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'Silent' Famine Sweeps Globe; Food Shortages,
Higher Prices Equal World Crisis
April 18, 2008
From India to Africa to North Korea to Pakistan and even in New York City, higher grain prices, fertilizer shortages and rising energy costs are combining to spell hunger for millions in what is being characterized as a global "silent famine." Global food prices, based on United Nations records, rose 35 percent in the last year, escalating a trend that began in 2002. Since then, prices have risen 65 percent. Last year, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's world food index, dairy prices rose nearly 80 percent and grain 42 percent. "This is the new face of hunger," said Josetta Sheeran, director of the World Food Program, launching an appeal for an extra $500 million so it could continue supplying food aid to 73 million hungry people this year. "People are simply being priced out of food markets." Full Story
Monsanto's Harvest Of Fear
April 17, 2008
Monsanto already dominates America's food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation's tactics-ruthless legal battles against small farmers-is its decades-long history of toxic contamination. For centuries-millennia-farmers have saved seeds from season to season: they planted in the spring, harvested in the fall, then reclaimed and cleaned the seeds over the winter for re-planting the next spring. Monsanto has turned this ancient practice on its head. Monsanto developed G.M. seeds that would resist its own herbicide, Roundup, offering farmers a convenient way to spray fields with weed killer without affecting crops. Monsanto then patented the seeds. For nearly all of its history the United States Patent and Trademark Office had refused to grant patents on seeds, viewing them as life-forms with too many variables to be patented. "It's not like describing a widget," says Joseph Mendelson III, the legal director of the Center for Food Safety, which has tracked Monsanto's activities in rural America for years. Indeed not. But in 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court, in a five-to-four decision, turned seeds into widgets, laying the groundwork for a handful of corporations to begin taking control of the world's food supply. Full Story
Food Prices Rise, Farmers Respond
April 7, 2008
Faced with strong worldwide food demand and the accompanying higher prices, American farmers are beginning to respond to the signals of the market. In a new government report, farmers said they would make significant cuts in corn acreage this year in favor of soybeans. If they carry through with their intentions, the resulting additional soybean oil could help alleviate global shortages of cooking oil that have led to sharply higher prices, hitting poor countries hard. But a smaller corn harvest would most likely raise prices for that crop, which could also increase the prices Americans pay for meat. Most corn is used as animal feed.Higher corn prices may also compound the difficulties of companies that use corn to produce ethanol as a motor fuel. Despite government mandates for the use of ethanol, those companies are struggling. They expanded so rapidly in recent years that an oversupply of ethanol depressed prices, even as the cost of their main feedstock corn was rising. Full Story
Analyst Predicts Corn Rationing In 2008
April 7, 2008
A BB&T Capital Markets analyst said Monday corn rationing may be necessary this year, following a U.S. Department of Agriculture report predicting farmers would plant far fewer acres of corn in 2008. According to the March Prospective Plantings Report, farmers intend to plant about 86 million acres of corn this year, down 8 percent from 2007, when the amount of corn planted was the highest since World War II. Analyst Heather L. Jones said in a note to investors if the USDA estimate proves accurate, the year may produce just 200 million bushels of corn. That, she said, wouldn't be enough to meet demand, given current export and feed demand trends and higher ethanol demand. Both ethanol and animal feed are made with corn. Full Story
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