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Post by Steve Gardner on Feb 26, 2008 2:10:31 GMT
...Warns UNI know of quite a few people who would see Prison Planet as the source of this article and not even bother to read it. And that would be a great shame, since Prison Planet has a nasty habit of telling it the way it is - albeit with a bit of theatre. Here, it would be all too easy to look at the headline and think 'typical Alex Jones hyperbole' and miss the fact that the article is quoting the Financial Times and, crucially, Jacques Diouf, director-general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, who claimed that, " If prices continue to rise, I would not be surprised if we began to see food riots.” UN sources aren't prone to hyperbole, they're prone to - even instructed in - the art of the understatement. Source: Prison PlanetExperts warn of food riots as foreign troops cleared to patrol American cities
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet Monday, February 25th, 2008
The UN is warning of a food shortage crisis and drawing up plans for food rations which will hit even middle-class suburban populations as inflation and economic uncertainty causes the prices of staple food commodities to skyrocket.
The United Nation's World Food Programme cautions today that if it doesn't receive more funding, it will have to halt food aid to developing countries like Mexico and China.
"The WFP crisis talks come as the body sees the emergence of a “new area of hunger” in developing countries where even middle-class, urban people are being “priced out of the food market” because of rising food prices," reports the Financial Times.
The warning coincides with a speech by William Lapp, of US-based consultancy Advanced Economic Solutions, who cautioned that rising agricultural raw material prices would translate this year into sharply higher food inflation.
It also parallels a prediction by Don Coxe, a Chicago-based global portfolio strategist for BMO Financial Group who correctly forecast the fall of the dollar and the rise in price of gold and oil years in advance, who last week spoke of a "global food crisis" which will cause the world to enter into, "A period of food shortages and swiftly rising prices," leading to government embargoes.
With the U.S. on the verge of a recession and, as many analysts have warned, a potential second great depression, those long scoffed at for hoarding vast quantities of storable food may unfortunately be able to say "I told you so" if the dollar continues to deteriorate and people begin to be priced out of the food market.
Global food prices have skyrocketed by as much as 60 per cent in the past year, while UN officials warn of the likelihood of food riots.
"If prices continue to rise, I would not be surprised if we began to see food riots,” said Jacques Diouf, director-general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, last October.
Many see the food shortages, whether real or manufactured, as simply another pretext for the implementation of martial law and the introduction of foreign troops to patrol major U.S. cities.
A recent announcement by Northcom confirmed that U.S. and Canadian troops will be allowed to patrol each other's countries in the event of a national emergency.
"U.S. Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, and Canadian Air Force Lt.-Gen. Marc Dumais, commander of Canada Command, have signed a Civil Assistance Plan that allows the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a civil emergency," reads a Northcom press release.
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Post by Steve Gardner on Feb 26, 2008 17:26:10 GMT
And right on cue, reports of rioting stretching across the North of Africa to the Middle East. Source: New York TimesAMMAN, Jordan — Even as it enriches Arab rulers, the recent oil-price boom is helping to fuel an extraordinary rise in the cost of food and other basic goods that is squeezing this region’s middle class and setting off strikes, demonstrations and occasional riots from Morocco to the Persian Gulf.
Many in Jordan are feeling the squeeze of higher prices. At a mall in Amman, the empty aisles reflect people’s inability to spend.
Here in Jordan, the cost of maintaining fuel subsidies amid the surge in prices forced the government to remove almost all the subsidies this month, sending the price of some fuels up 76 percent overnight. In a devastating domino effect, the cost of basic foods like eggs, potatoes and cucumbers doubled or more.
In Saudi Arabia, where inflation had been virtually zero for a decade, it recently reached an official level of 6.5 percent, though unofficial estimates put it much higher. Public protests and boycotts have followed, and 19 prominent clerics posted an unusual statement on the Internet in December warning of a crisis that would cause “theft, cheating, armed robbery and resentment between rich and poor.”
