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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/28/2008 12:25:15 AM | Summation, simplified view.
Oil=Food
600mn plus up and coming oil consumers in Chindia. Demand/supply curve ramps up.
Oil inputs to food costs rising.
IB/Banks/Hedgies using treasuries borrowed from FED to drive up commodities, oil included and scalp the profits.
Gbobal wage arbitrage underway, US consumer reduced buying power from shrinking bucky and negative wage growwth. Debt and money are fungible but debt destruction
is accellerating leaving only money to buy food. Hard to do with a negaative savings rate.
Rinse, repeat as the postitive feedback accellerates.
Fed lowers rates and commodities go higher. Fed raises rates and strangles connsumer and nad banks plan to recapitalize.
End game is the same. Lower standard of living foe the US & Canada. Middle class drops a few notches. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/28/2008 3:22:16 PM | NY Times article... it's actually an enviromental article about pollution but felt these paragraphs speak volumes to the senselessness...
Cod caught off Norway is shipped to China to be turned into filets, then shipped back to Norway for sale. Argentine lemons fill supermarket shelves on the Citrus Coast of Spain, as local lemons rot on the ground. Half of Europe’s peas are grown and packaged in Kenya.
And with far cheaper labor costs in African nations, Morocco and Egypt have displaced Spain in just a few seasons as important suppliers of tomatoes and salad greens to central Europe. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/28/2008 6:08:11 PM | | springazure44, then given the enormous transportation involved with food, however it is that has come to be.........I have to wonder: what incentives do companies have to avoid transportion if they can just pass the cost of pricier gas to the customers? | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/28/2008 6:51:15 PM | steven02151....I suspect many of these companies (especially the really big ones) have a "personal" (companies are deemed persons under US law...as I'm sure you know...I'm not sure about other countries) incentive to USE transportation since many of them have fingers in every pie. Either directly by ownership, or by stock holdings.
They scratch themselves and each other while clawing away at us. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/29/2008 7:53:45 AM | I'm not sure if it's been mentioned, but there is a video one can find on the net called
The World According to Monsanto.
Below is a text summation:
<div class="quote">By Siv O'Neall
(Axis of Logic) -- The gigantic biotech corporation Monsanto is threatening to destroy the agricultural biodiversity which has served mankind for thousands of years. The endless list of genetically modified seeds sold and controlled by Monsanto are putting at enormous risk age-old agricultural patterns under the presumptuous slogan of aiming at solving the huge problem of hunger in the world.
On March 11 a new documentary was aired on French television (ARTE – French-German cultural tv channel) by French journalist and film maker Marie-Monique Robin, entitled 'The World According to Monsanto' (Le Monde selon Monsanto[1]). Starting from the Internet over a period of three years Robin has collected material for her documentary, going on to numerous interviews with people of very different backgrounds. She traveled widely, from Latin America, to Asia, through Europe and the United States, to personally interview farmers and people in influential positions.
As an example of pro-Monsanto interviews, she talked at length with Michael Taylor who has worked as a lawyer for Monsanto and also for the Federal Drug Administration (FDA), where he had great influence on the legalization of the genetically modified bovine growth hormone (BGH). It also became FDA policy during Taylor's tenure that GM seeds are declared to be "substantially equivalent[2] to non-GM seeds, hence proclaiming proof of the harmlessness of GMs to be unnecessary. Michael Taylor[3] is a typical example of technocrats employed via 'the revolving door policy'. He is now head of the Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto Corporation.
The gospel according to Monsanto is that their patented GM seeds and their bovine growth hormone (BGH) will increase worldwide production of agricultural, dairy and meat products and Bt cotton to the extent that worldwide hunger and poverty will be eradicated.
The actual truth is rather the opposite. GMOs are creating serious damage all over the world and artificial BGH injection in cows[4] cause numerous health problems, and even death.
Monsanto is not held back by any considerations of ethics and it hides the reality of its sordid machinations behind a wall of secrecy. Everything Monsanto does is exclusively with the intent of increasing its own profit – everything else be damned. If left to its own devices it will most certainly destroy the livelihood of millions of farmers – a process begun a decade ago in India and certainly in many other countries as well[5]. The planet's ecosystems will be seriously threatened by unnatural ways of changing agricultural patterns. The dangers of GMO cultivation to the environment come in many forms:
* Switching from age-old biodiverse crops that can tolerate low-level amounts of water to industrial monocultures of crops such as GM soya, cotton, sugarcane, etc. that require large amounts of irrigation.
* Inundating cultivated lands with toxic herbicides, in particular the dangerous Monsanto product Roundup, to which the GMO seeds have been made biotechnically resistant. Any other growth should succumb to Roundup, were it not for the fact that weeds to a very large extent become Roundup resistant.
