Gold was way up today $860 an ounce somewhere arround there and oil went over the hundred a barrel. So when the rich start squirling gold away, what does it mean?
Meet Your Masters
- Thread starter darkbeaver
- Start date
I started 5 years ago when it was 260, cpincidentaly when the U.S. invaded Iraq.
I've done quite well in the gold market.
I've done quite well in the gold market.
Yup it's a sign that people do take disaster serious isn't it. I got my wealth tied up in land and firewood, brooks and building stone.
The Genocide Has Begun
.....and the genocide begins.
We as a world have 3 months of wheat stocks for global consumption. 3 months....that's it. In the U.S. the use of corn for ethenal has doubled since 2003.
Now, would you rather eat or drive your car? 3 months.......and the government wants to take more land out of food production and put it into energy production.....Brilliant.
Severe food shortages, price spikes threaten world population
Naomi Spencer | 23.12.2007 16:11 | Climate Chaos | Ecology | Health | World
Worldwide food prices have risen sharply and supplies have dropped this year, according to the latest food outlook of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. The agency warned December 17 that the changes represent an “unforeseen and unprecedented” shift in the global food system, threatening billions with hunger and decreased access to food.
The FAO’s food price index rose by 40 percent this year, on top of the already high 9 percent increase the year before, and the poorest countries spent 25 percent more this year on imported food. The prices for staple crops, including wheat, rice, corn and soybeans, all rose drastically in 2007, pushing up prices for grain-fed meat, eggs and dairy products and spurring inflation throughout the consumer food market.
Driving these increases are a complex range of developments, including rapid urbanization of populations and growing demand for food stuffs in key developing countries such as China and India, speculation in the commodities markets, increased diversion of feedstock crops into the production of biofuels, and extreme weather conditions and other natural disasters associated with climate change.
Because of the long-term and compounding nature of all of these factors, the problems of rising prices and decreasing supplies in the food system are not temporary or one-time occurrences, and cannot be understood as cyclical fluctuations in supply and demand.
The world reserves of cereals are dwindling. In the past year, wheat stores declined 11 percent. The FAO notes that this is the lowest level since the UN began keeping records in 1980, while the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has reported that world wheat stocks may have fallen to 47-year lows. By FAO figures, the falloff in wheat stores equals about 12 weeks worth of global consumption.
The USDA has cautioned that wheat exporters in the US have already sold more than 90 percent of what the department had expected to be exported during the fiscal year ending June 2008. This has dire consequences for the world’s poor, whose diets consist largely of cereal grains imported from the United States and other major producers.
More than 850 million people around the world suffer from chronic hunger and other associated miseries of extreme poverty. According to the FAO, 37 countries—20 in Africa, 9 in Asia, 6 in Latin America, and 2 in Eastern Europe—currently face exceptional shortfalls in food production and supplies.
Those most affected live in countries dependent on imports. The poorest people, whose diets consist heavily of cereal grains, are most vulnerable. Already the poor spend the majority of their income on staple foods—up to 80 percent in some regions, according to the FAO. Ever-rising prices will lead to a distinct deterioration in the diets of these sections of the population.
The food crisis is intensifying social discontent and raising the likelihood of social upheavals. The FAO notes that political unrest “directly linked to food markets” has developed in Morocco, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Guinea, Mauritania and Senegal. In the past year, cereal prices have triggered riots in several other countries, including Mexico, where tortilla prices were pushed up 60 percent. In Italy, the rising cost of pasta prompted nationwide protests. Unrest in China has also been linked to cooking oil shortages.
In addition to the cost of imports, war and civil strife, multiple years of drought and other disasters, and the impact of HIV/AIDS have crippled countries’ food supply mechanisms.
Iraq and Afghanistan both suffer severe shortfalls because of the US invasion and ongoing occupation. North African countries are hard hit by the soaring wheat prices because many staple foods require imported wheat.
Countries of the former Soviet Union are facing wheat shortages. People there spend upwards of 70 percent of their incomes on food; the price of bread in Kyrgyzstan has risen by 50 percent this year and the government released emergency reserves of wheat in the poorest areas to temporarily ease the crisis.
In Bangladesh, food prices have spiraled up 11 percent every month since July; rice prices have risen by nearly 50 percent in the past year.
Central American countries saw a 50 percent increase in the price of that region’s staple grain, corn. Several countries in South America have also been impacted by the high international wheat prices, compelling national governments to dispense with import taxes. The government in Bolivia, for example, has dispatched the military to operate industrial-scale bread bakeries.
All national governments are keenly aware of the possibility of civil unrest in the event of severe food shortages or famine, and many have taken minimal steps to ease the crisis in the short term, such as reducing import tariffs and erecting export restrictions. On December 20, China did away with food export rebates in an effort to stave off domestic shortfalls. Russia, Kazakhstan, and Argentina have also implemented export controls.
But such policies cannot adequately cope with the crisis in the food system because they do not address the causes, only the immediate symptoms. Behind the inflation are the complex inter-linkages of global markets and the fundamental incompatibility of the capitalist system with the needs of billions of poor and working people.