The inflation has many causes, from rising global demand for commodities to the monetary constraints of currencies pegged to the weakening American dollar. But one cause is the skyrocketing price of oil itself, which has quadrupled since 2002. It is helping push many ordinary people toward poverty even as it stimulates a new surge of economic growth in the gulf.
“Now we have to choose: we either eat or stay warm. We can’t do both,” said Abdul Rahman Abdul Raheem, who works at a clothing shop in a mall in Amman and once dreamed of sending his children to private school. “We’re not really middle class anymore; we’re at the poverty level.”
Some governments have tried to soften the impact of high prices by increasing wages or subsidies on foods. Jordan, for instance, has raised the wages of public-sector employees earning less than 300 dinars ($423) a month by 50 dinars ($70). For those earning more than 300 dinars, the raise was 45 dinars, or $64. But that compensates for only a fraction of the price increases, and most people who work in the private sector get no such relief.
The fact that the inflation is coinciding with new oil wealth has fed perceptions of corruption and economic injustice, some analysts say.
“About two-thirds of Jordanians now believe there is widespread corruption in the public and private sector,” said Mohammed al-Masri, the public opinion director at the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan. “The middle class is less and less able to afford what they used to, and more and more suspicious.”
In a few places the price increases have led to violence. In Yemen, prices for bread and other foods have nearly doubled in the past four months, setting off a string of demonstrations and riots in which at least a dozen people were killed. In Morocco, 34 people were sentenced to prison on Wednesday for participating in riots over food prices, the Moroccan state news service reported. Even tightly controlled Jordan has had nonviolent demonstrations and strikes.
Inflation was also a factor — often overlooked — in some recent clashes that were seen as political or sectarian. A confrontation in Beirut between Lebanese Army soldiers and a group of Shiite protesters that left seven people dead started with demonstrations over power cuts and rising bread prices.
In Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, inflation is in the double digits, and foreign workers, who constitute a vast majority of the work force, have gone on strike in recent months because of the declining purchasing power of the money they send home. The workers are paid in currencies that are pegged to the dollar, and the value of their salaries — translated into Indian rupees and other currencies — has dropped significantly.
The Middle East’s heavy reliance on food imports has made it especially vulnerable to the global rise in commodity prices over the past year, said George T. Abed, the former governor of the Palestine Monetary Authority and a director at the Institute of International Finance, an organization based in Washington.
Corruption, inefficiency and monopolistic economies worsen the impact, as government officials or business owners artificially inflate prices or take a cut of such increases.
“For many basic products, we don’t have free market prices, we have monopoly prices,” said Samer Tawil, a former minister of national economy in Jordan. “Oil, cement, rice, meat, sugar: these are all imported almost exclusively by one importer each here. Corruption is one thing when it’s about building a road, but when it affects my food, that’s different.”
In the oil-producing gulf countries, governments that are flush with oil money can soften the blow by spending more. The United Arab Emirates increased the salaries of public sector employees by 70 percent this month; Oman raised them 43 percent. Saudi Arabia also raised wages and increased subsidies on some foods. Bahrain set up a $100 million fund to be distributed this year to people most affected by rising prices. But all this government spending has the unfortunate side effect of worsening inflation, economists say.
Countries with less oil to sell do not have the same options.
In Syria, where oil production is drying up, prices have also risen sharply. Although it has begun to liberalize its rigid socialist economy, the government has repeatedly put off plans to eliminate the subsidies that keep prices artificially low for its citizens, fearing domestic reprisals.
Even so, the inflation of the past few months has taken a toll on all but the rich.
Thou al-Fakar Hammad, an employee in the contracts office of the Syrian state oil company, has a law degree and earns just less than 15,000 Syrian pounds, or $293, a month, twice the average national wage. His salary was once more than adequate, and until recently he sent half of it to his parents.
