm the presidential palace after prices of staple foods leaped 50 per cent.

In Egypt, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique, Senegal and Cameroon there have been demonstrations, sometimes involving fatalities, as starving, desperate people have taken to the streets. And in Vietnam the new crime of rice rustling - in which crops are stripped at night from fields by raiders - has led to the banning of all harvesting machines from roads after sunset and to farmers, armed with shotguns, camping around their fields 24 hours a day.

But what are the factors that led to this global unrest? What has triggered the price rises that have put the world's basic foodstuffs out of reach for a rising fraction of its population? And what measures must be taken by politicians, world leaders and monetary chiefs to rectify the crisis? Not surprisingly, the first two of these questions tend to be the easier ones to answer. Economists and financiers point to a number of factors that have combined to create the current crisis, a perfect storm in which several apparently unconnected events come together with disastrous effects.

One key issue highlighted at the G7 meeting was the decision by the US government, made several years ago, to give domestic subsidies to its farmers so that they could grow corn that can then be fermented and distilled into ethanol, a biofuel which can be mixed with petrol. This policy helps limit US dependence on oil imports and also gives support to the nation's farmers. However, by taking over land - about 20 million acres so far in the United States - that would otherwise have been used to grow wheat and other food crops, US food production has dropped dramatically. Prices of wheat, soya and other crops have been pushed up significantly as a result.

Other nations, including Argentina, Canada and some European countries, have adopted similar, but more restrained, biofuel policies. But without mentioning any countries by name, Zoellick clearly pointed the finger of blame at the US. Everyone should 'look closely at the effects of the dash for biofuels', he said. 'I would hope that countries that, for whatever reason, energy security and others, have emphasised biofuel development will be particularly sensitive to the call to meet the emergency needs for people who may not have enough food to eat.'

This point has also been stressed recently by the UK government's chief scientific adviser, Professor John Beddington. 'It is very hard to imagine how we can see the world growing enough crops to produce renewable energy and at the same time meet the enormous demand for food,' he said. 'The supply of food really isn't keeping up.'

For his part, Hank Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary - asked about the impact of US energy policies on food prices on Friday - tried to bat away the question. 'This is a complex area, with a number of causes,' he told reporters. The first priority, he added, was to get food supplies to people who need them, before considering the longer-term reasons for the rising prices.

It was not a point shared by the chief of staff in the United Nations trade and development division, Taffere Tesfachew, who flew to London last week ahead of a vital meeting of the leaders of the world's poorest nations in Accra, the capital of Ghana. Instead of an agenda designed to achieve economic progress in the developing world, the meeting will instead focus on the pressing issue of food. Tesfachew said that decades of aid has been skewed to ambitious industrialisation programmes and that the World Bank and others have failed to invest in the agricultural sector. 'We believe these high food prices won't disappear in the next two years, so now is the time to redress imbalances in terms of ethanol subsidies,' he said.

Zoellick was also clear that action was now urgently needed. 'In the US and Europe over the last year we have been focusing on the prices of gasoline at the pumps. While many worry about filling their tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs. And it's getting more and more difficult every day,' added Zoellick, who made an impassioned plea to the world's rich nations to provide emergency help, including $500m in extra funding to the UN World Food Programme.

This call was backed by finance ministers from the G24, who represent the leading developing countries, who also demanded extra cash to help cushion the poor against the shock of rising food prices. As well as causing hunger and malnutrition, the rising cost of basic foodstuffs risks blowing a hole in the budgets of food-importing countries, many of them in Africa, they argued.

As to the other factors that have combined to trigger the current food crisis, experts also point to the connected issue of climate change. As the levels of carbon dioxide rise in the atmosphere, meteorologists have warned that weather patterns are becoming increasingly disturbed, causing devastation in many areas. For several consecutive years, Australia - once a prime grower of wheat - has found its production ruined by drought, for example. Scarcity, particularly on Asia's grain markets, has then driven up prices even further.

Some campaigners see climate change as the most pressing challenge facing the world while others now say that biofuels - grown to offset fossil fuel use - is taking food out of the mouths of some of the world's poorest people. The net result will be eco-warriers battling with poverty campaigners for the moral high ground.

On top of these issues, there is the growing wealth of China and its 1 billion inhabitants. Once the possessor of a relatively poor rural economy, China has becoming increasingly industrialised and its middle classes have swelled in numbers.

One impact has been to trigger a doubling in meat consumption, particularly pork. As the country's farmers have sought to feed more and more pigs, more and more grain has been bought by them. However, China has only 7 per cent of the world's arable land and that figure is shrinking as farmland has been ravaged by pollution and water shortages.

The net result has been to decrease domestic supplies of grain just as demand for it has started to boom. Again the impact has struck worst in the Third World, with wheat and other grain prices soaring.

And finally there is the issue of vegetable oils. Soya and palm oils are a major source of calories in Asia. But flooding in Malaysia and a drought in Indonesia have limited supplies.

In addition, these oils are now being sought as bio-diesel, which is used as a direct substitute for diesel in many countries, including Australia. The impact has been all too familiar: an alarming drop in supplies for the people of the Third World as prices of this basic commodity have soared.

One such victim is Kamla Devi. She has already had to abandon dhal, a central, protein-rich dish of lentils that was a key part of her family's diet for several months. Now the cooking of fried food - in particular, pooris: hot, puffed, oil-soaked bread - has had to follow suit for the simple reason that cooking oil has become unaffordable.

'It has affected my health,' she says. 'The rich are becoming richer. They go to shopping malls and they don't need to worry. The problem with prices only matters for the poor people like me.'

· Additional reporting by Amelia Gentleman and Nick Mathiasson

Four key factors behind the spreading fear of starvation across the globe

Growing consumption

Six months ago Zhou Jian closed down his car parts business and launched himself as a pork butcher. Since then the 26-year-old businessman's Shanghai shop has been crowded out - despite a 58 per cent rise in the price of pork in the past year - and his income has trebled.

As China's emerging middle classes become richer, their consumption of meat has increased by more than 150 per cent per head since 1980. In those days, meat was scarce, rationed at around 1kg per person per month and used sparingly in rice and noodle dishes, stir fried to preserve cooking oil.

Today, the average Chinese consumer eats more than 50kg of meat a year. To feed the millions of pigs on its farms, China is now importing grain on a huge scale, pushing up its prices worldwide.

Palm oil crisis

The oil palm tree is the most highly efficient producer of vegetable oil, with one acre yielding as much oil as eight acres of soybeans. Unfortunately, it takes eight years to grow to maturity and demand has outstripped supply. Vegetable oils provide an important source of calories in the developing world, and their shortage has contributed to the food crisis.