The volatility of the financial markets, driven by speculation and trading in equity and debt, intersects with the futures and options markets that have a direct bearing on agricultural commodity markets. As the housing market in the United States collapsed, compounding problems in the credit market and threatening recession, speculation shifted to the commodities markets, exacerbating inflation in basic goods and materials. The international food market is particularly prone to volatility because current prices are greatly influenced by speculation over future commodity prices. This speculation can then trigger more volatility, encouraging more speculation.
Future grain prices are a striking example of this disastrous cycle. On December 17, speculation on wheat and rice for delivery in March 2008 forced prices to historic highs on the Chicago Board of Trade. Wheat jumped to more than $10 a bushel on projections of worsening shortages and inflation. This level is double the $5-a-bushel price of wheat at the beginning of 2007.
Japan, the largest wheat importer in Asia, announced December 19 that it may raise wheat prices by 30 percent. The same day, Indian government officials warned of impending food security problems. These were due, according to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, to “clouds on global financial markets following the sub-prime lending crisis.”
Soybean and corn prices have also been pushed up to 34-year and 11-year highs, respectively, on the projected shortages and demand for biofuel. These new trading levels become the agricultural benchmarks for subsequent trading, and, as the Financial Times put it December 17, have the consequence of “raising inflationary pressure and constraining the ability of central banks to mitigate economic slowdown.”
Higher fuel costs ultimately lead to higher food prices, via higher shipping charges, particularly for nations that import a large proportion of their staple foods. Shipping costs for bulk commodities have increased by more than 80 percent in the past year and 57 percent since June, according to the Baltic Exchange Dry Index.
The FAO report noted that the enormous increase in freight costs has had the effect of dis-integrating the world market in certain regions because many import-heavy countries have opted to purchase from closer suppliers, resulting in “prices at regional or localized levels falling out of line with world levels.”
The rising oil price not only affects the costs of transportation and importation. It also has a direct impact on the costs of farm operation in the working of agricultural and industrial processing machinery. Moreover, fertilizer, which takes its key component, nitrogen, from natural gas, is also spiking in price because of the impact of rising oil prices on the demand and costs of other fuels. By the same token, as oil prices rise, the demand for biofuel sources such as corn, sugarcane, and soybeans also rises, resulting in more and more feedstock crops being devoted to fuel and additives production.
In the US, the use of corn for ethanol production has doubled since 2003, and is projected by the FAO to increase from 55 million metric tons to 110 million metric tons by 2016. The US government is more ambitious. On December 19, President Bush signed a new energy bill into law which contains a mandate for expanding domestic biofuel production five-fold over the next 15 years, to more than 36 billion gallons a year. Already a third of the US corn harvest is devoted to ethanol production, surpassing the amount of corn bound for the world food markets.
As more US cropland is devoted to ethanol-bound corn, other major agricultural regions are struggling with weather disasters associated with climate change. Australia and the Ukraine, both significant exporters of wheat, have suffered extreme weather that damaged crops. A prolonged drought in southern Australia has curtailed farming to such a degree that many farmers have sold their land.
Current research suggests that as temperatures rise over the next fifty years by 1 to 2 degrees Celsius, poor countries may lose 135 million hectares (334 million acres) of arable land because of lost rainfall. In new studies published earlier this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers have cautioned that this estimate may be conservative, and that the impact of climate change on food production has been over-simplified.
According to NASA/Goddard Institute of Space Studies researcher Francesco Tubiello, complications of climate change on the world food supply may be far worse than previously predicted: “The projections show a smooth curve, but a smooth curve has never happened in history. Things happen suddenly, and then you can’t respond to them.”
Tubiello’s research focuses on extreme weather events that have devastated entire crops when they coincided with germination and blossoming periods, as was the case with Italy’s corn crop in 2003. Tubiello noted that corn yield in the Po valley growing region fell to 36 percent following a heat wave that raised Italy’s temperatures 6 degrees over the long-term average.
In addition to the survival thresholds of plants, researchers have begun studying the effects of higher temperatures on the physiology and diseases of livestock, as well as the spread of pests, molds and viruses native to tropical zones. Goddard Institute research has suggested that bluetongue, a viral disease of cattle and sheep, will move outward from the tropics into regions including southern Australia. According to the Earth Institute at Columbia University, higher temperatures will lead to higher infertility in livestock and lower dairy yields.
The implications of these studies are that farming adaptations such as hardier crops and shifts in planting times may initially mitigate anticipated global warming. Yet over the coming decades, the stress of climate change on the food supply will also intensify in abrupt and catastrophic ways for which the capitalist system and its ruling elites are entirely unprepared and which they are unable to prevent.
Naomi Spencer
Homepage: http://wsws.org/articles/2007/dec2007/food-d22.shtml
.....and the genocide begins.
We as a world have 3 months of wheat stocks for global consumption. 3 months....that's it. In the U.S. the use of corn for ethenal has doubled since 2003.
Now, would you rather eat or drive your car? 3 months.......and the government wants to take more land out of food production and put it into energy production.....Brilliant.
Severe food shortages, price spikes threaten world population
Naomi Spencer | 23.12.2007 16:11 | Climate Chaos | Ecology | Health | World
Worldwide food prices have risen sharply and supplies have dropped this year, according to the latest food outlook of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. The agency warned December 17 that the changes represent an “unforeseen and unprecedented” shift in the global food system, threatening billions with hunger and decreased access to food.