* Putting an end to biological farming and poisoning non GM cultures through pollenization from GM crops and accidental exposure to Roundup herbicide.
* Deforestation to make more land available for the culture of the GM seeds Monsanto sells at high prices to poor farmers.
On top of all these dangers to biodiversity and biological farming comes the fact that Monsanto has patented its products and farmers are legally bound not to save seeds for replanting for the following year. They must buy new seeds from Monsanto every year and the company has a sizeable staff that just deals with prosecuting farmers suspected of illegally using one year's seeds for the planting of the next year's crop.
Globalization and Poverty
Biological farming is adapted to existing ecosystems. But age-old biological farming has had to give room to industrial monocultures that enrich the few and cause poverty and despair for millions of small farmers. Now there is soil erosion, destruction of biodiversity and social/economic disasters in tow. Contrary to Monsanto promises that GM seeds and Roundup would reduce production cost, farmers now have to pay skyrocketing prices for herbicides, pesticides and fertilizer.[6]
The destructive effects of genetically engineered crops are worldwide, but the extensive damage done in India has been widely documented by Dr Vandana Shiva. She is a physicist and environmentalist as well as a tireless activist and author of many books concerning the nefarious consequences of GM farming as opposed to the wisdom of traditional family and biological farming. She is currently based in New Delhi.
Quote from Dr. Vandana Shiva:
"I am writing this statement from beautiful Doon Valley in the Himalaya where the monsoons have arrived, and our Navdanya (Nine Seeds—Our National Movement on Conservation of Biodiversity) team is busy with transplanting of over 300 rice varieties which we are conserving along with the rich diversity of other agricultural crops. Our farm does not use any chemicals or external inputs. It is a self-regenerative system which preserves biodiversity while meeting human needs and needs of farm animals. Our 2 bullocks are the alternative to chemical fertilisers which pollute soil and water as well as to tractors and fossil fuels which pollute the atmosphere and destabilise the climate."[7]
"Economic globalization has become a war against nature and the poor" says Dr. Vandana Shiva.
"Recently I was visiting Bhatinda in Punjab because of an epidemic of farmers’ suicides. Punjab used to be the most prosperous agricultural region in India. Today every farmer is in debt and despair. Vast stretches of land have become waterlogged desert. And, as an old farmer pointed out, even the trees have stopped bearing fruit because heavy use of pesticides has killed the pollinators — the bees and butterflies.
"And Punjab is not alone in experiencing this ecological and social disaster. Last year I was in Warangal, Andhra Pradesh, where farmers have also been committing suicide. Farmers who traditionally grew pulses and millets and paddy have been lured by seed companies to buy hybrid cotton seeds referred to as “white gold”, which were supposed to make them millionaires. Instead they became paupers."[8]
In India as well as in China it has been proven that the unscrupulous promises of Monsanto that Bt cotton (genetically engineered cotton) would produce a far higher yield and prove less costly in terms of herbicide and fertilizer required has been the exact opposite of what was promised. Bt cotton increases irrigation and water requirements where biological cotton would thrive without added irrigation. Thus the yield of Bt cotton has been far inferior to that of biological cotton and the costs of production significantly higher.[9]
Disastrous health problems caused by GMO products
In spite of the reassurances from Monsanto and its own lawyers and scientists that GMO cultures and Roundup herbicide are not health hazardous, it has been proven in their own research that rats have developed different forms of tumors and other health problems. However, instead of pushing the research further, they put a complete stop to it.
"As farmers know there is a cancer epidemic in America's heartland – partly resulting from exposure to chemicals like Roundup, and partly from ingesting contaminated food and drinking water." (Economic, health & environmental impacts of Roundup-type chemical and Roundup Ready soybeans)
Particularly when Roundup is applied by aerial spraying the risk of drift of the herbicide to close-by crops and trees is considerable. Both trees and nutritious and medicinal herbs have been proven to be killed or producing severely damaged fruit and leaves from the effect of Roundup being sprayed on nearby cultures, by air as well as by ground spraying.
Quote from "New research on the impact of GMOs on health"
"Although some GMOs have been approved and marketed for several years, there was no body of scientific research on their impact on the biology of living organisms. This is partly because animal feeding trials are not required in the current safety approval process for GMOs in the EU or USA. Only now is a body of evidence starting to emerge from a small number of animal feeding trials into the health effects and progress in the new science of epigenetics. This indicates that genetic engineering is much more unpredictable and risky than traditional breeding."[10]
Various health problems from GMO products have been identified, from serious skin problems in humans in Argentina at soya plantations (documented by Marie-Monique Robin in her film – The World According to Monsanto), to allergies in humans as well as tumors, damage to internal organs and internal bleeding in rats fed with genetically engineered potatoes.