But rising prices have changed all that, he said. Now he has taken a second job teaching Arabic on weekends to help support his wife and young child. Unable to buy a car, he takes public buses from his two-room apartment just outside Damascus to work. He can afford the better quality diapers for his son to wear only at night and resorts to cheaper ones during the day. He cannot send anything to his parents.
“I have to live day to day,” he said. “I can’t budget for everything because, should my child get sick, I’d spend a lot of what I earn on medication for him.”
At the same time, a new class of entrepreneurs, most of them with links to the government, has built gaudy mansions and helped transform Damascus, the Syrian capital, with glamorous new restaurants and cafes. That has helped fuel a perception of corruption and unfairness, analysts say. On Wednesday the state-owned newspaper Al Thawra published a poll that found that 450 of 452 Syrians believed that their state institutions were riddled with corruption.
“Many people believe that most of the government’s economic policies are adopted to suit the interests of the newly emerging Syrian aristocracy, while disregarding the interests of the poor and lower middle class,” said Marwan al-Kabalan, a political science professor at Damascus University.
The same attitudes are visible in Jordan. Even before the subsidies on fuel were removed this month, inflation had badly eroded the average family’s earning power over the past five years, said Mr. Tawil, the former economic minister. Although the official inflation rate for 2007 was 5.4 percent, government studies have shown that middle-income families are spending far more on food and consuming less, he added. Last year a survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit found that Amman was the most expensive Arab capital in cost of living.
Mr. Abdul Raheem, the clothing store employee in Amman, said, “No one can be in the government now and be clean.”
Meanwhile, his own life has been transformed, Mr. Abdul Raheem said. He ticked off a list of prices: potatoes have jumped to about 76 cents a pound from 32 cents. A carton of 30 eggs went to nearly $4.25 from just above $2; cucumbers rose to 58 cents a pound from about 22. All this in a matter of weeks.
“These were always the basics,” he said. “Now they’re luxuries.”
With a salary equivalent to $423 and rent at $176, paying for food and fuel exhausts his income, he said. “But we are much better off than others,” he added. “We are the average.”
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Post by Steve Gardner on Apr 13, 2008 13:59:10 GMT
And now the IMF issues a warning. I caught a BBC correpsondent on the radio talking about food price inflation the other day and the stats were truly frightening. I don't remember the figures too well but he spoke about cereal crop harvests being down affecting the cost not only of cereals, but also of butter, cheese and milk, as well as meat. Also, I'm sure he mentioned the rice yield was significantly down, leading to massively inflated prices. Again, whilst I cannot recall the exact figure given, I seem to recall the correspondent saying that a typical family food shopping bill had risen by around 50% over the past 12 months. I've been posting articles predicting doom and gloom for a while now. I'm beginning to think they've been optimistic! Source: BBCThe head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that hundreds of thousands of people will face starvation if food prices keep rising.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn said that social unrest from continuing food price inflation could cause conflict.
There have been food riots recently in a number of countries, including Haiti, the Philippines and Egypt.
Meeting in Washington, the IMF called for strong action on food prices and the international financial crisis.
Market turmoil
Although the problems in global credit markets were the main focus of the meeting of the IMF's steering committee of finance ministers from 24 countries, Mr Strauss-Kahn warned of dire consequences from continued food price rises.
"Thousands, hundreds of thousands of people will be starving. Children will be suffering from malnutrition, with consequences for all their lives," he told reporters.
He said the problem could lead to trade imbalances that may eventually affect developed nations, "so it is not only a humanitarian question".
Food prices have risen sharply in recent months, driven by increased demand, poor weather in some countries and an increase in the use of land to grow crops for transport fuels.
The steering committee also called for "strong action" among its 185 members to deal with "the still unfolding financial market turmoil and... the potential worsening" of housing markets and the credit crunch.
The finance ministers did not dissent from the IMF's previous forecast that only a moderate slowdown in world economic growth is the most likely outcome over the next year or two.