The FAO’s food price index rose by 40 percent this year, on top of the already high 9 percent increase the year before, and the poorest countries spent 25 percent more this year on imported food. The prices for staple crops, including wheat, rice, corn and soybeans, all rose drastically in 2007, pushing up prices for grain-fed meat, eggs and dairy products and spurring inflation throughout the consumer food market.
Driving these increases are a complex range of developments, including rapid urbanization of populations and growing demand for food stuffs in key developing countries such as China and India, speculation in the commodities markets, increased diversion of feedstock crops into the production of biofuels, and extreme weather conditions and other natural disasters associated with climate change.
Because of the long-term and compounding nature of all of these factors, the problems of rising prices and decreasing supplies in the food system are not temporary or one-time occurrences, and cannot be understood as cyclical fluctuations in supply and demand.
The world reserves of cereals are dwindling. In the past year, wheat stores declined 11 percent. The FAO notes that this is the lowest level since the UN began keeping records in 1980, while the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has reported that world wheat stocks may have fallen to 47-year lows. By FAO figures, the falloff in wheat stores equals about 12 weeks worth of global consumption.
The USDA has cautioned that wheat exporters in the US have already sold more than 90 percent of what the department had expected to be exported during the fiscal year ending June 2008. This has dire consequences for the world’s poor, whose diets consist largely of cereal grains imported from the United States and other major producers.
More than 850 million people around the world suffer from chronic hunger and other associated miseries of extreme poverty. According to the FAO, 37 countries—20 in Africa, 9 in Asia, 6 in Latin America, and 2 in Eastern Europe—currently face exceptional shortfalls in food production and supplies.
Those most affected live in countries dependent on imports. The poorest people, whose diets consist heavily of cereal grains, are most vulnerable. Already the poor spend the majority of their income on staple foods—up to 80 percent in some regions, according to the FAO. Ever-rising prices will lead to a distinct deterioration in the diets of these sections of the population.
The food crisis is intensifying social discontent and raising the likelihood of social upheavals. The FAO notes that political unrest “directly linked to food markets” has developed in Morocco, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Guinea, Mauritania and Senegal. In the past year, cereal prices have triggered riots in several other countries, including Mexico, where tortilla prices were pushed up 60 percent. In Italy, the rising cost of pasta prompted nationwide protests. Unrest in China has also been linked to cooking oil shortages.
In addition to the cost of imports, war and civil strife, multiple years of drought and other disasters, and the impact of HIV/AIDS have crippled countries’ food supply mechanisms.
Iraq and Afghanistan both suffer severe shortfalls because of the US invasion and ongoing occupation. North African countries are hard hit by the soaring wheat prices because many staple foods require imported wheat.
Countries of the former Soviet Union are facing wheat shortages. People there spend upwards of 70 percent of their incomes on food; the price of bread in Kyrgyzstan has risen by 50 percent this year and the government released emergency reserves of wheat in the poorest areas to temporarily ease the crisis.
In Bangladesh, food prices have spiraled up 11 percent every month since July; rice prices have risen by nearly 50 percent in the past year.
Central American countries saw a 50 percent increase in the price of that region’s staple grain, corn. Several countries in South America have also been impacted by the high international wheat prices, compelling national governments to dispense with import taxes. The government in Bolivia, for example, has dispatched the military to operate industrial-scale bread bakeries.
All national governments are keenly aware of the possibility of civil unrest in the event of severe food shortages or famine, and many have taken minimal steps to ease the crisis in the short term, such as reducing import tariffs and erecting export restrictions. On December 20, China did away with food export rebates in an effort to stave off domestic shortfalls. Russia, Kazakhstan, and Argentina have also implemented export controls.
But such policies cannot adequately cope with the crisis in the food system because they do not address the causes, only the immediate symptoms. Behind the inflation are the complex inter-linkages of global markets and the fundamental incompatibility of the capitalist system with the needs of billions of poor and working people.
The volatility of the financial markets, driven by speculation and trading in equity and debt, intersects with the futures and options markets that have a direct bearing on agricultural commodity markets. As the housing market in the United States collapsed, compounding problems in the credit market and threatening recession, speculation shifted to the commodities markets, exacerbating inflation in basic goods and materials. The international food market is particularly prone to volatility because current prices are greatly influenced by speculation over future commodity prices. This speculation can then trigger more volatility, encouraging more speculation.
Future grain prices are a striking example of this disastrous cycle. On December 17, speculation on wheat and rice for delivery in March 2008 forced prices to historic highs on the Chicago Board of Trade. Wheat jumped to more than $10 a bushel on projections of worsening shortages and inflation. This level is double the $5-a-bushel price of wheat at the beginning of 2007.
Japan, the largest wheat importer in Asia, announced December 19 that it may raise wheat prices by 30 percent. The same day, Indian government officials warned of impending food security problems. These were due, according to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, to “clouds on global financial markets following the sub-prime lending crisis.”