A drought in Indonesia and flooding in Malaysia has also hit the crop. While farmers and plantation companies hurriedly clear land to replant, it will take time before their efforts bear fruit. Palm oil prices jumped nearly 70 per cent last year, hitting the poorest families. When a store in Chongqing in China announced a cooking-oil promotion in November, a stampede left three dead and 31 injured.

Biofuel demand

The rising demand for ethanol, a biofuel that is mixed with petrol to bring down prices at the pump, has transformed the landscape of Iowa. Today this heartland of the Midwest is America's cornbelt, with the corn crop stretching as far as the eye can see.

Iowa produces almost half of the entire output of ethanol in the US, with 21 ethanol-producing plants as farmers tear down fences, dig out old soya bean crops, buy up land and plant yet more corn. It has been likened to a new gold rush.

But none of it is for food. And as the demand for ethanol increases, yet more farmers will pile in for the great scramble to plant corn - instead of grain. The effect will be to further worsen world grain shortages.

Global warming

The massive grain storage complex outside Tottenham, New South Wales, today lies virtually empty. Normally, it would be half-full. As the second largest exporter of grain after the US, Australia usually expects to harvest around 25 million tonnes a year. But, because of a five-year drought, thought to have been caused by climate change, it managed just 9.8 million tonnes in 2006.

Farmers such as George Grieg, who has farmed here for 50 years, have rarely known it to be so bad. Many have not even recovered the cost of planting and caring for their crops, and are being forced into debt. With global wheat prices at an all-time high, all they can do is cling on in the hope of a bumper crop next time - if they are lucky.

Food in figures

93,000,000 Acres of corn planted by US farmers last year, up 19 per cent on 2006.

76% Amount of US corn used for animal feed.

8kg Amount of grain it takes to produce 1kg of beef.

20% Portion of US corn used to produce five billion gallons of ethanol in 2006-07.

50kg Quantity of meat consumed annually by the average Chinese person, up from 20kg in 1985.

10% Anticipated share of biofuels used for transport in the EU by 2020.

$500m The UN World Food Programme's shortfall this year, in attempting to feed 89 million needy people.

9.2bn The world's predicted population by 2050. It's 6.6bn now.

130% The rise in the cost of wheat in 12 months.

16 times The overall food consumption of the world's richest 20 per cent compared with that of the poorest 20 per cent.

58% Jump in the price of pork in China in the past year.

$900 The cost of one tonne of Thai premier rice, up 30 per cent in a month.

Caroline Davies



http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/13/food.climatechange/print

http://www.thestar.com/News/Ideas/article/413769

FOOD FIGHTS
TheStar.com | Ideas | The coming hunger

The coming hunger

DAVID COOPER/TORONTO STAR
With the dramatic surge in the price of rice, corn, wheat and other basics, some experts predict the effects of a global food crisis are going to bite more quickly than climate change. Email story
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Riots over rising grain prices are ripping through the developing world and the United Nations warns there's worse to come. Was Malthus right? Are we getting too numerous to feed ourselves?

Apr 12, 2008 04:30 AM
Lynda Hurst
Feature Writer

The warning bells are ringing, furiously.

This week, food riots paralyzed Haiti, with angry marchers outside the president's palace shouting "We are hungry!" Five people were killed in the chaos.

In Egypt, a 15-year-old boy was shot and killed this week in two days of violence over food shortages. Last month, a two-week protest at government-subsidized bakeries ended with the deaths of 10 Egyptians in clashes with police.

Rice is the staple food of 4 billion people. But the prices for it, along with corn, wheat and other basics, has surged by 40 per cent to 80 per cent in the last three years and caused panicked uprisings in some of the poorest countries on Earth, from Cameroon to Bolivia.

The situation has deteriorated so swiftly that some experts predict the effects of a global food crisis are going to bite more quickly than climate change.

According to the World Bank, 33 countries are now vulnerable to social unrest and political instability because of food insecurity – and that has implications for all the rest. Major rice producers like China, Cambodia and Vietnam are already battening down, curbing exports to ensure supplies for their own populations. The Philippines, whose population has grown from 60 million to almost 90 million in 17 years, is warning rice hoarders they'll be charged with economic sabotage.

Why is it happening? Was Malthus right when he said the world would eventually be too populated to feed itself?

The United Nations already provides food for 73 million people in 78 countries worldwide. But the planet is getting hungrier. At least 4 million more people are being added to the list, most of them living in high-density, Third World cities.

The new face of hunger – and thirst – is overwhelmingly urban.

It takes 1,000 tonnes of water to produce one tonne of food, but water scarcity is affecting supplies. And, as Lester Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute in Washington, has cautioned: "A future of water shortages will be a future of food shortages."

The current crisis was ignited by a number of elements coming together in deadly tandem. Analysts say the most important one – the jump in global fuel prices – has triggered a chain reaction in the entire food-production system, from seed planting right through to the delivery process.

The world has been down this road before, of course. In 1973-74, OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) quadrupled the world price of oil, resulting in spiralling food prices and distribution snarls. The disaster led to a World Food Summit in 1976, but nothing was done to prevent it happening again.

Today's crisis is even worse because biofuels, a factor unanticipated in the mid-'70s, has been added to the mix, says David Bell, emeritus professor of environmental studies at York University.

"A false environmental sensibility has led to a push on biofuel production and corn is the product of choice," he says. "There's been a significant diversion of crops away from food use."

The corn needed to produce ethanol fuel has to be grown somewhere and when land available for food farming is converted, food prices are pushed up: "That's what's tripped off the food riots this time."

And the environmental benefits of corn fuel, he scathingly adds, are "completely illusory."

Throw in the new and exploding demand for meat in economically booming China and India and even more land is being converted – for cattle, and the feeding thereof.

Climate change is also making its toxic contribution. Major droughts have hit wheat-producing nations such as Australia and Ukraine, leading to a 30-year low in the world's wheat inventories.

This week, John Holmes, the UN's top humanitarian and emergency relief co-ordinator, warned that the number of global "extreme weather" disasters has doubled in the past two decades to 400 a year. What's building in consequence of all these factors, he said, is a "perfect storm."

"The security implications should not be underestimated ...Current food price trends are likely to increase sharply both the incidence and depth of food insecurity."

In other words, this week's food riots may be just a foreshadowing of what looms ahead in the not-so-distant future.

It took all of human history for the world to reach a population of 2.5 billion in 1950. Half a century later, it's risen to more than 6.5 billion. By 2030, it's expected to reach 8.2 billion, and by 2050, a staggering 9 to 12 billion.

Can the world sustain that number of people?

A UN report says we are already living beyond the planet's means – just as Thomas Malthus warned could occur. The early 19th-century British demographer and political economist believed population growth was exponential and man's "struggle for existence" eventually would outstrip Earth's capacity to sustain it.