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Post by Steve Gardner on Apr 20, 2008 19:11:59 GMT
Yet more 'food price' doom and gloom from the UN. The following extract is especially interesting in the context of the recent reports about the UK government's plans to make sure all fuel includes 2.5% of biofuel. If not handled properly, this crisis could result in a cascade of others ... and become a multidimensional problem affecting economic growth, social progress and even political security around the world. If ever a problem was in danger of 'cascading' this is it. Source: ReutersACCRA (Reuters) - The surge in global food prices risks setting back the world's anti-poverty efforts and, if not properly handled, could hurt global growth and security, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Sunday.
Opening a U.N. trade and development conference in Accra, Ghana, Ban said the huge increases in prices of food staples like cereals since last year could erase progress made towards U.N.-set goals of halving world poverty by 2015.
"The problem of global food prices could mean seven lost years ... for the Millennium Development Goals," he said.
"We risk being set back to square one," Ban told the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) meeting.
The food price surge has sharply increased the risk of hunger and poverty in developing countries and has already sparked food riots in parts of Asia and Africa.
The U.N. chief noted that several countries had moved to try to offset the food squeeze by barring exports of rice and wheat, or introducing incentives for easier imports of foodstuffs.
"This threatens to distort international trade and exacerbate shortages," he said.
"If not handled properly, this crisis could result in a cascade of others ... and become a multidimensional problem affecting economic growth, social progress and even political security around the world," Ban told the conference.
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Post by Steve Gardner on Apr 20, 2008 19:18:21 GMT
Thankfully, others see the fucked-up, backward-arse logic of implementing a increased uptake of biofuels at the very same time the world is struggling to feed itself. Source: Reuters (emphasis mine) VIENNA (Reuters) - Global food price rises are leading to "silent mass murder" and commodities markets have brought "horror" to the world, the United Nations' food envoy told an Austrian newspaper on Sunday.
Jean Ziegler, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, told Kurier am Sonntag that growth in biofuels, speculation on commodities markets and European Union export subsidies mean the West is responsible for mass starvation in poorer countries.
Ziegler said he was bound to highlight the "madness" of people who think that hunger is down to fate.
"Hunger has not been down to fate for a long time -- just as (Karl) Marx thought. It is rather that a murder is behind every victim. This is silent mass murder," he said in an interview.
Ziegler blamed globalization for "monopolizing the riches of the earth" and said multinationals were responsible for a type of "structural violence".
"And we have a herd of market traders, speculators and financial bandits who have turned wild and constructed a world of inequality and horror. We have to put a stop to this," he said.
Ziegler said he believed that one day starving people could rise up against their persecutors. "It's just as possible as the French Revolution was," he said.
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Post by Steve Gardner on Apr 22, 2008 21:26:23 GMT
Here's a good piece from the BBC, which puts the world food price problem into some perspective.
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Post by Steve Gardner on Apr 23, 2008 17:56:17 GMT
The food price problem is so bad that, according to this commentator, you'll actually get a better return on your investment by stockpiling food than by making short-term investments. I know I've been going on about this for a while now, but this is serious. Source: The Wall Street JournalI don't want to alarm anybody, but maybe it's time for Americans to start stockpiling food.
No, this is not a drill.
You've seen the TV footage of food riots in parts of the developing world. Yes, they're a long way away from the U.S. But most foodstuffs operate in a global market. When the cost of wheat soars in Asia, it will do the same here.
Reality: Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.
"Load up the pantry," says Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street's top investors and the manager of the Quaker Strategic Growth mutual fund. "I think prices are going higher. People are too complacent. They think it isn't going to happen here. But I don't know how the food companies can absorb higher costs." (Full disclosure: I am an investor in Quaker Strategic)
Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash. Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you'll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax.
Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year.
And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They're all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.
These are trends that have been in place for some time.
And if you are hoping they will pass, here's the bad news: They may actually accelerate.
