Speigel: Graph; food crises protests and restrictions

Source of image: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,grossbild-1149977-547198,00.html

The link only leads to the image Not the story.

The Image was published at the end of April

Natural News: The Economics of World Hunger, explained

Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/023387.html See also : http://foodcrisis.wordpress.com/

Asia Times: Food Crises

 

 

 

Rice, death and the dollar
By Spengler

The global food crisis is a monetary phenomenon, an unintended consequence of America’s attempt to inflate its way out of a market failure.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JD22Dj01.html

Wall Street Journal: Stock up on Food

 

 

R.O.I.

By BRETT ARENDS

Load Up the Pantry
April 21, 2008 6:47 p.m.

I don’t want to alarm anybody, but maybe it’s time for Americans to start stockpiling food.

Food Crisis, Alarm bells ringing.

Food crises,

Over the last week, there has not been a major publication that has not featured the growing global food scarcities.

Compared to food, all other issues are irrelevant.

I can imagine large vehicles being attacked, because their fuel hunger is inflating the price of food, through biofuel’s grain requirements.

Democracy and capitalism, will have no significance, and society’s paid guards of soldiers and police will blur into humans.

Perhaps it will herald the end of centralisation and large conglomerates, maybe we will reenter the world of small communities.

Anyway the alarm bells are ringing everywhere, even with Global warming there are dissenters and different points of view. But about growing food shortages and a bleak outlook no one is arguing.

All our governments pronouncements will sound more and more empty.

The anger will be focused on Capitalism, from fertilisers degrading land quality, to factories polluting the water, to ‘exports’ taking the food away.

Holistic health practitioners have been arguing that eating foods when they are out of season that have come from far away is not healthy. It probably is not very efficient, Mono crops like bananas or whatever being grown for export.

We have just lived through a time of abundance with some curious political

IMF head gives food price warning

The BBC and the IMF have made this a top news story.

Two pillars of the establishment. Who normally champion a ‘business as usual’ approach. They are now ringing alarm bells. It would seem we are on the threshold of massive change.

The challenge will crystalize into a choice between material desires and food. The food being compassion, the material being self interest.

It raises more questions: population growth, Islam, Judaism and Catholicism all enshrine the birth of many children. BTW prior to the old testament, there were fertility cults. So religion will need to take a stance.
Also going organic. When faced with starvation may not be attractive. The dreaded GM?…

And a major culprit to our woes is eating animals, at least 8 times less efficient than growing crops. Plus the amount of methane given off by cows is huge, comparable to the use of fossil fuels
Will we change?
Maybe less beef will mean less wars?

The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that hundreds of thousands of people will face starvation if food prices keep rising.

And he also said: “so it is not only a humanitarian question”. Meaning conflict and economic trade.

Food abundance is history

Food abundance is not true anymore for a variety of reasons, I made a posting 2 days ago .
It was the discovery after the second world war, that the ingredients for gun powder were useful as fertilizer  that started modern Industrialised agriculture.
Rice prices have gone up %50 in the last two weeks. Six countries have instituted export restrictions on rice: Already China, India, Egypt, Vietnam and Cambodia have imposed tariffs or export bans
Tony Karon speculates that food riots are  the missing link for the downfall of unpopular regimes. …”revolutions succeed precisely in that moment when the soldiers and policemen paid to defend the existing order look into the eyes of the enemy confronting them, on the streets, and they see themselves, their families and neighbors, and the states power to enforce its rule evaporates.”
And he is talking about Egypt.
Hell with capitalism flailing all over the place, maybe food shortages will cunjur up a new way, a new system of exchange. Free trade has its limits. And food supplies will be the first to be protected. The first to cause civil unrest, and that means people questioning the system.
Let us not forget, part of macrobiotic eating is; to eat food that is grown locally. It is healthier.
The EU is already reappraising its BIoFuel program.