Malthus's thinking influenced Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory, but it also led to nightmare scenarios. In 1968, American biologist Paul Ehrlich notoriously predicted that by the 1980s, hundreds of millions would die because of overpopulation and subsequent lack of food. It didn't happen. Not only did Ehrlich take a drubbing, but Malthus's theory did, as well.

Critics have continually insisted that Malthus was too pessimistic. Humans would always find alternatives to resources that have been exhausted, they say, develop new technologies to improve crop yield.

But how far, asks David Bell, can substitution go?

After having dismissed Malthus, people are starting to talk about him again, he says. "His warning of a crash as a possible outcome may not be that far wrong. Ultimately, more mouths to feed is going to exacerbate political pressures. There will be more failed societies."

Today, projections are that, by 2030, global agriculture/agribusiness will have to double its output – and use less water to do it. Fish as a food source? Every fishery in the world is expected to have collapsed within 25 to 50 years, says Bell.

The UN's food program has launched an appeal to boost its budget from $2.9 billion to $3.4 billion. But that's just to meet the demands of the hungry today.

What about tomorrow?

"We're a selfish species," says Bell. "But we're going to have to do things differently."

Lynda Hurst is a feature writer for the Toronto Star. She can be reached at lhurst@thestar.ca

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/04/12/18492403.php

How Far is the US From Food Shortages and Food Riots?
by Monica Davis ( davis4000_2000 [at] yahoo.com )
Saturday Apr 12th, 2008 2:37 PM

Even the United States is not immune from the potential for food shortages, food riots and food insecurity. We’re just blind to the possibility.


As Americans complain over high gasoline and food prices, many third world countries are experiencing food riots over price and scarcity of food. In some parts of the word rice is so expensive that it is transported in heavily guarded convoys and farmers guard their fields from thieves.

Food riots are becoming more common, as more land and crops are being diverted from the food chain by the world biofuels industry. According to an investment magazine, the crisis shows no signs of weakening. Food, the bread of life, is fast becoming the “gold” of the Twenty-first century.

Fatal food riots in Haiti. Violent food-price protests in Egypt and Ivory Coast. Rice so valuable it is transported in armoured convoys. Soldiers guarding fields and warehouses. Export bans to keep local populations from starving. (Globalinvestor.com)

The face of food security is rapidly changing around the world and there are no quick fixes experts say. What worries many is that food stockpiles are at historic lows. In the United States alone,
stockpiles of wheat hit a 60-year low in the United States as prices soared. Almost all other commodities, from rice and soybeans to sugar and corn, have posted triple-digit price increases in the past year or two. (Ibid)

Experts say the high prices will continue for years, putting billions of people at risk for malnutrition or starvation. World leaders continue to cast fearful eyes at the burgeoning bio-fuels industry, noting that the competition generated by the industrial biofuels industry and food agriculture is pushing up food prices and making it more profitable to grow fuel crops for industrialized countries than it is for big farmers in Third World countries to grow food for their own citizens.

What has put many world leaders on notice is the fact that this artificially generated food crisis has not yet peaked. As of this writing, no one knows when the situation will reach a crescendo, or to what extent this demand will affect food security and political stability in the world.
Many believe that the food crisis is in its infancy and they worry about increasing food-based political instability worldwide.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said this week he's worried that ethanol production is pushing up food prices everywhere, and he called for an urgent review of the issue. Economist Dr. Hazell has said that filling an SUV tank once with ethanol consumes more maize than the typical African eats in a year. (Ibid)

So far, Americans have been able to weather the storm. While rising fuel and food prices have generated grumbling from the populace and hand wringing from the politicians, this country has yet to experience the level of social unrest and rioting that high food prices have generated in other parts of the world.

In Haiti, ongoing instability and riots over food prices has led to the probable ousting of the nation’s Prime Minister. Newswires are reporting “A Haitian senator says that parliament has voted to dismiss Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis following deadly riots over rising food prices.” (Wire services)


A few analysts believe that the United States is on the verge of a major economic revolution, a process, which will change where we live, what we eat, and how we view agriculture. Looking at the rumbles from around the world we are already seeing wars over oil and energy resources, not to mention the violent eviction of traditional farmers in South America and other parts of the world by the industrialized bio-fuels industry.

The fight over finite land resources is slowly taking shape out of sight of most of the United States as agribusinesses lay claim to land around the world. Agro-conglomerates chase natives off tribal lands in South America, Indonesia and parts of the Far East at gunpoint. Murder over land continues in the Third World, as conglomerates move onto jungle and rain forest land, clearing acreage with slash and burn campaigns.

What was once climate producing tropical rain forest has become fields for sugar cane, corn and other biofuels. More profitable biofuel crops have now deprived the food chain of a large supply of corn and other crops, driving up the cost of corn-based food such as corn meal, tortillas, corn syrup and a hundred other crops and products which grace our tables at ever greater cost.

The food riots in Haiti are mirrored by riots in parts of Africa and Asia, sending shock waves throughout the Third World. According to a report from the United Nations, the 60 per cent price increase in the price of corn and feedstock over the past two years can be directly traced to the increased demand on corn and soybeans made by the biofuels industry. The United States, as the world’s largest exporter of corn, has diverted millions of pounds of corn and soybean crops to the growing biofuels industry, creating a market that makes fuel crops more profitable than food crops. National surpluses of grains have give way to increased demand for biofuels, driving up the price of corn and grains around the world. (World Bank)

Traditional food crops—rapeseed, maize (corn), palm and soybean are in demand by both food agriculture and the growing biofuels industry, creating an increased competition, which is driving up food costs by double digits, generating food riots around the world. Thai farmers and other farmers are now guarding rice crops, as skyrocketing grain prices are leading to crop theft and food riots around the world. According to international reports:

Rice farmers here (Thailand) are staying awake in shifts at night to guard their fields from thieves. In Peru, shortages of wheat flour are prompting the military to make bread with potato flour, a native crop. In Egypt, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso food riots have broken out in the past week. (Thoughtcriminal.org)

In Thailand and other rice and grain producing nations, food theft is rising. Crops are stolen directly from fields.

The reported thefts in five rice-growing provinces in central Thailand are the first signs of criminal activity in this region stemming from the sharpest global spike in commodity prices since the oil crisis in the mid-1970s. Across the world, higher food prices are triggering thefts and violence – both by people who can’t afford to eat and those who want to make an easy buck. (Ibid)

The United States produces 46% of the world’s biofuels, with Brazil coming in at a close second with 42%. (Biofuels: the Promise and the Risks). As a world leader in food exports, grain in particular, the United States has altered world grain markets by diverting grain into fuel production, thereby increasing demand for grains with a resultant rise in the price of the commodity because of demand. The ensuing market shortage has generated price increases in the world grain market, making food staples too expensive for much of the world’s poor to afford.