Soybean and corn prices have also been pushed up to 34-year and 11-year highs, respectively, on the projected shortages and demand for biofuel. These new trading levels become the agricultural benchmarks for subsequent trading, and, as the Financial Times put it December 17, have the consequence of “raising inflationary pressure and constraining the ability of central banks to mitigate economic slowdown.”
Higher fuel costs ultimately lead to higher food prices, via higher shipping charges, particularly for nations that import a large proportion of their staple foods. Shipping costs for bulk commodities have increased by more than 80 percent in the past year and 57 percent since June, according to the Baltic Exchange Dry Index.
The FAO report noted that the enormous increase in freight costs has had the effect of dis-integrating the world market in certain regions because many import-heavy countries have opted to purchase from closer suppliers, resulting in “prices at regional or localized levels falling out of line with world levels.”
The rising oil price not only affects the costs of transportation and importation. It also has a direct impact on the costs of farm operation in the working of agricultural and industrial processing machinery. Moreover, fertilizer, which takes its key component, nitrogen, from natural gas, is also spiking in price because of the impact of rising oil prices on the demand and costs of other fuels. By the same token, as oil prices rise, the demand for biofuel sources such as corn, sugarcane, and soybeans also rises, resulting in more and more feedstock crops being devoted to fuel and additives production.
In the US, the use of corn for ethanol production has doubled since 2003, and is projected by the FAO to increase from 55 million metric tons to 110 million metric tons by 2016. The US government is more ambitious. On December 19, President Bush signed a new energy bill into law which contains a mandate for expanding domestic biofuel production five-fold over the next 15 years, to more than 36 billion gallons a year. Already a third of the US corn harvest is devoted to ethanol production, surpassing the amount of corn bound for the world food markets.
As more US cropland is devoted to ethanol-bound corn, other major agricultural regions are struggling with weather disasters associated with climate change. Australia and the Ukraine, both significant exporters of wheat, have suffered extreme weather that damaged crops. A prolonged drought in southern Australia has curtailed farming to such a degree that many farmers have sold their land.
Current research suggests that as temperatures rise over the next fifty years by 1 to 2 degrees Celsius, poor countries may lose 135 million hectares (334 million acres) of arable land because of lost rainfall. In new studies published earlier this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers have cautioned that this estimate may be conservative, and that the impact of climate change on food production has been over-simplified.
According to NASA/Goddard Institute of Space Studies researcher Francesco Tubiello, complications of climate change on the world food supply may be far worse than previously predicted: “The projections show a smooth curve, but a smooth curve has never happened in history. Things happen suddenly, and then you can’t respond to them.”
Tubiello’s research focuses on extreme weather events that have devastated entire crops when they coincided with germination and blossoming periods, as was the case with Italy’s corn crop in 2003. Tubiello noted that corn yield in the Po valley growing region fell to 36 percent following a heat wave that raised Italy’s temperatures 6 degrees over the long-term average.
In addition to the survival thresholds of plants, researchers have begun studying the effects of higher temperatures on the physiology and diseases of livestock, as well as the spread of pests, molds and viruses native to tropical zones. Goddard Institute research has suggested that bluetongue, a viral disease of cattle and sheep, will move outward from the tropics into regions including southern Australia. According to the Earth Institute at Columbia University, higher temperatures will lead to higher infertility in livestock and lower dairy yields.
The implications of these studies are that farming adaptations such as hardier crops and shifts in planting times may initially mitigate anticipated global warming. Yet over the coming decades, the stress of climate change on the food supply will also intensify in abrupt and catastrophic ways for which the capitalist system and its ruling elites are entirely unprepared and which they are unable to prevent.
Naomi Spencer
Last edited:
UN Issues Warning
UN Issues Warning....
Hard times are coming my friends.....
http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/ne...of-billions-of-people-will-be-se/1151741.html
UN Issues Warning....
Hard times are coming my friends.....
http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/ne...of-billions-of-people-will-be-se/1151741.html
Last edited:
I know it's just after the holiday season and the grocery stores are low on stock right now, but we were in our local store yesterday and it's eerie when you look at those empty shelves.
In every ant colony there's only going to be one Queen, so many guards, so many workers, so many soldiers all who have certain expected limited time spans.
And there's getting to be so many humans that we resemb
The Bell curves in demographic studies of any society showing who gains power and riches and amortization tables on the median death averages are the tyranny, not some cartoon conspiracy led by one laughing megalo-maniac.
The tyranny is the expected law of averages on who succeeds and who doesn't, who lives longer and who doesn't.
The tyranny is the physics of gravity, the laws of atrophy.
And there's getting to be so many humans that we resemb
The Bell curves in demographic studies of any society showing who gains power and riches and amortization tables on the median death averages are the tyranny, not some cartoon conspiracy led by one laughing megalo-maniac.
The tyranny is the expected law of averages on who succeeds and who doesn't, who lives longer and who doesn't.
The tyranny is the physics of gravity, the laws of atrophy.
Well, personally speaking, I know I have never, not once mentioned the word ..jew...in any of my posts until just now. The only theme I have is global dominance of a few over the rest of the world. The citizens or ...slaves, how ever you want to word it.
