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An escalating global food crisis could bring the problem of hunger home to the US and other developed countries.

Millions of poor Americans risk going hungry if food prices continue to rise and food agencies struggle to cope with rising costs, dwindling resources and a huge increase in demand.

Already more and more poor people in the US are turning to charity and government assistance as they struggle with rising food costs and soaring fuel bills. Even some stores are restricting bulk rice purchases as the grain reached a fresh high on Thursday.

Laurie True, executive director of the California Women Infants and Children Program Association, said local agencies were reporting a sharp increase in new enrolments. “That’s the canary in the coal mine,” she said. “These are people that don’t normally claim benefits.”

The Congressional Budget Office forecast the number of Americans on food stamps would next year reach 28m, the highest number since the programme began more than 40 years ago.

The impact will be felt most acutely by the 35m Americans – 10.9 per cent of all households – who already struggle to put enough food on the table each year. About 11m of these are thought to have “very low food security”, meaning someone in their home went hungry for lack of money to buy food, according to government data from 2006.

Campaigners fear the food situation could deteriorate further if House and Senate negotiators fail to pass an additional $10bn (£5bn, €6.4bn) in funding for national food aid programmes.

Measures to broaden eligibility for food stamps and increase emergency food provision are contained within a $288bn farm bill which has been held up for months by divisions on how to pay for budget increases.

The Senate on Thursday approved another one-week extension to the 2002 bill so that negotiations could continue.

“I don’t know what we’ll do if [the bill] doesn’t pass,” said Anne Goodman, executive director of the Cleveland Food Bank. “We’ve got a mounting tragedy going on here which is being exacerbated by the rising cost of food and fuel.”

The cost of foodstuffs poor Americans tend to buy have risen more rapidly than those bought by their richer neighbours.

Average food prices rose 5.1 per cent between February 2007 and 2008 but the cost of a basket of food used as a benchmark for food stamp benefits rose 6.5 per cent in the same period.

Bob Dolgan, spokesman for the Greater Chicago Food Depository, said rising food prices were affecting “those people who live on the margins, living pay cheque to pay cheque”.

Filling the gap where government help does not reach is a network of 200 regional food banks that distributes food to about 30,000 churches and soup kitchens around the country. America’s Second Harvest, the body that oversees the network, estimates the number of people seeking its help has risen by up to 25 per cent in the past year.

About 40 per cent of the 13m working-age adults served by the organisation come from households where at least one family member has a job, said Vicki Escarra, chief executive.

“The face of poverty and hunger has changed in the past few years. The notion that it’s just homeless people is inaccurate.”

Food agency resources are stretched because rising fuel prices have increased the cost of transporting supplies and both public and private donations have started to fall.

The government used to buy large quantities of surplus farm commodities to support market prices, which it would distribute to food banks. As prices have climbed over the past four years these donations have dropped by 75 per cent, leaving food banks scrambling for resources.

“[Stores] are pretty empty right now,” said Lindsey Buss, president of Martha’s Table, a food charity in Washington.


Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Perhaps if they curtail their exports

The point here is that the US is puting in billions in fighting a senseless war,
more billions in developing the future weapons that they will use in the next war they are planning,
a lot more billions to support all the industries assosiated with the wars they so eagerly seek to fight trying to convince the rest of us that they are the messaiah that will liberate the enslaved!

at the same time, we got the people that come here trying to discuss politics and the upcomming elections as if the fundamentals are going to change. Bollocks.
it is not the politicians that rule this planet, it is that 0,1% of the haves that control everything, even the politicians.
The ancient ideas of democracy and ruling of the people have detteriorated to a pharse, where ones only aim when voting, is to contain/minimize the damage.

As you knoe this has been discussed rehashed and discussed again

the only answer IMO there is Manolito is revolution thru organics, renewable ,recycled and green lifestyle - know your individual political representative ( Federal,State,Council), and as a group or individual ,lobby this person into the direction that suits you

i know it has been discussed at least a hundred times here,

but still, since the political discussions are heating up lately - maybe due to the elections over at the US - and also because i happened to see a thread yesterday where someone was asking in a very demanding tone "why arent the rest of us interested in politics!?",...

...this is my take on things. I AM interested in politics, but pluuuhsee dont make it sound like choosing THIS canditate over THAT one is going to change a whole lot of whats really importand...


I also bring this up again now, because at no other time in the recent history (post WWII) was there such a great shortage of food.
Those who really care for what's going on around them in the world, know this. Rice plantations in Australia (once the worlds largest producer/exporter) have practically disappeared... Same with many other food producing countries... The farmers over there say that the draught doesnt allow for the gainfull production of rice, and, it pays better to produce wine grapes (sic!)...