The reason? The prices of many underlying raw materials have risen much more quickly still. Wheat prices, for example, have roughly tripled in the past three years.
Sooner or later, the food companies are going to have to pass those costs on. Kraft saw its raw material costs soar by about $1.25 billion last year, squeezing profit margins. The company recently warned that higher prices are here to stay. Last month the chief executive of General Mills, Kendall Powell, made a similar point.
The main reason for rising prices, of course, is the surge in demand from China and India. Hundreds of millions of people are joining the middle class each year, and that means they want to eat more and better food.
A secondary reason has been the growing demand for ethanol as a fuel additive. That's soaking up some of the corn supply.
You can't easily stock up on perishables like eggs or milk. But other products will keep. Among them: Dried pasta, rice, cereals, and cans of everything from tuna fish to fruit and vegetables. The kicker: You should also save money by buying them in bulk.
If this seems a stretch, ponder this: The emerging bull market in agricultural products is following in the footsteps of oil. A few years ago, many Americans hoped $2 gas was a temporary spike. Now it's the rosy memory of a bygone age.
The good news is that it's easier to store Cap'n Crunch or cans of Starkist in your home than it is to store lots of gasoline. Safer, too.
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Post by Steve Gardner on May 3, 2008 12:20:11 GMT
The headline is actually a bit misrepresentative of what Bush really said. He argued that: No question that ethanol has had a part of it. But I simply do not subscribe to the notion that it is the main cost driver for your food going up.
Actually, the reason why food prices are high now is because, one, energy costs are high, and if you're a farmer, you're going to pass on your cost of energy in the products you sell, otherwise you'd go broke.
And when you're paying more for your diesel, paying more for your fertiliser because it's got a lot of, you know, natural gas in it, in other words, when your basic costs are going up, so does the cost of food. Much to my surprise - and perhaps for the first time since dicovering he was a lying fucktard back in 2001 - I find myself agreeing with Bush. He's right, there are other factors. And some of them, such as the increasing prosperity of the people of India, for example, are to be welcomed. The problem in this whole debate is that the factors are 'cascading', as Reuters pointed out a couple of weeks ago. And that is why we should take a step back from the compulsory adoption of biofuels, in my view. If we continue to commit land to the production of biofuels, we will continue to find food shortages, which will continue to push prices up, which will cripple some of the world's poorest people. Hmmm... isn't there a conspiracy theory floating around that argues the world's elite are hell-bent on population reduction? Source: The Times of IndiaWASHINGTON: Prosperity in countries like India is "good" but it triggers increased demand for "better nutrition" which in turn leads to higher food prices, US President George W Bush said. ( Watch )
The comments come close on the heels of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's controversial statement that "apparent improvement" in the diets of people in India and China and consequent food export caps is among the causes of the current global food crisis.
At an interactive session on economy in Missouri, Bush argued that there are many factors for the present crisis, only one of which was investment on biofuels like ethanol.
"Worldwide there is increasing demand. There turns out to be prosperity in developing world, which is good. It's going to be good for you because you'll be selling products in the countries, you know, big countries perhaps, and it's hard to sell products into countries that aren't prosperous. In other words, the more prosperous the world is, the more opportunity there is," the US President said.
"It also, however, increases demand. So, for example, just as an interesting thought for you, there are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle class. That's bigger than America. Their middle class is larger than our entire population.
"And when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up," he said.
Bush also listed change in weather patterns and increase in basic costs like that of energy as factors contributing to higher food prices.
"No question that ethanol has had a part of it. But I simply do not subscribe to the notion that it is the main cost driver for your food going up," Bush said.
Several international experts have in recent days held biofuels, until recently cast as a miracle alternative to polluting fossil fuels, for being responsible for usurping arable land and distorting world food prices.
"Actually, the reason why food prices are high now is because, one, energy costs are high, and if you're a farmer, you're going to pass on your cost of energy in the products you sell, otherwise you'd go broke.