So far, Americans are mostly bystanders in the game, content to grumble at the gas pump and complain in the grocery aisles. As a “First World” nation, the United States so far has not been subject to the food riots, which we have seen in Haiti and other parts of the world. Americans have more per capita income than much of the world; hence the crisis of the Third World, so far, is inconvenience in the “First World” and in developed nations such as the United States.

That said, however, we must understand that this situation is not sustainable. While Americans do have more disposable income than the rest of the word, that income is not unlimited and our food supply is much more vulnerable than we think. When it comes to food security, both in terms of supply and accessibility, this country is much more vulnerable than we think.

As one retired grain salesman noted, most of the nation’s grain is moved around the country by just TWO railroads. Little is stored in the event of disaster and the whole system is extremely vulnerable. While we in the United States look at the food riots in other countries with a sense of disbelief, we are not immune. Under the right circumstances, we could be in the same boat. (Ibid)

In order for riots to break out the whole food supply doesn't have to be wiped out. It just has to be threatened sufficiently. When people realize their vulnerability and the fact that there is no short-term solution to a severe enough drought in the Midwest they will have no clue as to what they should do. Other nations can't make up the difference because no other nation has a surplus of grain in good times let alone in times when they are having droughts and floods also. (Robert Felix, “US Food Riots Much Closer than You Think”)

Critics say the US is currently too preoccupied with foreign excursions and oil to pay attention to food security, particularly how concentration of suppliers and processors threaten the food chain. The highly concentrated meat processing industry has generated millions of pounds of recalls this year. Outbreaks in e.coli and other food borne pathogens continue to haunt the headlines, as food prices rise around the world.

The concentration of food processing, cultivation and distribution into the hands of a few companies is wrecking havoc around the world. A Canadian reporter noted the connection between market concentration and price increases around the world:
In Mexico and most other countries, a handful of international companies is controlling more and more of the food production line—from growing crops to purchasing crops from farmers, to warehousing, processing and distribution.

Carlsen said investigations following the tortilla crisis found that huge stores of corn in warehouses had cut down the supply and led to a jump in prices. (Matthew Little, Epoch Times, “Food Prices Skyrocket Amidst Growing Shortages.”)

Food security, that is the availability and affordability of food, has been pushed aside by the War on Terror, and continues to lag behind our awareness, despite their being linked together in a dangerous dance of death, which has been created by the bio-fuels industry. Ultimately, the price of oil, depends on supply, demand and risk (War), and the price of food has now become dangerously linked to the energy market by the requirements of the fuel crop industry. We now are dealing with a ‘double whammy’ that is dangerously impeding our food supply.

Living in the “Breadbasket of the World,” it is hard for most Americans to even conceive of the idea that food could become scarce in this country. Few of us are paying attention to the close relationship between biofuel, grain crops and price inflation.

Think tank analyst Pat Mooney noted the close connection between corn and oil prices.

"The market place does now tie the price of a bushel of corn to the price of a barrel of crude and when it does that it means that poor people are going to lose out," said Mooney. (Ibid)

The world’s grain and food markets have been turned on their heads. Where once the price of fuel and oil-based fertilizers used to cultivate crops added to the cost of the crop, now the use of crops as fuel generates still another tier of demand on the world’s soils and crops.

With finite amounts of cropland, competition between fuel and food crops for land and economic resources, and unpredictable natural disasters, wars and pestilence waiting in the wings, our food supply is not as secure as we think it is.

Even the United States is not immune from the potential for food shortages, food riots and food insecurity. We’re just blind to the possibility.

The author is an activist/writer/public speaker based in the Midwest. She has written articles on the mortgage crisis, land theft, mis-education of ethnic youth and food security. Books include:
Land, Legacy and Lynching: Building a future for Black America, and Urban Asylum: Politics, Lunatics and the Refrigerator Woman.



http://www.Lulu.com/davis4000_2000

"The people should also change their food habits."

Starving people should change their food habits...to WHAT???

Egyptian tremors


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
, THE JERUSALEM POST Apr. 12, 2008

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak turns 80 next month. He assumed power 26 years ago, after Islamists assassinated Anwar Sadat for having made peace with Israel.

Egypt's political system remains weak on legitimacy. The liberal opposition, led by the Democratic Front Party, is in disarray. A leading reformist critic of the regime, Ayman Nour, is imprisoned.

Egyptians mostly ignored the April 8 local elections to fill 52,000 places on municipal and village councils. Seventy percent of the seats were earmarked for Mubarak's National Democratic Party because they were "uncontested." Mubarak's son, Gamal, happens to head the NDP.

Recalling the failed policies of the Shah of Iran, Mubarak has defeated the non-Islamist opposition, leaving the Muslim Brotherhood as the only credible voice of reform. This is the same toxic movement, founded in 1928, whose world-view spawned al-Qaida and Hamas. It wants Shari'a law imposed in Egypt and relations with Israel broken off. Prudently, the Brotherhood eschews violent revolution, patiently waiting for power to fall into its hands. Despite Mubarak's machinations, Brotherhood-supported "independent" candidates captured 20% of the 454-seat parliament.

Mubarak has stayed in power by making an implicit contract with Egypt's masses: We provide food, you keep your noses out of politics. That deal is now fraying.

Egypt is a vast country of some 76 million people, of whom 53% are under 24. Hope and economic prospects are in short supply; religion, however, is bountiful. Mosques are everywhere (one for every 745 people). Most women in Cairo, once a cosmopolitan city, now cover their hair.

Globalization, worldwide economic factors, even climate change have all conspired to make the temporal lives of average Egyptians more difficult. In recent weeks, labor and food riots have broken out in the Nile Delta industrial city of Mahallah-Al-Kobra. Two protesters were killed, 100 wounded and over 300 arrested. Opponents organized protests, using text messaging and even Web-based social networks to circumvent the state-controlled media. A nationwide one-day strike had been planned, but was ultimately stymied by the authorities.

Fearing the spread of rioting, Mubarak dispatched Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif to meet with workers at the state-owned weaving factory in Mahallah, which employs 25,000 people, and where the average monthly salary is $34. And to appease the local opposition, Nazif granted it 15 seats in the municipal government.

Six people have died since March waiting on bread lines, either from exhaustion or because frustration led to fighting. A piece of bread costs 5 piasters - about a US penny. Thirty million Egyptians depend on subsidized bread under a scheme that is riddled with corruption. Forty percent of Egyptians live under the $2-a-day poverty line.

As an emergency measure Mubarak ordered the army to start baking bread.

Amr Elshobaki of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies told The Washington Post last week that "The mood of the people is angry. I think it's near collapse, the state."

To address the larger crisis, the regime has halted the export of rice and cement for the next six months and continues to impose price controls on a wide range of commodities. Food is subsidized at a staggering $13.7 billion annually.