From a lack of sufficient research and the fact that many health hazards develop over a long period of time, there is still no complete list of real health hazards to humans caused by GMO products. Monsanto who provides 90% of the world's long list of genetically engineered products[11] (having bought up 50 smaller companies during the last decade) does their business with such complete secrecy that there are still sold-out individuals out there who praise the complete revolution of agriculture achieved by the culture of GMO crops. These corrupt people seem to be totally unaware of the health hazards and the drive to despair and ruin of small farmers caused by GMO products. They seem to still believe that genetically engineered seeds can save the world's food problems. Or worse yet, they don't care.
A high representative for Monsanto has openly admitted that "We want to control the world's food supply."[12] It is also very clear that they have no concern for health hazards or human disasters caused by the callous decisions of world leaders to give up on biological farming and opt for genetically engineered food production and monoculture industrial farming.
The proofs that GM huge industrial monocultures and Roundup herbicide are destroying the earth's environment and human health are completely censured and ignored, due to intense lobbying and pressure from sold-out individuals at the United States Department of Agriculture and the Federal Drug Administration.
Once again, only corporate profit counts and people as well as the environment are of no importance. And the neocon puppets are playing the game with great gusto.
http://www.inteldaily.com/?c=172&a=5653
The citations and links are provided. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/29/2008 8:45:55 AM | The price of food has shot up because oil prices have shot up, and for every calorie of food in the supermarket, approximately ten calories of oil have been used in its production and transportation.
As an above poster said: oil=food.
What it portends, is localisation. The trend over the last century has been increasing globalisation arising largely from the abundance of cheaply available oil, and therefore low transportation costs. Now that we're at the end of cheap oil - prices will only continue to go up from here, and a lot - transport & production costs go up and food prices follows suit.
What happens next is that the bloated supply chains of 1500 mile food become increasingly cost-inefficient and economically unviable, and will start losing out to locally grown produce. The higher the price of oil gets, the closer to home food will need to be produced in order to be affordably priced.
Countries who aren't able to be self-sufficient in terms of food will eventually find things to be VERY expensive. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/29/2008 10:01:39 AM | Outdoor2, I understand that there is a great deal of legal requirement via the IMF, World Bank, other lenders as well as the boys who lease back farmlands to farmers after they put them out of business to use the genetically-engineered seeds, licenses issued, etc., most of which have "terminator" genes so the seeds are infertile.
Monsanto and others are ruling, world-wide, not just in our heartland in the US, but world-wide. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/29/2008 10:05:30 AM | "Recently I was visiting Bhatinda in Punjab because of an epidemic of farmers’ suicides. Punjab used to be the most prosperous agricultural region in India. Today every farmer is in debt and despair. Vast stretches of land have become waterlogged desert. And, as an old farmer pointed out, even the trees have stopped bearing fruit because heavy use of pesticides has killed the pollinators — the bees and butterflies.
"And Punjab is not alone in experiencing this ecological and social disaster. Last year I was in Warangal, Andhra Pradesh, where farmers have also been committing suicide. Farmers who traditionally grew pulses and millets and paddy have been lured by seed companies to buy hybrid cotton seeds referred to as “white gold”, which were supposed to make them millionaires. Instead they became paupers."
This is sad. The multinational/government/World Bank powers that be are wreaking such havoc over the entire world........it's like a Godzilla movie. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/29/2008 5:04:36 PM | My two cents:
yes, oil=food...oil is a limited resource..we are running out of oil...and at the same time adding a hundred million people to the population every year. I think we have passed the earth`s carrying capacity for humans. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/29/2008 10:09:23 PM | | There used to be a renewable energy source that literally grew on trees. It was called wood. People burned it to heat their houses and used it to run a mass transit system called trains. However wood could not keep up and people found another energy source, that was not so renewable, it was coal. Coal was good for running trains, but the soot and ash were undesirable, even with scrubbers, so coal was thrown to the wayside and oil and oil products were used. Gas was cheap, but radical environmentalists pushed for less drilling and less refineries because man was destroying America and the world and the EPA was created. The EPA forced oil companies to look overseas for oil in countries that could care less if the world was destroyed. These foreigners realized they had power and created an embargo on oil. Silly Americans created price and wage controls, which made the situation worse, and one President (Carter) advocated wearing sweaters as a solution. (LOL) Things got so bad, that a misery index was created to gauge the misery. Now here we are 30 years later and have we learned anything? No, we still dependant on foreign oil and do not use wood, coal, or nuclear power as much as we could. Nor is research or incentives used for these Alternative Fuels. Instead we push ethanol which uses FOOD as a fuel....not even a sci-fi writer could make this mess up. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 4/29/2008 11:45:20 PM | Not only is the price of food going up... but it's being poisoned by corps. And being helped to do it by the gov't.