"And when you're paying more for your diesel, paying more for your fertiliser because it's got a lot of, you know, natural gas in it, in other words, when your basic costs are going up, so does the cost of food," Bush said.
He said there are two aspects of rising food prices -- its effect on US citizens and the fact that there is a food scarcity in the world.
"We don't have a scarcity issue in America...We got a price issue. Our shelves aren't going empty, it's just costing more money," Bush said.
"There is scarcity in the world, and I happen to believe when we find people who can't find food we ought to help them find it," he said adding, "America is by far the most generous nation when it comes to helping the hungry."
"We're an unbelievably compassionate nation," he said. "I think we ought to change our food policy in Africa and other developing countries...buying food directly from farmers as opposed to giving people food. I think we ought to be saying, 'Why don't we help you be able to deal with scarcity by encouraging your farmers to grow and be efficient growers? Otherwise, we're going to be in this cycle forever."
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Post by Steve Gardner on May 5, 2008 10:22:07 GMT
...growing global food crisisFirst oil companies make metaphorical killing out of increased fuel prices - here in the UK, a litre of diesel will cost you around £1.22 (~$2.40)! And now food giants are making a literal killing out of the world's food shortages which, as we know, are now starting to become exacerbated by the demands for biofuels. Source: The IndependentGiant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry.
The prices of wheat, corn and rice have soared over the past year driving the world's poor – who already spend about 80 per cent of their income on food – into hunger and destitution.
The World Bank says that 100 million more people are facing severe hunger. Yet some of the world's richest food companies are making record profits. Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543m (£275m) to $1.12bn. Its profits increased from $1.44bn to $2.22bn.
Cargill's net earnings soared by 86 per cent from $553m to $1.030bn over the same three months. And Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world's largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42 per cent in the first three months of this year from $363m to $517m. The operating profit of its grains merchandising and handling operations jumped 16-fold from $21m to $341m.
Similarly, the Mosaic Company, one of the world's largest fertiliser companies, saw its income for the three months ending 29 February rise more than 12-fold, from $42.2m to $520.8m, on the back of a shortage of fertiliser. The prices of some kinds of fertiliser have more than tripled over the past year as demand has outstripped supply. As a result, plans to increase harvests in developing countries have been hit hard.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation reports that 37 developing countries are in urgent need of food. And food riots are breaking out across the globe from Bangladesh to Burkina Faso, from China to Cameroon, and from Uzbekistan to the United Arab Emirates.
Benedict Southworth, director of the World Development Movement, called the escalating earnings and profits "immoral" late last week. He said that the benefits of the food price increases were being kept by the big companies, and were not finding their way down to farmers in the developing world.
The soaring prices of food and fertilisers mainly come from increased demand. This has partly been caused by the boom in biofuels, which require vast amounts of grain, but even more by increasing appetites for meat, especially in India and China; producing 1lb of beef in a feedlot, for example, takes 7lbs of grain.
World food stocks at record lows, export bans and a drought in Australia have contributed to the crisis, but experts are also fingering food speculation. Professor Bob Watson – chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who led the giant International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development – last week identified it as a factor.
Index-fund investment in grain and meat has increased almost fivefold to over $47bn in the past year, concludes AgResource Co, a Chicago-based research firm. And the official US Commodity Futures Trading Commission held special hearings in Washington two weeks ago to examine how much speculators were helping to push up food prices.
Cargill says that its results "reflect the cumulative effect of having invested more than $18bn in fixed and working capital over the past seven years to expand our physical facilities, service capabilities, and knowledge around the world".
The revelations are bound to increase outrage over multinational companies following last week's disclosure that Shell and BP between them recorded profits of £14bn in the first three months of the year – or £3m an hour – on the back of rising oil prices. Shell promptly attracted even greater condemnation by announcing that it was pulling out of plans to build the world's biggest wind farm off the Kent coast.