Not everyone is suffering. The disparity between rich and poor is immense. Sales of some luxury cars are up 20 percent. The economy has grown 7%. The Cairo and Alexandria stock exchanges are up 40%. Foreign investment has surged to $11 billion. Egypt's international reserves stand at $30 billion; foreign debt is $7.8 billion. Thousands of new companies are established every year. For its part, Washington contributes $1.3 billion in military aid and a paltry $200 million in economic assistance. More constructively, however, annual trade with the US stands at $8 billion.

How well the regime feeds, clothes and employs its population, how swiftly it creates a civil society and system of representative government should be of foremost concern to Israel. Mubarak is mistaken in emasculating the moderate opposition, misguided in trying to "out-Islam" the Brotherhood by persecuting homosexuals. He is wide off the mark in allowing Egypt's media to demonize Jews and Israel. It took him too long to realize that letting Hamas bleed Israel was ultimately not in Cairo's interest.

But we who have an interest in a stable and flourishing Egypt understand the enormity of the challenges Mubarak faces. May he continue to enjoy good health, and be blessed with better judgment.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1207649994353&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/Printer

"The solution is not to go around destroying stores. I'm giving you orders to stop."

Whew...that'll take care of that. Just in time, too!

nharrold said:

"The solution is not to go around destroying stores. I'm giving you orders to stop."

Whew...that'll take care of that. Just in time, too!

Click to expand...

Now, World Bank President Robert Zoellick has called on world leaders to act to ease the global food crisis. Zoellick urged the United States, the European Union, Japan and other developed countries to help plug a $500 million (€319 million) shortfall in the United Nations' World Food Program. In a speech given in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday,

And the other solution is to give to the other countries our supplies and give them more money and further the American debt...there by screwing the American people.... whew...that took care of the issue now we can end the meeting go home and watch American Idol!!!!

Aren't these people aware that we are broke! We don't have any money to send them!

"The people should also change their food habits."

Starving people should change their food habits...to WHAT???

Let them eat cake... right?

dd

HeliumAvid said:

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/04/12/18492403.php

How Far is the US From Food Shortages and Food Riots?
by Monica Davis ( davis4000_2000 [at] yahoo.com )
Saturday Apr 12th, 2008 2:37 PM

Even the United States is not immune from the potential for food shortages, food riots and food insecurity. We’re just blind to the possibility.

http://www.Lulu.com/davis4000_2000

Click to expand...

Got humbleness? and then food?

Strauss-Kahn Warns Food-Price Inflation May Trigger Starvation

By Christopher Swann

April 12 (Bloomberg) -- Further gains in food prices would be ``terrible'' for the world's poor and throw hundreds of thousands of them into starvation, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said.

Governments throughout Asia, Africa and the Middle East are seeking to combat food inflation and avoid social unrest by curbing exports or lifting import duties on basic food staples such as rice. Global food prices surged 57 percent last month from a year earlier, according to the United Nations, and the World Bank warns civil disturbances may be triggered in 33 countries.

If food inflation keeps accelerating at its current rate ``the consequences will be terrible,'' Strauss-Kahn told reporters at the IMF's semi-annual meeting in Washington today. ``Hundreds of thousands of people will be starving, leading to a disruption in the economic environment.''

Haitian Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis was voted out of office by the country's senate today after violent protests over rising food prices, news agencies reported today.

President Rene Preval, who called the no-confidence vote ``unjust,'' announced a 15 percent cut in the price of rice, which had doubled this week to $70 for a 50-kilogram (110-pound) bag, Agence France-Presse reported. No replacement for Alexis was announced.

Price Outlook

Consumer-price inflation in poor or so-called developing countries will accelerate this year to 7.4 percent, compared with a January forecast of 6.4 percent, the IMF said this week. Food prices will probably remain comparatively high until at least 2015, the World Bank said in a separate report.

``Economic progress made over the last years could be destroyed,'' Strauss-Kahn said.

Rice, the staple food for half the world, has surged 96 percent in the past year, reaching a record $21.60 per 100 pounds on April 8. That's forced China, Egypt, Vietnam and India, which export more than a third of the world's rice, to curb shipments of the grain. Argentina and Russia have also sought to discourage food exports in a bid to boost domestic supplies.


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601116&sid=aIFgkr_Mr6wA&refer=africa

Rising Food Prices A New 'Monster' Taking Center Stage
Sunday, April 13, 2008; Posted: 05:59 PM
WASHINGTON, Apr 13, 2008 (Dow Jones Commodities News Select via Comtex) -- By Laurence Norman Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

As if the world's top economic officials didn't have enough to worry about amid an acute financial crisis, a possible U.S. recession and $110 a barrel oil prices, a new danger has burst onto the scene: surging food prices.



The rising cost of grain, soy, rice and other basic foodstuffs is a multi-faceted challenge for policy makers. It is stymying already-slow progress on poverty reduction by raising the cost of essential goods. It is pitting environmental goals of increased use of biofuels against the need to protect the most vulnerable.

And, at a time when policy makers are increasingly concerned about the impact of the credit crisis on growth, it is restricting central banks' room for maneuver by raising already-significant inflationary pressures.

"A monster has suddenly stepped on the political stage," German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said Friday in Washington, adding that he fears he that higher prices won't be a passing phenomenon.

With food riots breaking out in recent weeks from Haiti to the Ivory Coast, the rise in food prices was certainly center-stage at the weekend's meetings of the Group of Seven leading industrial nations, International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

In a press conference Friday, U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling said the international community can and must address the problem, saying "there's no time to lose."

Darling said part of the problem comes from the encouragement of biofuels, which diverts land and agricultural production away from food production.

Wrapped up in that are the subsidies that developed nations, not least the U.S., give their farmers to grow the crops used for biofuels.

"What we cannot do is allow the market to become so distorted that ... it's pushing up food prices which is causing major problems elsewhere," Darling said.

The issue also stood at the heart of World Bank President Robert Zoellick's message Sunday.

Zoellick said a doubling of food prices over the last three years could push 100 million low-income people deeper into poverty.

He urged governments to step up their commitments to a $500 million fund to address emergency food needs, part of a New Deal for Global Food Policy that Zoellick has called for. And he welcomed the fact that the Group of Eight finance ministers' meeting in Japan will address the issue.

"But, frankly speaking, the G8 meeting is in June and we cannot wait for that. We have to put our money where our mouth is now, so that we can put food into hungry mouths. It is as stark as that," Zoellick said.

In addition to the potentially devastating impact of higher food prices on the poor, the surge in prices is also adding to the dilemma of policy makers in more developed nations.

Simon Johnson, the IMF's chief economist, warned last week that rising commodity prices are "restricting the room not just for monetary policy, but for fiscal policy to be effective" since loosening fiscal policies can aggravate price pressures. Thus, governments may have to consider a "third line of defense" - public funds - if a contingency plan is needed to protect their financial system.