[1] JR Latham et al., “The Mutational Consequences of Plant Transformation,” The Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology, Vol 2006 Article ID 25376 Pages 1-7, DOI 10.1155/JBB/2006/25376; for a more in-depth discussion, see also Allison Wilson et al., “Genome Scrambling -Myth or Reality? Transformation-Induced Mutations in Transgenic Crop Plants, Technical Report - October 2004, www.econexus.info.
[2] Mortality in Sheep Flocks after Grazing on Bt Cotton Fields – Warangal District, Andhra Pradesh. Report of the Preliminary Assessment April 2006, http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6494
[3]Ashish Gupta, et. al., Impact of Bt Cotton on Farmers’ Health (in Barwani and Dhar District of Madhya Pradesh), Investigation Report, Oct - Dec 2005
[4] See for example, Monsanto Cited In Crop Losses New York Times, June 16, 1998 , http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A04EED6153DF935A25755C0A96E958260; and Greenpeace http://archive.greenpeace.org/geneng/reports/gmo/intrgmo5.htm
[5] Antje Lorch, Monsanto Bribes in Indonesia, Monsanto Fined For Bribing Indonesian Officials to Avoid Environmental Studies for Bt Cotton, ifrik 1sep2005, http://www.mindfully.org/GE/2005/Monsanto-Bribes-Indonesia1sep05.htm
[6] Bt Cotton - No Respite for Andhra Pradesh Farmers More than 400 crores' worth losses for Bt Cotton farmers in Kharif 2005 Centre for Sustainable Agriculture: Press Release, March 29, 2006 http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6393; see also November 14, 2005 article in regarding Madhya Pradesh.
[7] Jaideep Hardikar, One suicide every 8 hours, Daily News & Analysis (India), August 26, 2006 http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1049554
[8] Rick Weiss, U.S. Rice Supply Contaminated, Genetically Altered Variety Is Found in Long-Grain Rice, Washington Post, August 19, 2006
[9]Jeffrey Smith, US Government and Biotech Firm Deceive Public on GM Corn Mix-up, Spilling the Beans, April 2005
[10] See for example, Christopher Doering, ProdiGene to spend millions on bio-corn tainting, Reuters News Service, USA: December 9, 2002
[11] See www.centerforfoodsafety.org
[12]Office of Inspector General, USDA, Audit Report Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Controls Over Issuance of Genetically Engineered Organism Release Permits, December 2005 http://www.thecampaign.org/USDA_IG_1205.pdf
[1 3] Justin Gillis, Genetically Modified Organisms Not Easily Contained; National Research Council Panel Urges More Work to Protect Against Contamination of Food Supply, Washington Post, Jan 21, 2004
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 5/1/2008 7:48:38 PM | We are still lucky in North America, as compared to other regions. The average cost of food (including milk and honey) per income is close to ten percent. So even if it shot up another hundred percent, which it will, we would still be well below most.
Some unfortunates pay forty percent of their annual income for just the staples. (read~rice)
So why do we put corn, bio-diesel, in our SUVs when people are starving. (Scratches his head)
Cheers | |
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| Response to outdoors2; 300 rice varieties
Posted: 5/11/2008 12:47:34 PM | I wonder how the "Re-plantation" of 300 rice varieties going to turn out. I hope they make another documentary about this subject. It's a dirty shame these farmers kill them selves. They are the ones needed to participate with the "Re-plantation" process.
Plantation of rice is actually very simple, you load the rice on a single-engine Cessna airplane to spread the rice in the fields.
The hard part is the Natural cross-pollination in rice. Also the water, because that is a dry climate. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 5/12/2008 5:55:45 AM | uR xOXO, I read that the bio-diesel grown from corn has actually onlya small effect on the price of it.
What I am reading is that it is the Food Futures and hedge speculation driving up the price. the same forces that have driven up gas.
The current supply IS meeting the demand.
Whats the REAL cause of the increases and what do speculators who are bidding up futures and the declining dollar have to do with it?
I believe these latter things account for MOST of the sharp increases,not the actual market place nor actual production costs. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 5/12/2008 7:43:35 AM | caffeine7 :
The cost of many staples has risen 50% or more in the last six months.
