Riots, instability spread as food prices skyrocket

[underpants]

Source: CNN


(CNN) -- Riots from Haiti to Bangladesh to Egypt over the soaring costs of basic foods have brought the issue to a boiling point and catapulted it to the forefront of the world's attention, the head of an agency focused on global development said Monday.

"This is the world's big story," said Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute.

"The finance ministers were in shock, almost in panic this weekend," he said on CNN's "American Morning," in a reference to top economic officials who gathered in Washington. "There are riots all over the world in the poor countries ... and, of course, our own poor are feeling it in the United States."

Another major reason is rising demand, particularly in places in the midst of a population boom, such as China and India.

Also, said Sachs, "climate shocks" are damaging food supply in parts of the world. "You add it all together: Demand is soaring, supply has been cut back, food has been diverted into the gas tank. It's added up to a price explosion."


Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/04/14/world.food.crisis/index.html

[Liberty Belle]

1. We can blame this largely on the food-for-fuel trend;

Farmers can make more money selling crops to the biofuels market than for food, so food manufacturers and suppliers are having to pay outrageous rates to guarantee supplies from farmers. As a nutrition industry editor, I interviewed people who said costs of commodities like rice and corn have tripled or quadrupled, driven largely by greed.

Instead of biofuels we should be investing heavily in solar, wind, and other alternative fuel markets that don't force up the price of foods.

Of course there are other factors, including global climate change, which is causing drought and crop shortages in some areas.

This is a very important issue and I urge everyone to study up and start talking about it.

:kick:

[Winterblues]

2. It's added up to a price explosion."

So some can get extremely wealthy from absolute neccessities. Remember Exxon is making a Net Profit of over one hundred million dollars a day and people are starving all around the world because oil prices keep going up.....Oil prices figure prominently in the price of food because oil is used in harvesting and distribution..One Hundred Million Dollars a Friggin' Day Think about it...day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and oil prices keep going up....

[AndyTiedye]

3. There's Plenty of Inedible Stuff to Make Alcohol Out Of. Food is for People & Animals, Not Machines

and economics will say the same infinitely louder than I can, very soon.

[juno jones]

6. Hemp

No fuss, no muss, grows on marginal lands unsuited for food and the rope/oil/food kind doesn't really get people high, despite the drug war hysteria.

The other kind ;) is an excellent medicine and also provides fiber which could be used for paper and cloth.

We don't need to be sticking corn into our gas tanks. Genetically engineered corn, I might add.

[AndyTiedye]

23. Hear! Hear!

[Xithras]

16. Still takes farmland out of production.

Farmers are going to plant whatever will make them money. Whether they're planting corn or something else doesn't matter. The issue is not the CROP, but the LAND that was previously used for food production which is now used for energy production. We could ban cor-for-fuel tomorrow, but if those corn crops are simply replaced with some other energy producing crop, nothing will change.

That leaves us with three choices. 1. Give up on the whole growing energy concept. 2. Devastate the environment by plowing under so-called "marginal" land that hadn't previously used for crop production (e.g., continue the human assault on nature under the guise of biodeisel). 3. Accept that farmable land is finite, and that high food prices are the new norm.

Personally, I doubled the size of my garden this year.

[AndyTiedye]

22. Garbage

We produce a lot of garbage, which includes a lot of food waste.
Farmers and gardeners can compost some of it,
but city-dwellers generally cannot, and it ends up in the landfill.

We can do better than that.

As for your 3 choices, I think all three are going to happen, even if all we grow on our farmland is food.

The biggest limitation on how much we can grow is water.

[NickB79]

18. I'm concerned about the nutrients removed from the land

The "waste" chaff, stalks, and roots left in the field after harvest that people advocate converting into ethanol are vital to maintaining the soil's fertility.

Repeatedly removing ALL organic matter from a field year after year will quickly reduce it to sand.

[AndyTiedye]

21. Rather A Lot of Food Waste Ends Up as Garbage

Presumably it isn't worth shipping garbage out from the city to the farm for fertilizer. Make alcohol out of that.

[kestrel91316]

4. I bought 6 lb of pasta on sale this weekend to stick in my pantry......

Time to gradually increase the modest stockpile again, after having finally used up the tail end of some Y2K staple items.

[underpants]

5. My wife fessed up that that was why we had made several large purchases lately

:shrug:

Mostly nonperishable paper goods and some canned food staples.