The policy challenge from rising food prices isn't a new one. Throughout last year, rising corn prices in North America led to shortages of tortilla - a staple of the Mexican diet. That was a key factor pushing food prices higher and helping to persuade the Bank of Mexico to raise rates twice despite a slowing economy.

In China earlier this year, snowstorms gave an extra push to already high food prices in that country. That helped boost the country's consumer price index to a 12-year high of 8.7% in February.

And as Germany's Steinbrueck acknowledged, the rise in food prices is also causing concern in Europe.

Euro-zone consumer prices in March rose 3.5% on the year, the highest rate since the euro's launch and well above the European Central Bank's 2% target.

The biggest inflationary driver so far has been energy prices, which climbed an annual 10.4% in February in the euro zone - the last month for which a detailed breakdown was available. European statistics agency Eurostat, however, also said that euro-zone food prices rose an annual 5.8% that month.

The same is true in the U.K. where food prices rose 5.6% on the year in February, helping lift the annual CPI rate to 2.5%. Bank of England Governor Mervyn King warned earlier this year that surging food and energy prices are likely to push inflation to 3% in coming months - such an increase would require King to write a letter to the U.K. government explaining why inflation is rising.

This hasn't stopped the BOE from cutting interest rates three times since December, with the Bank easing policy by 25 basis points to 5.0% on Thursday. By contrast, the European Central Bank has held rates steady at 4.0% since last June, with fears of rising inflation convincing officials that this was no time to relax policy.

With developed economies battling to contain the fallout from the global credit crunch on domestic growth, it is becoming clear that surging food prices are an increasingly nasty complication.

"Second-round effects stemming from the impact of higher energy and food prices on wage and price-setting behavior must be avoided," ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet said Thursday after announcing the latest interest-rate decision.

"In the view of the (ECB) Governing Council, this is of key importance in order to preserve price stability in the medium term and thereby the purchasing power of all euro-area citizens," Trichet said.

-By Laurence Norman, Dow Jones Newswires; 44 (0)207-842-9270; laurence.norman@dowjones.com



http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock News/1356080/

wars? check
pestilence? check
famine? check

Usually Curious don't forget to add water!

Usually Curious don't forget to add water! That's in the bible also.

nharrold said:

In nature, this would be a self-limiting problem. Maybe animals are smarter than we are...

Click to expand...

Animals don't control their own numbers - the numbers are limited by predators, and when populations don't have sufficient predators they are limited by starvation or disease.

We have no predators, so our numbers will be limited by starvation or disease. You are seeing the thumps and bumps as we hit the limits, with hundreds of millions at risk. If the chaos destroys the complex infrastructure of food movement, you could see billions at risk.

Too bad that population control can't be rationally discussed, because the alternative is now confronting us, and the alternative is way uglier than contraception.

for a brief synopsis of the agricultural and industrial revolution that allowed the world to (just barely) avoid Thomas Malthus Point of Crisis, the last time the world came close to mass famine:

http://images.google.com/imgres?img...9&tbnw=114&prev=/images?q=malthus&gbv=2&hl=en

there are still possibilities - nearly endless - that would allow us to avoid the current plunge into the approaching Point of Crisis, just as the discovery of the New World, the evolution of Science and Industry, the Green Revolution saved our collective bacon previously, such as:

a massive breakthrough (mostly politically) in re-ordering our investments into development of mineral, alternative energy and biological (aquaculture) development of the Oceans (3/4s of the Earth’s surface...).

I don’t think that will happen. The Rothschilds and Rockefellas of the world have another plan. (google the Georgia Guidestones)

And God has His own plan also.
(see Psalm 2)

and then there are the anti-population control folks
in Islam and Rome and India
hold huge responsibility in promoting
this planet's massive growth of human stock.

bw said:

Animals don't control their own numbers - the numbers are limited by predators, and when populations don't have sufficient predators they are limited by starvation or disease.

We have no predators, so our numbers will be limited by starvation or disease. You are seeing the thumps and bumps as we hit the limits, with hundreds of millions at risk. If the chaos destroys the complex infrastructure of food movement, you could see billions at risk.

Too bad that population control can't be rationally discussed, because the alternative is now confronting us, and the alternative is way uglier than contraception.

Click to expand...

uhhhh, the population control is needed in the 3rd world (and it must be initiated within those countries, not FORCED upon them by the western countries with boatloads of condoms or birth control pills!!!) - so why is it that the liberal wack-jobs want to discuss it in the Western countries?

Timely and important posting

One of the keys to reducing your chances of having this happen to you is to practice OPSEC (operational security) regarding your belongings and purchases. If a nosy cashier asks why you are buying so much a variety of responses

None of your business (not the best choice, people remember!)
Oh, I'm in charge of the kitchen at our church
Big family get together coming up
Picking up things for your elderly parents as well

and many more besides. Throughout this thread there are terrific examples of how to limit your exposure to other people gaining knowledge of your preps. A good buddy of mine and his wife store their extra toilet paper in a place I never thought about. Under their couch, out of sight but easy to access.

Keep your garage door closed as much as possible, don't discuss your plans, preps or purchases in public. In the house don't have all your food and supplies in one place that is easy to see.

One common item I noticed as reading the threads above that I completely agree with is there is a large segment of our population that WILL demand, not ask but demand help from others. This is in part due to the fact that the majority of people have never done without. They have absolutely no clue on how they would survive in a no-power, no-food, no-luxury environment and don't plan to find out.

I've often been asked what my biggest fear post-event is. It surprises a good many people when I answer that my biggest fear is not the criminal element but my neighbors and those like them. I know the criminal element is out there and will be a problem. However the guy two houses over who is normally a decent, moral person in part because his life functions with power and food and some degree of choice will become a problem when it's day four without power, he and his family are hot, tired, hungry and dirty. The same with the guy next to him and so on and so on. There are ALOT more of them than there are criminals and they are alot closer. That is part of the reason I am trying so hard to move out of town (and I only live in a town of 5,100 !) and to a place better suited for privacy and to an extent defense.

One key to surviving long term following an event is having sufficient manpower on hand. You have to sleep at some point in order to function at something approaching normal levels.

I realize this is not exactly in line with this Post but thought it might be a good time to bring up some of these reminders.

Monday, April 14, 2008


South China Sea troubles
threaten Asia food supply


HANOI: Polluted, crossed by busy shipping lanes, and disputed by many countries, the South China Sea has taken an environmental battering that threatens future food supplies, marine scientists have warned.

In a decade the sea—at the heart of a densely populated and rapidly industrializing region—has lost 16 percent of its coral reefs and coastal mangroves and 30 percent of its sea grass, the United Nations said.