So, see, it pays better to produce wine for all of us "rich" asses instead of rice to feed the millions that are in immediate danger of starvation (and i am not talking just about the US, the US has a very small problem compaired with what is going on in other parts of the world).

Anyway, lets just go on fighting over obama and hillary, it's more fun...

This is from the New Statesman;


The trading frenzy that sent prices soaring

Iain Macwhirter

Published 17 April 2008



Four people were killed in food riots in Haiti. From Bolivia to Uzbekistan there have been violent protests against the doubling of food prices. In Italy, mothers are marching against the price of pasta. The World Food Programme has seized up and the World Bank on 13 April forecast that 100 million people face starvation. It should not have come as a surprise.

Conventional explanations for the food crisis range from climate change to dietary change in China, from global overpopulation to the switch of agricultural production to biofuels. These long-term factors are important but they are not the real reasons why food prices have doubled or why India is rationing rice or why British farmers are killing pigs for which they can't afford feedstocks. It's the credit crisis.

This latest food emergency has developed in an incredibly short space of time - essentially over the past 18 months. The reason for food "shortages" is speculation in commodity futures following the collapse of the financial derivatives markets. Desperate for quick returns, dealers are taking trillions of dollars out of equities and mortgage bonds and ploughing them into food and raw materials. It's called the "commodities super-cycle" on Wall Street, and it is likely to cause starvation on an epic scale.

The rocketing price of wheat, soybeans, sugar, coffee - you name it - is a direct result of debt defaults that have caused financial panic in the west and encouraged investors to seek "stores of value". These range from gold and oil at one end to corn, cocoa and cattle at the other; speculators are even placing bets on water prices.

Just like the boom in house prices, commodity price inflation feeds on itself. The more prices rise, and big profits are made, the more others invest, hoping for big returns. Look at the financial websites: everyone and their mother is piling into commodities. It is the great bull market of the Noughties. The trouble is that if you are one of the 2.8 billion people, almost half the world's population, who live on less than $2 a day, you may pay for these profits with your life.

This speculation doesn't happen on its own, however. Commodities such as gold and oil are favourite "hedges" against falling currencies. But this time all manner of other commodities, such as wheat and rice, have been swept along in the inflationary slipstream.

Investment houses, pension funds, private equity groups and banks are driven by profit not morality, and they invest wherever they can see the biggest return. It is not a conspiracy, but it is a conscious strategy, backed by the central bankers of the west as they try to help Wall Street back on its feet. Put another way, the banks are exporting our debts to the developing world. The collapse of the dollar means that most international commodities are more expensive for poor people to buy. The dollar's decline is a direct result of the low interest rate policy of the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, which shockingly cut interest rates on 10 April even as inflation spiralled.

When interest rates are below the rate of inflation, investors have to keep moving their funds from sector to sector in search of higher returns. In the 1990s they piled into internet stocks. When that bubble burst in the 2000 stock-market crash, they shifted into property and complex collateralised debt dealing based on US "sub-prime" mortgages. Now, with the collapse of the property bubble - not just in the US but across the world - investors are on the move again, and the only place left is commodities. It's the third bubble and it's hitting the developing world hard.

There are other reasons for food shortages: the diversion to biofuels because of the depletion of oil reserves, the increasing population, changing eating habits in south-east Asia - all these are putting long-term pressure on agricultural resources. But the efforts of institutions such as the US Federal Reserve to revive the economy on the back of a commodities boom have dramatically speeded up global inflation.

Will it work? Will the new "asset bubble" restore the profits of the banks and revive the US economy? In the short term, possibly yes - but at terrible human cost. In the end, the US may be cutting its own throat. Once speculative prices get out of control, there is no knowing when they will stop. Oil is now more than $100 a barrel. Resource-rich countries such as Russia are suddenly world powers again. Hungry people are desperate people. This might be the bubble to end all bubbles.

The opener of that article was indeed a nice "attention getter". I am usually very reluctant to blindly accept any article with eye opening numbers at first. I will say that there is no exaggeration here considering the dynamics of the economy in America. There are just too many problems (that may seem small now) that have the potential to really blow up. The domino effect has begun around the world. Gas and energy bills continue to go up, the cost of food continues to go up, and more and more Americans are losing their homes as we speak because of that wretched subprime lending scandal.
The way it's going now, it appears that the lower middle class and the lower class in America will be the first victims. And they represent a significant number of Americans with spending power as a consumer. Businesses will suffer, banks will suffer, and America as well as the world will suffer. If the cost of oil continues to rise, it will be a major problem for the commuters(by car) of America to get to work....many Americans drive 1 hour to work and maybe more. Factor in the shit public transportation system in America, and only one can imagine the magnitude of a possible crisis in the future.