[kestrel91316]

8. I don't use much in the way of disposable paper products.

I use cloth napkins, cleaning cloths. No paper napkins and only one or two rolls of paper towels a year. TP is one I still use, lol. But under the bathroom sink I have a secret stash of cut up flannel (from an old flannel sheet due to be dumpsterized) for reusable bathroom "wipies". That's my "TEOTWAWKI TP". lol. Just in case.

[underpants]

10. we've cut way down

I used to be horrible with them

We went to cloth towels and washing them. I notice a huge difference.

[bvar22]

7. Time to move way out in the country....

...and plant a BIG garden.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=246x5729


Some chickens would be a good idea too.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=268x1437

Some fruit trees and a few goats would be welcome.
Maybe a windmill and a few solar panels.

[pitohui]

9. um, checked the price of gas lately?

who can afford to move way out in the country? people have to get to work and they had better be at work on time and not put their job at risk

a few chickens and tomato plants can't replace the income from a j-o-b

there's a reason people moved out of the country in the first place, as a wise old man once told me, "it's pretty country, but you can starve to death in pretty country" -- his little commune/farm in arkansas collapsed for economic reasons and those reasons sure weren't lack of chickens

[Trillo]

12. That may be true.

However, there may also be an argument that a life closer to the "earth" and nature is more likely to confer happiness ("pursuit of happiness") versus the highly artificial culture that has developed for several millennia around money and the pursuit of Money, and which has apparently given to us in the U.S. a few hundred uber wealthy people whose decisions trickle through every aspect of the rest of lives today.

As a born and raised big-city person, I'm none too happy that compulsory education (K-12) failed to teach me how to raise chickens, what wild plants are edible, how to grow a garden, how to cook (etc), among other survival issues that were well known to a larger percentage of people in the 19th century and prior versus today.

Instead, they taught me a lot of crap that I've never been able to use, and today's marketplace reinforces the lack of economic utility of those compulsory lessons. Fuck em.

[harun]

13. The Amish here in Pennsylvania seem to be making it (n/t)

[htuttle]

15. That's because they live in a *community* and help each other

...Which I predict is going to be the one survival strategy that works long-term, no matter whether the community is rural or urban.

[MadinMo]

11. bvar22 that chick is adorable.

While we are planning on a huge garden this year, we have postponed getting our chickens. They would be our first. But having paid $3 yesterday for 1 1/2 dozen eggs, I'm thinking we need to change our plans.

Your garden "sass" is luscious looking as well. I can't wait for my own goodies!

Thanks for the reminder pics.

[bvar22]

17. The chick in the photo is a Barred Rock.

:hi:

We lost 1/2 of the chicks to an respitory illness.
It was really sad. We thought we were going to lose all of them, but the survivors are doing well and appear strong and happy.

We were warned not to give them names, but you know how it is. The names just came, and it was harder to let go of the ones with names.
Starkraven & myself are having fun playing with the chicks.
They are very social, and have surprisingly individual personalities.


Good luck with your chicks.

[cliss]

14. The new wealth:

FOOD.

Last year, I started to realize 2 things were going to run out (or at least there would be more demand so prices would go up) on 2 things: a) gas and b) food.

I always thought that a)would be the first to run out. Looks like I was wrong.

[CHIMO]

19. Ottawa to pay $50-million for swine cull

EDMONTON — In what is being called an unprecedented move, the federal government will pay Canadian pork producers $50-million to kill off 150,000 of their pigs by the fall as the industry teeters on the brink of economic collapse.

The animals are being destroyed at slaughter plants and on pig farms in a bid to cull the swine breeding herd by 10 per cent.

Producers are weighed down by the cumulative impact of low prices, increasing feeds costs and the high value of the Canadian dollar. They are also facing new country-of-origin labelling rules for meat products in the United States that are to go into effect later this year.

http://www.reportonbusiness.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080414.wpigs0414/BNStory/robNews/home

And in the beef industry in Canada people are getting out of the business. Things don't add up.

[Hannah Bell]

20. You noticed. One of the few. People seem to be wedded to

the idea that the sky is falling. Just like they were during the Enron debacle.

"Oh, there's noooooo trans-mission capacity!!!"

"Oh, there's noooooo foooooood! Global warming! Ethanol! China & India want to eat beef! We're running out of cropland! Stockpiles at their lowest for 30 years! Overpopulation (let those people in africa die, they have too many kids anyway.) Ohhhhhh nooooooo!"

In reality, in 2007 there was a world record rice harvest, & normal wheat & soy harvests. In reality, world stockpiles have gone down because gov't reduced subsidies & opened to the international grain trade (controlled by 4 companies), as mandated by free trade agreements & other political pressures.