The exploitation of its fisheries, both legal and illegal, by family boats and industrial deep-sea trawlers now threatens to deplete fish stocks that millions of people rely on, a Hanoi conference heard last week.

“The key issues on a basin scale are habitat degradation and loss, overfishing and land-based pollution,” said Vo Si Tuan, who served as Vietnam’s representative to the UN Environment Program (UNEP) South China Sea Project.

“There are many, many problems, but these are the biggest.”

The South China Sea is ringed by China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, with about 350 million people living along its coastal areas.

“There are large populations heavily dependent, directly and indirectly, on fishing, in one of the world’s most biodiverse marine areas,” said Keith Symington, a marine specialist with the World Wide Fund for Nature.

“The international trends are more pronounced in the South China Sea.

“Boats have to go further and fish longer to catch the same amount of fish, and they are catching smaller fish,” said Symington, speaking to Agence France-Presse at the fourth Global Conference on Oceans, Coasts and Islands.

“There are a lot of illegal or unreported catches; there are fishing boats flying flags of convenience; there are loopholes.”

The UN has highlighted the damage done to coral reefs, sea grass, mangroves and wetlands that are crucial for biodiversity and fish breeding.

Vietnam’s Halong Bay, a world heritage-listed site, is a case in point, said Michael Hayes, an expert on tourism in protected marine areas.

“There are 138 coral species in Halong Bay, but most of the reefs are being destroyed by heavy sedimentation,” he said.

Erosion from deforestation along the Red River is pouring silt into the bay, where shrimp farms and land reclamation have destroyed mangroves and heavy shipping, coal mining and tourism are polluting the waters.

“There is more and more pressure on the South China Sea, from fisheries but also from other exploitation like oil and gas and ballast waters from ships that introduce invasive species,” he said.

Vietnam, aiming to protect its coastal areas, plans to send fewer and larger fishing boats deeper into the South China Sea, said Nguyen Chu Hoi, director of the Vietnam Institute of Fisheries Economics and Planning.

The communist government plans to declare 15 marine protected areas this year, he said, and to reduce its fleet of 90,000 mostly family-run boats by 30 percent over five years while encouraging more offshore fishing.

The ships may be heading into troubled waters, and not just during the annual typhoon season that is set to worsen with climate change.

Fishing has already led to clashes on the high seas, with Chinese vessels and the Indonesian coast guard firing at Vietnamese ships.

Spratlys issue

Managing the South China Sea is complicated by the fact that at its heart lie the Spratly Islands, which are claimed in full or in part by Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.

“The South China Sea is a highly contested area,” said Robert Jara of the Philippines’ environment and natural resources department.

“One of the basic approaches now is putting aside the claims while we address the environment and the resource degradation of the South China Sea.

“If you address the claims before addressing the environment, at the end of the day everybody loses out.”

http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2008/apr/14/yehey/top_stories/20080414top6.html

The global food fight


The biofuel craze, commodity speculation, growing demand in emerging economies and soaring energy prices coalesce to boost food prices, with mass hunger and political instability looming, Simon Roughneen writes for ISN Security Watch.

By Simon Roughneen for ISN Security Watch (14/04/08)

"A hungry man is an angry man" - this was Brenda Barton's (the World Food Programme Deputy Director for Communications) apposite summing-up to ISN Security Watch last week.

Jacques Diouf, Head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), took this further, wondering aloud to the world's press why he had not been asked to brief the UN Security Council about a looming crisis that leaves 37 countries without enough affordable food.

In recent weeks protests have taken place in Indonesia, Peru, Mauritania, Yemen, Burkina Faso, Bolivia and Uzbekistan. In Egypt and Haiti riots turned deadly, with seven and four people killed, respectively, in both countries in the past 10 days, while over 40 died in Cameroon's February food unrest.

Even as far back as August 2007, the quashed Saffron Revolution in Burma was sparked in the first instance by the junta's overnight doubling of essential food and fuel prices.

Despite government attempts to shelter domestic food from soaring global cereal prices, essentials such as bread, rice, maize products, milk and soybean have continued to become more expensive, all over the world.

The facts are stark: The global price of wheat has risen by 130 percent in the past year, and dairy prices have doubled since 2005. A combination of factors is making basic food and fuel too expensive for people in poorer countries - even as projected world cereal production for 2008 is a record 2,164 million tonnes, up almost 3 percent from last year.

But with across-the-board world food price rises averaging at over 80 percent during the last 24 months, this volatility could acquire a dangerous political counterpart, in countries where 60-75 percent of people's income is spent on food.

On Saturday, 12 April, 20,000 Bangladeshis took to the streets - angered over low wages and high food costs - wrecking vehicles and attacking police, after last years rice crop was ruined by another of that country's periodic floods.

A changing world
Growing demand for more food - in terms of quality and quantity - as well as general rising living standards in India, Brazil, Russia and China, where vast new middle classes are emerging, has part-prompted the price increases.

In both countries, oil demands are up, contributing to the US$100+ per barrel costs, as more people can afford to own a car, which in turn fuels the food price ramp-up by increasing transport costs and making fertilizer more expensive.

Thomas Friedman's flat-world thesis seems relevant here - with consumers in emerging economies seeking to match western affluence. This means more cars, more meat and more high calorie, high protein foods - all of which puts pressure on oil supplies and prices, not least as more meat equals more fuel consumption for cooking, as well as increased demand for the grain feed for livestock and chickens.

Such changes are not irreversible, however.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), got no demurral from the 24 finance ministers on his steering committee when he warned on 12 April that ongoing price inflation could undermine much of the recent pro-poor development gains in many countries.

This echoed fears outlined in a World Bank policy paper Rising Food Prices - Policy Options and World Bank Response - released on 9 April. Group President Robert B Zoellick was quoted as saying: "In some countries, hard-won gains in overcoming poverty may now be reversed."

'The Politics of the Belly'
Jean Francois Bayart's above-named treatise took its title as a metaphor for the corrupt and patronage-addled nature of post-colonial African politics. But there seems to be a more literal application these days.

Politics has at least partly caused the food price increases, with corrupt administrations unwilling to maximize food-production potential, and other developing economies unable as yet to improve yields - with the worst performers squandering their thriving agriculture systems.

More directly, producer governments are restricting exports - notably rice - to meet domestic demand, but leaving neighboring importers in a quandary.

C Peter Timmer, visiting professor at Stanford University's Food Security and Environment Institute, gave ISN Security Watch access to his work-in-progress analysis of the current food price situation. He wrote, "The newly elected populist government in Thailand did not want consumer prices for rice to go up, so they started talking about export restrictions [...]. On March 28 rice prices in Thailand jumped US$75 per metric tonne. They have risen another US$200 per metric tonne since. This is the stuff of panics [...]."