World leaders are to meet next month at a special summit on the food crisis, and it will be high on the agenda of the G8 summit of the world's richest countries in Hokkaido, Japan, in July.
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Post by Steve Gardner on Jul 4, 2008 13:09:11 GMT
You just have to shake your head and wonder whether our leaders are dumb or corrupt - it's one or the other. Either they didn't figure using crops for fuel would put pressure on the availability (and, therefore, the price) of food, or else they knew precisely what would happen and that food shortages and price increases were the desired result. And when you learn, as we have recently, that genetically modified crops are being considered as a means of addressing the global food shortage, it's hard not to dismiss the 'dumb' label and realise they're simply 'corrupt'. Source: The GuardianBiofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.
The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.
The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.
Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.
"It would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House," said one yesterday.
The news comes at a critical point in the world's negotiations on biofuels policy. Leaders of the G8 industrialised countries meet next week in Hokkaido, Japan, where they will discuss the food crisis and come under intense lobbying from campaigners calling for a moratorium on the use of plant-derived fuels.
It will also put pressure on the British government, which is due to release its own report on the impact of biofuels, the Gallagher Report. The Guardian has previously reported that the British study will state that plant fuels have played a "significant" part in pushing up food prices to record levels. Although it was expected last week, the report has still not been released.
"Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises," said Robert Bailey, policy adviser at Oxfam. "It is imperative that we have the full picture. While politicians concentrate on keeping industry lobbies happy, people in poor countries cannot afford enough to eat."
Rising food prices have pushed 100m people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt. Government ministers here have described higher food and fuel prices as "the first real economic crisis of globalisation".
President Bush has linked higher food prices to higher demand from India and China, but the leaked World Bank study disputes that: "Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases."
Even successive droughts in Australia, calculates the report, have had a marginal impact. Instead, it argues that the EU and US drive for biofuels has had by far the biggest impact on food supply and prices.
Since April, all petrol and diesel in Britain has had to include 2.5% from biofuels. The EU has been considering raising that target to 10% by 2020, but is faced with mounting evidence that that will only push food prices higher.
"Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate," says the report. The basket of food prices examined in the study rose by 140% between 2002 and this February. The report estimates that higher energy and fertiliser prices accounted for an increase of only 15%, while biofuels have been responsible for a 75% jump over that period.
It argues that production of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.
Other reviews of the food crisis looked at it over a much longer period, or have not linked these three factors, and so arrived at smaller estimates of the impact from biofuels. But the report author, Don Mitchell, is a senior economist at the Bank and has done a detailed, month-by-month analysis of the surge in food prices, which allows much closer examination of the link between biofuels and food supply.
The report points out biofuels derived from sugarcane, which Brazil specializes in, have not had such a dramatic impact.
Supporters of biofuels argue that they are a greener alternative to relying on oil and other fossil fuels, but even that claim has been disputed by some experts, who argue that it does not apply to US production of ethanol from plants.
"It is clear that some biofuels have huge impacts on food prices," said Dr David King, the government's former chief scientific adviser, last night. "All we are doing by supporting these is subsidising higher food prices, while doing nothing to tackle climate change."
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Post by Steve Gardner on Jul 7, 2008 11:43:35 GMT
Am I the only one who finds themselves disgusted by Brown's arrogance? It's as well to remind ourselves what the primary source of the food price increases really is: it's the high price of oil coupled with the use of cereal crops as fuel. Source and full article: BBC Britons must stop wasting food in an effort to help combat rising living costs, Gordon Brown has said as he travelled to the G8 summit in Japan.
The PM said "unnecessary" purchases were contributing to price rises, and urged people to plan meals in advance and store food properly.
A government study found the UK wastes 4m tonnes of food every year, adding £420 to a family's shopping bills.
Rising prices and the world economy are due to dominate the annual G8 summit.
The Cabinet Office report, due to be published later, claims that up to 40% of food harvested in developing countries can be lost before it is consumed, due to the inadequacies of processing, storage and transport.
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