In reality, people are being stampeded into supporting "solutions" to the wrong problems, & poorer people are dying for profits.

[bemildred]

24. The MSM seems willing to push this story.

That makes me wonder why? The problem has been there and building for a while now, so I'm not questioning that, but I do wonder why all of a sudden it's "news" and they are saying things like: "The finance ministers were in shock, almost in panic this weeken", i.e. why are they spreading FUD about it now?

** -- FUD == "Fear, uncertainty, doubt"

[humus]

25. GQ

http://quotes.zaadz.com/topics/garden?page=14

When I feed the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist". Brazilian Bishop, Dom Helder Camara.

I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that . . . I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature.

Abraham Cowley


Exclusiveness in a garden is a mistake as great as it is in society.

Alfred Austin


10 Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.

Alfred Austin

12 The first gatherings of the garden in May of salads, radishes and herbs made me feel like a mother about her baby - how could anything so beautiful be mine. And this emotion of wonder filled me for each vegetable as it was gathered every year. There is nothing that is comparable to it, as satisfactory or as thrilling, as gathering the vegetables one has grown.

Alice B. Toklas

CABBAGE, n. A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.

Ambrose Bierce Source: The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

25 Gardens, scholars say, are the first sign of commitment to a community. When people plant corn they are saying, let's stay here. And by their connection to the land, they are connected to one another.

Anne Raver

How fair is a garden amid the toils and passions of existence.

Benjamin Disraeli
The principal value of a garden is not understood. It is not to give the possessors vegetables and fruit (that can be better and cheaper done by the market-gardeners), but to teach him patience and philosophy, and the higher virtues - hope deferred, and expectations blighted, leading directly to resignation, and sometimes to alienation.

Charles Dudley Warner
44 There is a great pleasure in working in the soil, apart from the ownership of it. The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something for the good of the world.

Charles Dudley Warner

To cultivate a garden is to walk with God.

Christian Bovee
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53 Observe this dew-drenched rose of Tyrian gardens A rose today. But you will ask in vain Tomorrow what it is; and yesterday It was the dust, the sunshine, and the rains.

Christina Rosetti
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54 Beyond its practical aspects, gardening - be it of the soil or soul - can lead us on a philosophical and spiritual exploration that is nothing less than a journey into the depths of our own sacredness and the sacredness of all beings. After all, there must be something more mystical beyond the garden gate, something that satisfies the soul's attraction to beauty, peace, solace, and celebration.


If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Cicero

One of the healthiest ways to gamble is with a spade and a package of garden seeds.


Our vegetable garden is coming along well, with radishes and beans up, and we are less worried about revolution that we used to be.

E. B. White

To garden is to let optimism get the better of judgment.

Eleanor Perenyi

The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind. The paired butterflies are already yellow with August Over the grass in the West garden; They hurt me. I grow older.

Ezra Pound Source: The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter (After Rihaku)
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133 I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.

Henry David Thoreau
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136 Little by little, even with other cares, the slowly but surely working poison of the garden-mania begins to stir in my long-sluggish veins.

Henry James
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137 There is nothing like the first hot days of spring when the gardener stops wondering if it's too soon to plant the dahlias and starts wondering if it's too late. Even the most beautiful weather will not allay the gardener's notion (well-founded actually) that he is somehow too late, too soon, or that he has too much stuff going on or not enough. For the garden is the stage on which the gardener exults and agonizes out every crest and chasm of the heart.

Henry Mitchell Source: The Essential Earthman, p. 17
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It's amazing how much time one can spend in a garden doing nothing at all. I sometimes think, in fact, that the nicest part of gardening is walking around in a daze, idly deadheading the odd dahlia, wondering where on earth to squeeze in yet another impulse buy, debating whether to move the recalcitrant artemisia one more time, or daydreaming about where to put the pergola.

Jane Garmey Source: A Writer in the Garden
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More quotes about: debate, earth, facts, garden, impulses, time

158 Forty is about the age for unexpected developments: extroverts turn introspective, introverts become sociable, and everyone, without regard to type, acquires grey hairs and philosophies of life. Many also acquire gardens.

Janice Emily Bowers Source: A Full Life in a Small Place, 1993
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159 Finally, I realized what makes my garden exciting is me. Living in it every day, participating minutely in each small event, I see with doubled and redoubled vision. Where friends notice a solitary hummingbird pricking the salvia flowers, I recall a season's worth of hummingbird battles.

Janice Emily Bowers Source: A Full Life in a Small Place, 1993