The Fed Can't Save Us from World Food Shortages
posted on: December 20, 2007 | about stocks: DIA / QQQQ / SPY
Print Email
I have talked about this subject of resource shortages relentlessly in the blog, but now the mainstream press and 'academic studies' are seeing the strains on our food supply by a 'World of Shortages'. Our inflation this time is not due to an overheated economy like past cycles but demographic worldwide trends (the world was not built for 7 billion plus people, with >50% urbanized which is where we are headed within a decade); this is why I argue the Fed just needs to forget about inflation (it is powerless to stop the trends behind it) and work on growth.
It would also help if our gosh darn politicians did not encourage programs that diverted food supply away from food and into energy, especially such inefficient things as corn ethanol but votes are votes, and they will be bought off any way they can in Iowa, to the detriment of us all. It is one thing to put sarcastic comments into a blog, but these are truly very bad things happening that our politicians are in fact encouraging (they kill the solar incentive in the recent tax bill? they keep subsidizing the bad types of energy and call this a 'victory'?) What a joke.
Just like the mortgages, until it gets so terrible that wide parts of our population suffer and raise hell, then they will reverse course - and look back at these type of energy bills and say "so and so is to blame for such a bad decision". Check back in 3-4 years, trust me, this will happen.
These are not things that get fixed if China GDP drops from 12% annual to 3% or US "slows down". This is what "those in the know" either don't know or are ignoring. And again we move to a 'reactive' situation than 'proactive'. I am not sure what it will take to put this on the radar, since people unable to pay for food in the lower tranches of society won't affect the investment banks in New York and thus do not require any urgent action or Fed hand holding.
As I have stated, this is incrementally happening year by year (all this inflation, not just food), but now it's really starting to accelerate and affect much larger swathes of people. And this is why the economy will be issue #1, #2, and #3 by the time the general election is in full swing. I expect to see an angry electorate in fact.
First, World Food Supply is Shrinking U.N. Agency Warns
Until then I will just complain in the blog and continue to look for the people with deeper and deeper pockets (farmers) and find the items they will be throwing our tax money at (fertilizer).
What a system.
As in the past, any time a farmer has made money through price increases such as this, the bottom has fallen out of the economy shortly after. This time will be no different.
posted on: December 20, 2007 | about stocks: DIA / QQQQ / SPY
Print Email
I have talked about this subject of resource shortages relentlessly in the blog, but now the mainstream press and 'academic studies' are seeing the strains on our food supply by a 'World of Shortages'. Our inflation this time is not due to an overheated economy like past cycles but demographic worldwide trends (the world was not built for 7 billion plus people, with >50% urbanized which is where we are headed within a decade); this is why I argue the Fed just needs to forget about inflation (it is powerless to stop the trends behind it) and work on growth.
It would also help if our gosh darn politicians did not encourage programs that diverted food supply away from food and into energy, especially such inefficient things as corn ethanol but votes are votes, and they will be bought off any way they can in Iowa, to the detriment of us all. It is one thing to put sarcastic comments into a blog, but these are truly very bad things happening that our politicians are in fact encouraging (they kill the solar incentive in the recent tax bill? they keep subsidizing the bad types of energy and call this a 'victory'?) What a joke.
Just like the mortgages, until it gets so terrible that wide parts of our population suffer and raise hell, then they will reverse course - and look back at these type of energy bills and say "so and so is to blame for such a bad decision". Check back in 3-4 years, trust me, this will happen.
These are not things that get fixed if China GDP drops from 12% annual to 3% or US "slows down". This is what "those in the know" either don't know or are ignoring. And again we move to a 'reactive' situation than 'proactive'. I am not sure what it will take to put this on the radar, since people unable to pay for food in the lower tranches of society won't affect the investment banks in New York and thus do not require any urgent action or Fed hand holding.
As I have stated, this is incrementally happening year by year (all this inflation, not just food), but now it's really starting to accelerate and affect much larger swathes of people. And this is why the economy will be issue #1, #2, and #3 by the time the general election is in full swing. I expect to see an angry electorate in fact.
First, World Food Supply is Shrinking U.N. Agency Warns
- In an “unforeseen and unprecedented” shift, the world food supply is dwindling rapidly and food prices are soaring to historic levels, the United Nations’ top food and agriculture official warned Monday.
- The changes created “a very serious risk that fewer people will be able to get food,” particularly in the developing world, said Jacques Diouf, head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
- The agency’s food price index rose by more than 40 percent this year, compared with 9 percent the year before</SPAN _extended="true"> — a rate that was already unacceptable, Mr. Diouf said. New figures show that the total cost of food imported by the neediest countries rose 25 percent in the last year, to $107 million.
- At the same time, reserves of cereals are severely depleted, the agency’s records show. World wheat stores declined 11 percent this year, to the lowest level since 1980</SPAN _extended="true">. That corresponds with 12 weeks of the world’s total consumption, much less than the average of 18 weeks’ consumption, in storage during the 2000-2005 period.
- There are only 8 weeks of corn left, down from 11 weeks in the same five-year period.
- Prices of wheat and oilseeds are at record highs, Mr. Diouf said Monday. Wheat prices have risen by $130 a ton, or 52 percent, since a year ago. United States wheat futures broke $10 a bushel for the first time Monday, a psychological milestone.
- Mr. Diouf said the crisis was a result of a confluence of recent supply and demand factors that, he said, were here to stay.