Okay, I've tried to stay away from these types of threads in this forum and another I frequent, due to the fact that certain people may get angry because they feel patriotic and want to defend the American way and they deny what is happening to them in front of their eyes. Plus it is very negative with a dark outlook on reality. The bottom line is that if Americans have enough money in their pockets that still give them a sense of security, then they don't give a flying fuck about what's going on. However, once they realize that they are broke and have lost their sense of security, ooooh....holy shit, shit is going to hit the fan. Americans will stand up and demand change in a very aggressive way. Trust me, it's in the nature of the American way. However, more often than not, most Americans will make this realization when it is too late.

Many people have the mentality along the lines "of course it will get better eventually. It's crazy how the economy is so emotional. Companies believe that a recession will happen, so they curb expenditures...and they're suppliers get hurt and stop spending." There is a recession, and it is only going to get worse.
Yeah, it's the nature of economic cycles.....only this time there may or may not be no upside. We need a new sector to save the world economy. A sector that will make oil and gas obsolete. Green technology and Eco solutions can't come fast enough in which provides a cheaper, smarter means for us and for Mother Earth.

The thing that also irritates me, is the two party system in America. The Green Party in America is very small and has no influence.....yet.
Personally, I don't see a change with a President from the Republican or Democratic party. We need radical change on all levels. We need a new Political Party in America to radically change the institutions. Yes, it means changing our way of living.
First, we would need to advance our eco technologies so we are not dependent on oil as a source of energy and transportation. Second, we would have to radically change the monetary system in revolutionary ways with a saturation of the radical and cutting edge on a creative level in which it does not create polarization and the abuse of third world countries. Get rid of this fuckin Plutocracy that is disguised as a Democracy.

Changing the established ways does not happen overnight....it is a process that can only be catalyzed by an enormous global crisis that would deem our current world a simple failure for the survival of our species and our planet...


That is all for now. And FYI, I was born and raised in America. My family lives in America. I have double citizenship....okay, carry on.

The trading frenzy is ONE of the reasons that created this fckd up mess. It is not the only one though.

It is true that for a big big part this is the fault of the US, we need to admit this:
After the dot-com bubble in 2000-2001, they tried to avert a recession and kept the interest rates rediculusly low for far too long. Many prominent economists tried to voice objections and warn of the possible dangers, but they were hashed and thrown in the backround: Everyone was making money! and there was a war to be fought, wasnt there?

that reckless set of policies, tailored to the needs of some very rich people that wanted to get richer, is what fuelled the housing crisis: If you have a (rediculusly) low enough interest rate, things are bound to spinn off balance at some point. Credit gets too easy to acquire, and credit on credit a whole nation ends up living on borowed wealth. Someone is gonna have to pay for all of it someday... Some(a few million) lives need to be lost once again...

Japan has a near-zero interest rate for a long time now. But there's a whole different set of dynamics in that economy. Who is to speak out for the US dynamics and what needs be done, when prominent scientists of the economia are silenced by not being given the publicity or the ear they diserve?

I sometimes get the feeling that we are reliving in a capitalistic version of the dark days of communism, were everything that went public had to be sensored.
This is exactly what is happening today, with the corresponding analogies: Maybe people are not kidnaped and vanished nowdays, but their ideas are! When the vast majority of the mass media is 100% controlled, who is to give these oppinions to the public?
Sure, scientists publish stuff and a bunch of old (and young) geezers discuss them in forums like this, but what eventually reaches the average American is what the controllers want it to be...

the bubble to end all bubbles? I dont think so. But i do believe (as many have predicted) that the next world war will be ALL about food and water; and it wont be a war between nations, it will be a war within nations.

We have been given shining freedom, as a species. And what do we do with it? We sink it in the mud of ignorance.

I couldn't agree with you more.And it costs nothing to make up bogus intelligence reports to allege an aspiring enemy and justify huge budgets.

That said there is no oversight on some budgets at all, like the NSC....the president and the other two members can start their own private war if they want.Long as its a small one and use clandestine operatives of course.

The military industrial complex is a business, make no mistake, wars are needed to sell product and theres no shortage of people willing to sell them the hardware.After all look at what happened to the Military in the Ukraine when the Soviet Union started crumbling, the largest arm's theft in History!!

Now it didn't come here, we dont need it, but it turned up everywhere else!!!

The sooner people wise up that so called democracy in the west isnt the real thing the better we will all be.