Somehow I doubt population growth is matching. In fact, the UN estimates world growth at 1.14% (75 million) annually and declining steadily since it's peak of 86 million in 1987.
It's not the supply per se...it's who controls it... | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 5/12/2008 7:51:32 AM | This thought just came to my head;
Workers in India went from eating 1 meal, to, 2 meals a day.
Workers in India= 300'000'000
population of United States= 300'000'000
India 1,129,866,154 (July 2007 est.)
United States — Population: 301,139,947 (July 2007 est.) | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 5/12/2008 9:40:04 AM |
Somehow I doubt population growth is matching.
Matching what? The price rise? Cost doesn't have a linear relationship to supply. You don't need a 50% population increase or food shortfall for a 50% price increase. When you have a shortfall of food, people either pay more or starve. That pretty much means the price goes up until the bottom X% of the supply chain literally cannot afford to buy it at all.
A 1% shortfall in supply of an essential like rice or grain is more than enough to see the price rocket by 50% or so. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 5/12/2008 4:32:01 PM | The OP asks...
<div class="quote">Whats the REAL cause of the increases and what do speculators who are bidding up futures and the declining dollar have to do with it?
I personally don't think there is only one cause for the exponential increases in the price of foods/staples.
As caffeine7 suggests population growth increases both supply and demand. Supply because more people inhabit the planet thus restricting land for harvest. Here in Toronto for instance, the most fertile land in the area has grown into a concrete jungle. The populace has dredged a corridor, 150 miles x 35 miles, where only a short time ago was mostly pristine farm land. Demand because there are more mouths to feed, which invariably takes its toll on supply again. Scary if you think about it really.
Another reason is draughts. Last year was a particularly dry summer in many regions, including North America, Australia and Europe. This drained our stashes/reserves, affecting once again the supply part of the equation.
Speculators and their speculations, Food Future hedging, typically create what I call a feeding frenzy. The sharks smell blood and attacks, with instinct and without thought. This causes a paper demand of food stocks, a further hindrance of the supply/demand.
Not a Monsanto
or subsidy fan,
Ur.
Great thread by the way. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 5/12/2008 4:55:26 PM | | So after reading several of the previous posts here is what I understand to be the problem. Mostly it seems to be Bush's fault. Darn republicans, but wait the Democratics are at fault as well for not voting to increase production of oil, and passing legislation for promoting ethanol usage in cars. Then we have the overpopulation problem as well. And let us not forget everyone driving big cars as well. Oh and the people from India, How dare they eat more than one meal a day. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 5/12/2008 5:17:03 PM | Mother nature just needs to thin out the population
and starvation is as good a means as any!
We didn't have the intelligence to control our growth, pollution and
over use of resources. Other things were MUCH more important,
like Britney Spears or some stain on Lewinsky's dress! Or forever
talking Politics! That achieves nothing!
So now the matter is no longer in our hands!
What will happen will be like the perfect storm, where various
factors start to compound the effect and the very fragile systems
we have in place will fail. New Orleans was just a TINY example,
even when in that case, there SHOULD have been outside help! | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 5/13/2008 2:47:09 AM | Well, EU, USA, Austraila, Russia, Argentina, Brazil will just start to rig the game to keep more food at home. The problem is China, India like red meat and farmers, ranchers are happy to provide it at a better profit margins. Food costs have gone down in the west from 1960s, and Tractors, Combines have GPS sensors to how till just perfect, and modifield seeds are creating more yields per bushel on corn, wheat.
India will probadly start to force off most ineffiecent landowners off the farms, and allow coporatization of farming to occur because more important to feed mouths then to keep the Rural folk happy at this point. Gonna get real ugly in India, Phillipnes, China when the goverment technocrats start to realize the only way to bring up food production is mechanized farming on a commerical by private eneterprise. Collectization of Argiculture never work, nor does small inefficent plots. The only time ineffficent farm plots are useful is when goverment needs to keep them tilling the land prevent rioting by peasants.
EU, USA will keep on subidizing those farmers to ensure they have the fund to buy machinces like tractors with GPS, Combines, tillers, exotic fertilizers to increase yields. | |
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| Why Has the Price of Food Shot Up and What Does It Portend?
Posted: 5/13/2008 5:25:58 PM | I'm currently watching the History Channel. I cant tell ya the name of the show, I just stumbled across it. But it's about swarming insects.
I didn't catch what year they claimed, but apparently 230,000 people died in one season from starvation in Africa because of a Locust swarm that destroyed ALL CROPS. Then they talked about a swarm of Mormon crickets.. and the show is now mentioning the rocky mountain locusts.
SO.... world wide we have Droughts, Insect swarms, and Gas Prices... hmmmm? | |
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