- On the supply side, the early effects of global warming have decreased crop yields in some crucial places. So has a shift away from farming for human consumption to crops for biofuels and cattle feed. Demand for grain is increasing as the world’s population grows and more is diverted to feed cattle as the population of upwardly mobile meat-eaters grows.
- “We’re concerned that we are facing the perfect storm for the world’s hungry,” said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Program, in a telephone interview. She said that her agency’s food procurement costs had gone up 50 percent in the last five years and that some poor people were being “priced out of the food market</SPAN _extended="true">.”
- To make matters worse, high oil prices have doubled shipping costs in the last year, putting stress on poor nations that need to import food and the humanitarian agencies that provide it.
- Already “unusual weather events,” linked to climate change — like drought, floods and storms — have decreased production in important exporting countries like Australia and Ukraine, Mr. Diouf said.
- Shopping at a Whole Foods Market in suburban Chicago, Meredith Estes said food prices have jumped so much she has resorted to coupons. Charles T. Rodgers Jr., an Arkansas cattle rancher, said normal feed rations so expensive and scarce he is scrambling for alternatives. In Oregon, Jack Joyce, the owner of Rogue Ales, said the cost of barley malt has soared 88 percent this year. (ok I have to admit I laughed at the first sentence... poor lady had to resort to coupons at Whole Foods, a very expensive place to shop for you darn yuppie types</SPAN _extended="true">)
- For years, cheap food and feed were taken for granted in the United States. But now the price of some foods is rising sharply, and from the corridors of Washington to the aisles of neighborhood supermarkets, a blame alert is under way.
- Among the favorite targets is ethanol, especially for food manufacturers and livestock farmers who seethe at government mandates for ethanol production. The ethanol boom, they contend, is raising corn prices, driving up the cost of producing dairy products and meat, and causing farmers to plant so much corn as to crowd out other crops.
- The results are working their way through the marketplace, in this view, with overall consumer grocery costs up roughly 5 percent in a year and feed costs up more than 20 percent.
- Now, with Congress poised to adopt a new mandate that would double the volume of ethanol made from corn, ethanol skeptics say a fateful moment has arrived, with the nation about to commit itself to decades of competition between food and fuel for the use of agricultural land.
- “This is like a runaway freight train,” said Scott Faber, a lobbyist for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, who complained that ethanol has the same “magical effect” on politicians as the tooth fairy and Santa Claus have on children. “It’s great news for corn farmers, but terrible news for consumers</SPAN _extended="true">.”
- But ethanol critics are not getting much traction with their argument. Last week, the Senate voted 86 to 8 for a new energy bill containing expanded ethanol mandates, and the House is expected to follow suit this week.
- Experts with no stake in the argument say ethanol has indeed contributed to rising food costs, but that is only one among several factors. Higher fuel costs are driving up the expense of growing and transporting food. And strong economic growth abroad is increasing demand for agricultural commodities, allowing once-destitute people to augment their diets with meat and dairy.</SPAN _extended="true">
- It is also a tough time, politically, to make a case against ethanol. With continuing turmoil in the Middle East, sky-high gas prices and presidential candidates stumping in Iowa, the heart of the Corn Belt, a new renewable fuel standard has plenty of supporters on Capitol Hill.
- “We did get whipped,” said Jay Truitt, vice president of government affairs for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. “We continue to be caught up in this fervor, almost spirituality, about ethanol. You can’t get anyone to consider that there is a consequence to these actions.</SPAN _extended="true">”
- He added, “We think there will be a day when people ask, ‘Why in the world did we do this?</SPAN _extended="true">’”</SPAN _extended="true">
- The bill in Congress would increase the mandate for renewable fuels to a striking 36 billion gallons by 2022. That is far beyond a requirement on the books now for 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol by 2012. Much of the newly required ethanol could be made from agricultural wastes like corn stalks and straw, and its production would not compete directly with food production. But the proposed mandate, known as a renewable fuel standard, also calls for 15 billion gallons of ethanol made from grains, primarily corn.
- Mark W. Leonard, who raises cattle and corn in western Iowa and owns a stake in several ethanol plants, said it was “absolutely essential” that the government increase the mandate for ethanol, and he urged Congress to push up the deadlines. (clearly an unbiased opinion</SPAN _extended="true">) “This is a national security issue more than anything else,” said Mr. Leonard, noting the nation’s dependence on imported oil. “We need to quit sending money to people who want to blow us up.” (of course, the fallback for everyone when questioned - the terrorists will come to our corn fields if we don't go to their corn fields first</SPAN _extended="true">)
- Joe Victor, vice president for marketing for Allendale, an agricultural research firm in the Chicago suburbs, said Midwestern farmers would face a pleasant quandary in the spring in deciding what to plant because wheat and soybean prices are at or near record highs and corn prices remain bullish. “Oh geez, they’ve got money galore,” he said. “The Senate vote for the energy bill was a real confidence builder for the farmer to think, ‘They are not going to pull the rug out from underneath us.’”