They are too busy paying for crops NOT to be raised.

there's a sad sad reality...

YUP!

I think our social awarness is raising as a species... but maybe not fast enough. We still do not have that critical mass of people that are alert and aware of the world around them to shift this thing around.

I am an optimist, however i do not seem ike one by bringing this up. I believe in the human race and their potential. I believe that we can rise above this. But i also believe that it is going to get ugly too. Soon.

There's an equasion called the drake equasion that postulated on the probability to contact sentient life in the universe.

The Rand corporation built upon this for an American Intelligence Agency and added that the main indicator that someone could achieve interstellar flight was the need to eradicate internal conflict on their home plant, or by their own nature their civilisation would destroy itself before it mastered the technology to achieve their goal.

Personally i dont think we will get there without someone else putting us in our place and establishing our ground rules, with a caveat of or else written in.

Hopefully someone will turn up, and shake society to a fundamental point where the need for fighting and economics is just washed away.That said if we wait for someone else to do it for us we've had it.

Biggest danger we have is a unemployed Russian Scientist weaponising bird flu and it being able to transfer across the species barrier with all the characteristics of the infection being spread by air and physical contact.

If that happens basically you can watch the majority of the world die within a month.

I wont even go into the work where its been deployed that biological weapons that can be tailored to attack certain racial characteristics such as race, height and many other indicators.

We need a seachange and fast, or our species is in serious trouble.

Well, start taking action people. Anything to raise awareness and bring the evil system that is basically bending us over and raping us without any lube.

Action. If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem.

As for me, I have invested in Green/Eco technologies, and I have just begun to write a book about today's world and the world's blind robots who blindly accept the prescribed non-sense that is shoved down our realities. Change will come eventually, but the shit storm must happen. It's the only way.

That is all....I got some muff to think about for tonight....

Fixed for clarity. Don't be surprised if a civil war happens in America within the next 50 years.

Thats if enough people are left within 50 yrs to fight........

I have mentioned autogenocide before and the more I observe of how society is collapsing around us, the more I am convinced of whats going on. There is enough food to go around, crop production hasnt been adversely affected to the extent that there isnt enough to go round, the crisis is with the distribution and the politics behind the global economy, namely, the World Trade Organisaton's modus operandi is dodgy to say he least and as is becoming the norm, works in the interests of the very few rather than the many.

below is copied and pasted from The Atlantic Free Press cos they say it all so much more succinctly than I could manage - oh yes, and I am a bit busy just now too for another month or so. Although the article below is written from an American perspective, I in no way whatsoever am implying that the issues presented are are just an American problem - they involve us all!;

Why Autogenocide?

In a 1978 letter of resignation from his position of president of the UAW, Douglas Fraser wrote, “I believe leaders of the business community, with few exceptions, have chosen to wage a one-sided class war today in our country --a war against working people, the unemployed, the poor, the minorities, the very young and the very old, and even many in the middle class of our society…”

1. Autogenocide has been solving the population problems of the American elite since the beginning of the country. Its been applied in many different forms over the centuries: small pox blankets and starvation for Indians; cannons fired at protesters in the mid-1800’s, the disappearances of little towns who resisted selling out to the Railroad Barons; the CIA introduction of crack to ghetto neighborhoods; criminalizing anything to keep the prisons full of members of certain groups; letting Dickensian poverty in its modern form make people suffer and die prematurely. Thus, American Autogenocide is “business as usual, ” making American Autogenocide inherently institutional.

2. American autogenocide hides the deficiencies of American-Anglo Saxon (AASAX) capitalism until it controls all the markets of the world. Capitalism, by its nature alone, simply cannot provide enough paying work for all the workers who need work in America. More, the number of jobs are declining while the number of workers is rising. Quite simply: industry has no use for many people.

3. Killing off the excess population is cheaper, easier and faster than having to deal with them. In capitalistic thought and lexicon, this is called “efficiency.”

Low, non or negative producers are costly for a pay-as-you-go, you’re-on-your-own (YOYO), pull-yourself-up-with-your-bootsraps merchant society. People without work or with little work and/or without money, still need food, shelter, emergency help, medical care, so forth.

Since the famous “restructuring” of the economy (which is also a restructuring of society back to a close resemblance of the old white patriarchal power hierarchy), more and more people — usually those from the lower tiers of society--can not earn enough money to properly live. This leads to tax money spent on social and emergency services. The rich complain that the tax money could have been better used — used for the priorities of the elite: tax reduction; reduction of capital gains taxes to zero; greater dividends to rich investor; huge salaries and pay packages to CEOs; so forth.