David King is secretary-general of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers. He told ISN Security Watch that "for example, only one-quarter of the irrigation potential along the Niger river valley is being exploited" and that "yields in Africa are very low compared with other regions, but there is massive potential for improvement."

In 1998, food price increases brought people onto Zimbabwe's streets, accelerating Robert Mugabe's turn to demagoguery as a diversion from his regime's frailties, and sparking his ruthless suppression of any political opposition. Zimbabwe was once called "the breadbasket of Africa," but now cannot feed its own people, much less function as a swing supplier, helping meet demand and reduce prices.

Burma was once the world's biggest rice exporter, now many of its people hunger under the quixotic and brutal dictatorship ensconced in its jungle hideaway-fortress capital in Napyidaw.

Politically expedient choices made by governments - donors and recipients alike - contribute to the structural issues undermining food supply in vulnerable locations.

As David King puts it, "it is much easier for developed countries to send their food surpluses as aid to somewhere like Ethiopia, than it is to make focused long-term investments in water management technology to reduce that country's drought vulnerability. It is also easier for any recipients to divert attention from their own administration to external factors - such as food aid - when things go wrong."

Eaten bread is soon forgotten
The impact of food price increases could well be serious instability in many countries.

Pakistan's pivotal parliamentary elections were depicted as a policy-wonkish litmus-test for Muslim democracy and counterterrorism policy. But ordinary people voted for who they thought best able to help them make ends meet. The incumbent coalition led by President-General Pervez Musharraf took a hammering, as voters fused his anti-democratic policies with rising inflation now hitting consumers in the pocket. These days, Pakistani troops are guarding rice warehouses against looting, with similar scenes in the Thailand and Vietnam - the world's number one and three rice exporters, respectively - and in the Philippines and Indonesia, both rice importers.

In Manila, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo recently jailed nine coup plotters, but legitimately expressed disaffection with her administration simmers on. She recently admonished rice traders against hoarding - saying that "anyone who steals rice from the people" will be jailed. Arroyo is clearly hoping that rice supply can be maintained on the domestic market, heading off any further price increase or shortage, which could bring people onto the streets. Such "people power" manifestations have twice changed governments in the Philippines, in 1986 and 2001 - the latter bringing the incumbent Mrs Arroyo to power.

But with Thailand, India and Vietnam all more or less ceasing rice exports, and China rebuffing Manila's request for additional wheat, urgent calls were being made over recent days for high-level pan-Asian talks on the food price crisis.

David King's timely warning to ISN Security Watch that "this type of thing can bring down a government in a developing country," was realized on Saturday, 12 April, with Haiti's Senate sacking the prime minister in a deliberate snub to President Rene Preval over his response to Port-au-Prince's deadly food riots.

The most vulnerable: Crumbs from the table
The price spike provoked "tortilla riots" in middle-income Mexico, and wealthy consumer groups in Italy staged a one-day protest at the price of pasta. But it is the world's poor who are feeling the pinch. Most vulnerable could be the aid-dependent in Darfur, Somalia, North Korea and elsewhere.

Brenda Barton told ISN Security Watch that “on 20 March the WFP appealed to donors for an extra half-billion dollars - just to enable us to meet the needs we projected back in June 2007."

"This does not even account for any emergency or contingency funding needed, say, if another Niger-type scenario came about," she added, referring to the August 2005 near-famine in that impoverished Sahelian country, which left over three million people verging on starvation.

But the overall global economic downturn and rising inflation means less money, and with demand elsewhere soaring, food aid might be squeezed - bad news for the 73 million people across 78 countries that need WFP-sourced assistance.

As Barton explains, malnutrition has some serious spin-off effects: "While the food shortages and potential malnutrition are deadly serious in themselves, this issue affects development issues across the board, with at least six MDGs compromised: take education- children cannot learn when hungry, and with money tight, kids get pulled from school so parents can pay for food."

"A slow onset of malnutrition can have a devastating impact: Even as families cut from three to two to one meal per day, economizing on quality as well as quantity, and the very young are worst-affected," she added.

Hot money trumps hot weather?
"Green" subsidies for biofuel crops are diverting agri-output away from food. American farmers have diverted over 30 percent of corn as part of a government-sponsored ethanol production scheme - aiming to reduce oil dependency and offset man-made global warming.

The US was the world's fourth largest rice producer, the knock-on from divestment into corn is lifting rice prices amid greater demand, while reduced US corn-for-food output has put pressure on corn importer countries to diversify into ever more expensive wheat and sorghum, the latter needed to replace corn as animal feed.

Another stark fact: Over 240kg of corn would feed one person for a year. This same amount is required to produce just the 100 liters of ethanol needed to fill a SUV tank.

But on 4 April the BBC reported that no increase in global temperatures has been recorded by the World Meteorological Organisation since 1998, despite growing levels of carbon in the atmosphere, instead linking the 1998 recorded all-time high with El Nino, and the recent cooling with La Nina - two vast Pacific Ocean currents.

With those natural factors seemingly decisive to recent weather, and after bitterly-cold winters in China - its coldest in a century - and in central Asia and across North America - the biofuels gambit thus seems doubly-questionable, as it fuels food price increases more efficiently than its does enviro-friendly automobiles.

Meanwhile, the falling dollar has put pressure on commodities denominated in that currency, especially when import-export deals are signed off months in advance of delivery, with costs based on a now outdated dollar valuation.

More debilitating might be the fall-out from the subprime collapse and slowing global economy. Both have prompted a commodities bubble, with real economy speculation leading farmers to divest into crops they anticipate to reach higher prices, fuelling the supply and demand crisis.

Elsewhere, with the tech bubble a mid-term memory and the real estate downturn still biting hard, return-seeking investment funds have moved money in and out of petroleum and then food commodities, inflating the price of wheat by 70 percent between 2005-2007.

What's on the table now?
The impact on the global economy remains to be seen - but the IMF warned last week that commodity price increases were feeding the inflation beast, curtailing what policy options were available to deal with an overall global slowdown. This too can have political ramification. China's communist rulers, now shaken by Olympic and Tibet protests doubtlessly also recall the inflation-driven unrest culminating in the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

On 10 April, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown called on his Japanese counterpart and current G-8 chairman Yasuo Fukuda to take the lead on devising an international plan to deal with the food spike.

David King believes that "policymakers should use this [price increase] as a catalyst to develop agriculture, especially in low-yield, high-potential regions," echoing a call from the International Rice Research Institute for "a second Green Revolution," replicating the improvements in the 60s and 70s in agricultural technologies that boosted production across Asia.

But C Peter Timmer concluded on a sober note: "[T]here is already substantial evidence that significant increases in production, if they are attainable at all, will require development of new crop technologies that are not on the shelf or even in the pipeline [...]. The prospect is that very high food prices, perhaps near current levels, will be a market reality for many years."



http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?id=18857