- Feed costs have increased 25 to 30 percent in the last year, according to David Fairfield, director of feed services at the National Grain and Feed Association. He attributed virtually all of the increase to the demands of the ethanol industry
- As the debate continues, one thing is certain: American shoppers are increasingly frustrated over rising prices. “It’s the staples, the cheeses, the milks and produce,” said Ms. Estes, shopping at the Chicago-area Whole Foods. “It’s going up, and my grocery bill at the end, it’s like, ‘Are you kidding me?’”
Until then I will just complain in the blog and continue to look for the people with deeper and deeper pockets (farmers) and find the items they will be throwing our tax money at (fertilizer).
What a system.
As in the past, any time a farmer has made money through price increases such as this, the bottom has fallen out of the economy shortly after. This time will be no different.
The Magna Carter singles out Jews in two separate instances.
One allows for recent widows not to have to pay Jewish lenders for any debt owed.
With the heavy moralistic condemnation of charging interest for lending money in the Christian world, the only ones allowed to practice any usury were non-christians.
Also with the guilds denying non-christians membership in their unions, not much in the way of other skills and jobs were left to non-christians.
It is no Christian accident that the largest and earliest worldwide bankers were non-christian.
Unfortunately this history has led to stereotyping. And therefore a great prejudice.
One allows for recent widows not to have to pay Jewish lenders for any debt owed.
With the heavy moralistic condemnation of charging interest for lending money in the Christian world, the only ones allowed to practice any usury were non-christians.
Also with the guilds denying non-christians membership in their unions, not much in the way of other skills and jobs were left to non-christians.
It is no Christian accident that the largest and earliest worldwide bankers were non-christian.
Unfortunately this history has led to stereotyping. And therefore a great prejudice.
No, but I think jews are a theme across both threads.
Forgive me DurkaDurka But these people are no more Jewish than Christ was Christian or Rambo is real, they may hide behind religion but they are not religious, they're simple dirtbag silverspoon bankers. They'd like you to think of them as Jews Durka, then they could cry anti-semitism. They are the greatest enemys the Jews ever had, the source of a lot of Jewish pain.The Jews will be as well or better done with them as anyone else.
I was mostly kidding about merging the threads DB
I know but you know where the reasoning goes after a bit and I would avoid that like the plague it is, someone else would not be kidding and people would have to burn for it.:lol:
Do no allow our government to take land out of food production. The people are in charge of the government, not the other way around.
This article appeared as part of a feature in the December 8, 1995 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.See Feature Introduction and Table of Contents.
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]Kissinger's 1974 Plan for
Food Control Genocide[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]by Joseph Brewda[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]On Dec. 10, 1974, the U.S. National Security Council under Henry Kissinger completed a classified 200-page study, "National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests." The study falsely claimed that population growth in the so-called Lesser Developed Countries (LDCs) was a grave threat to U.S. national security. Adopted as official policy in November 1975 by President Gerald Ford, NSSM 200 outlined a covert plan to reduce population growth in those countries through birth control, and also, implicitly, war and famine. Brent Scowcroft, who had by then replaced Kissinger as national security adviser (the same post Scowcroft was to hold in the Bush administration), was put in charge of implementing the plan. CIA Director George Bush was ordered to assist Scowcroft, as were the secretaries of state, treasury, defense, and agriculture.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]The bogus arguments that Kissinger advanced were not original. One of his major sources was the Royal Commission on Population, which King George VI had created in 1944 "to consider what measures should be taken in the national interest to influence the future trend of population." The commission found that Britain was gravely threatened by population growth in its colonies, since "a populous country has decided advantages over a sparsely-populated one for industrial production." The combined effects of increasing population and industrialization in its colonies, it warned, "might be decisive in its effects on the prestige and influence of the West," especially effecting "military strength and security."[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]NSSM 200 similarly concluded that the United States was threatened by population growth in the former colonial sector. It paid special attention to 13 "key countries" in which the United States had a "special political and strategic interest": India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Turkey, Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. It claimed that population growth in those states was especially worrisome, since it would quickly increase their relative political, economic, and military strength.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]For example, Nigeria: "Already the most populous country on the continent, with an estimated 55 million people in 1970, Nigeria's population by the end of this century is projected to number 135 million. This suggests a growing political and strategic role for Nigeria, at least in Africa." Or Brazil: "Brazil clearly dominated the continent demographically." The study warned of a "growing power status for Brazil in Latin America and on the world scene over the next 25 years."[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]Food as a weapon[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]There were several measures that Kissinger advocated to deal with this alleged threat, most prominently, birth control and related population-reduction programs. He also warned that "population growth rates are likely to increase appreciably before they begin to decline," even if such measures were adopted.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]A second measure was curtailing food supplies to targetted states, in part to force compliance with birth control policies: "There is also some established precedent for taking account of family planning performance in appraisal of assistance requirements by AID [U.S. Agency for International Development] and consultative groups. Since population growth is a major determinant of increases in food demand, allocation of scarce PL 480 resources should take account of what steps a country is taking in population control as well as food production. In these sensitive relations, however, it is important in style as well as substance to avoid the appearance of coercion."[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]"Mandatory programs may be needed and we should be considering these possibilities now," the document continued, adding, "Would food be considered an instrument of national power? ... Is the U.S. prepared to accept food rationing to help people who can't/won't control their population growth?"[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]Kissinger also predicted a return of famines that could make exclusive reliance on birth control programs unnecessary. "Rapid population growth and lagging food production in developing countries, together with the sharp deterioration in the global food situation in 1972 and 1973, have raised serious concerns about the ability of the world to feed itself adequately over the next quarter of century and beyond," he reported.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]The cause of that coming food deficit was not natural, however, but was a result of western financial policy: "Capital investments for irrigation and infrastucture and the organization requirements for continuous improvements in agricultural yields may be beyond the financial and administrative capacity of many LDCs. For some of the areas under heaviest population pressure, there is little or no prospect for foreign exchange earnings to cover constantly increasingly imports of food."[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]"It is questionable," Kissinger gloated, "whether aid donor countries will be prepared to provide the sort of massive food aid called for by the import projections on a long-term continuing basis." Consequently, "large-scale famine of a kind not experienced for several decades—a kind the world thought had been permanently banished," was foreseeable—famine, which has indeed come to pass.[/SIZE][/FONT]
This article appeared as part of a feature in the December 8, 1995 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.See Feature Introduction and Table of Contents.