4. As mentioned above, the political and economic elite are restructuring society back to its original institutional, constitutional model of plutocracy and its support model, the elite patriarchal hierarchy of subordination.

5. Autogenocide is utilitarian but the sacrifice of the victims is not for the benefit of the village, but for the benefit of the economic and political elite.

6. Now that the country’s infrastructure is in place and hardwired into the federal government, surplus people aren’t needed and won’t be needed in the future.

7. The wealthy elite and many big businesses are against paying taxes (cuts into their net profits) and governments (local, state and federal) have to raise taxes to support the poor and disenfranchised. Eliminate as much poor as you can so the demand for helping them (and for taxes to do it) drops.

8. Too many unwanted people might figure it out and organize themselves as a force to be reckoned with.

9. Too many people with no hope, no hope for the future and nothing to lose can result in organizing, protests, strikes and rage-fueled riots.

10. Too many poor, disenfranchised and/or minorities with votes threaten the established power and wealth structures. Within 50 years, it is projected that there will be more minorities than whites. This new majority could take out the elite, white patriarchal system. This makes the current autogenocide a “preemptive” genocide. It guarantees continued power and wealth of the elite by keeping the majority of votes in the hands of whites.

11. It is negative population control. America is running out of room for its current population which is continually expanding. Over population can result in greater pollution, social suffering and epidemics. In the mind of patriarchal leaders, somebody has to be removed, so the powerless — the people few will speak up for — are quietly and invisibly removed.

12. Autogenocide can remove enough people to let the earth heal so the rich and powerful can continue plundering it and enslaving the world’s populations.

13. Symbolically and literally scapegoats and punishes the powerless for the deeds of the real culprits, the ruling and financial elite. Vents the anger and frustration of the remaining villagers at someone “safe” to blame.

14. It is a result of the natural institutional racism of the System.

15. It is a predictable result of corrupt patriarchal power.

16. It is modern witch-burning. Male economics has historically struggled with the problem of unemployed women and women without male sponsors. Patriarchal societies have historically responded by killing/burning them as witches. It is estimated that ten million people, mostly women, were killed as witches from 1400-1750 and most of these killings were related to economics, patriarchal control of females and the use of scapegoats to soothe the village’s anger/tension over corruption, plagues, wars, so forth.

17. Arrogance and racism.

18. Pleasure and the thrill of being able to kill and get away with it.

19. Greed and selfishness.

20. Entrenches more power and wealth in the hands of elite.

21. Shapes reality and the country to the elite’s patriarchal, market ideology, will and dreams.

21. Reduces the numbers in slums. Slums are incubators for plagues and civil wars or civil rights movements.

22. Thins out the middle-class. As with all patriarchal hierarchies, there are sub-hierarchies within them. Examples are the hierarchy of white women, the hierarchy of minorities (by skin color, gender, age, so forth). For example, the federal government has several categories for Hispanics, including “White Hispanic.” There is also a sub-hierarchy for the middle-class.

In the early days of the country, a small middle-class existed. Many modern politicians embellish the truth about the colonial middle-class to connect some kind of mystical American middle-class of yesteryear to the American middle-class of now. Its all propaganda. The colonial middle-class was small and more prominent along the sea coast.

The Founding Fathers, most wealthy, untitled aristocrats, never intended for a large middle-class to exist in America. Only the descendants of the existing colonial middle-class were to be allowed to be middle-class. Constitutional scholars know this.

Controlling the number of the middle-class worked for almost two hundred years until unionization, the GI Bill and other government programs helped villagers from the lower working class tiers strive to achieve the American Dream. The new middle-class became a problem for the traditional, inherited, historically- and politically- guaranteed white middle-class.

Now that we are facing a work-less world, the elite has no use for such a large layer of middle-class. The primary reason is because they are expensive in a colonial capitalist system whose wealth was designed to accumulate in the hands of the few elite. The nouveau middle-class have come to expect work with decent wages and fringe benefits when the world is flooded with the unemployed, thus the privileges of the last half of the 20th century have become antiquated. This is one of the realities of the “invisible” hand of the market.

Too many middle-class pose other problems for the elite: if there are too many of them, some will vote left or away from patriarchy. It may be legal, but it is a social faux pas against the masters of society.

Autogenocide is the perfect way for the elite to thin out the classes so they are disappeared or more manageable. Not only that, everyone gets the invisible messages of terror, so they are more likely to do as they are told.

Autogenocide tells everyone in the village what their place is and what happens to those who “fail” or “fall.” It doesn’t matter if the loser were destined to fail. In a highly materialistic, pay-as-you-go-society there are no margins for compassion and empathy. Those things don’t make money but cost it.