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]Kissinger's 1974 Plan for
Food Control Genocide[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]by Joseph Brewda[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]On Dec. 10, 1974, the U.S. National Security Council under Henry Kissinger completed a classified 200-page study, "National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests." The study falsely claimed that population growth in the so-called Lesser Developed Countries (LDCs) was a grave threat to U.S. national security. Adopted as official policy in November 1975 by President Gerald Ford, NSSM 200 outlined a covert plan to reduce population growth in those countries through birth control, and also, implicitly, war and famine. Brent Scowcroft, who had by then replaced Kissinger as national security adviser (the same post Scowcroft was to hold in the Bush administration), was put in charge of implementing the plan. CIA Director George Bush was ordered to assist Scowcroft, as were the secretaries of state, treasury, defense, and agriculture.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]The bogus arguments that Kissinger advanced were not original. One of his major sources was the Royal Commission on Population, which King George VI had created in 1944 "to consider what measures should be taken in the national interest to influence the future trend of population." The commission found that Britain was gravely threatened by population growth in its colonies, since "a populous country has decided advantages over a sparsely-populated one for industrial production." The combined effects of increasing population and industrialization in its colonies, it warned, "might be decisive in its effects on the prestige and influence of the West," especially effecting "military strength and security."[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]NSSM 200 similarly concluded that the United States was threatened by population growth in the former colonial sector. It paid special attention to 13 "key countries" in which the United States had a "special political and strategic interest": India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Turkey, Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. It claimed that population growth in those states was especially worrisome, since it would quickly increase their relative political, economic, and military strength.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]For example, Nigeria: "Already the most populous country on the continent, with an estimated 55 million people in 1970, Nigeria's population by the end of this century is projected to number 135 million. This suggests a growing political and strategic role for Nigeria, at least in Africa." Or Brazil: "Brazil clearly dominated the continent demographically." The study warned of a "growing power status for Brazil in Latin America and on the world scene over the next 25 years."[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]Food as a weapon[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]There were several measures that Kissinger advocated to deal with this alleged threat, most prominently, birth control and related population-reduction programs. He also warned that "population growth rates are likely to increase appreciably before they begin to decline," even if such measures were adopted.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]A second measure was curtailing food supplies to targetted states, in part to force compliance with birth control policies: "There is also some established precedent for taking account of family planning performance in appraisal of assistance requirements by AID [U.S. Agency for International Development] and consultative groups. Since population growth is a major determinant of increases in food demand, allocation of scarce PL 480 resources should take account of what steps a country is taking in population control as well as food production. In these sensitive relations, however, it is important in style as well as substance to avoid the appearance of coercion."[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]"Mandatory programs may be needed and we should be considering these possibilities now," the document continued, adding, "Would food be considered an instrument of national power? ... Is the U.S. prepared to accept food rationing to help people who can't/won't control their population growth?"[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]Kissinger also predicted a return of famines that could make exclusive reliance on birth control programs unnecessary. "Rapid population growth and lagging food production in developing countries, together with the sharp deterioration in the global food situation in 1972 and 1973, have raised serious concerns about the ability of the world to feed itself adequately over the next quarter of century and beyond," he reported.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]The cause of that coming food deficit was not natural, however, but was a result of western financial policy: "Capital investments for irrigation and infrastucture and the organization requirements for continuous improvements in agricultural yields may be beyond the financial and administrative capacity of many LDCs. For some of the areas under heaviest population pressure, there is little or no prospect for foreign exchange earnings to cover constantly increasingly imports of food."[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][SIZE=-1]"It is questionable," Kissinger gloated, "whether aid donor countries will be prepared to provide the sort of massive food aid called for by the import projections on a long-term continuing basis." Consequently, "large-scale famine of a kind not experienced for several decades—a kind the world thought had been permanently banished," was foreseeable—famine, which has indeed come to pass.[/SIZE][/FONT]
These are the people that run our food supply.
The Windsors' Global Food Cartel:
Instrument for Starvation
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/1995/2249_windsor_food.html
The Windsors' Global Food Cartel:
Instrument for Starvation
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/1995/2249_windsor_food.html