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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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 Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2008 11:59 pm Post subject: Why Food Costs Are Climbing |
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| Quote: | Why Costs Are Climbing
As food prices surge, starvation looms for millions. Experts call for emergency action but admit there's no quick fix.
Fatal food riots in Haiti. Violent food-price protests in Egypt and Ivory Coast. Rice so valuable it is transported in armoured convoys. Soldiers guarding fields and warehouses. Export bans to keep local populations from starving.
For the first time in decades, the spectre of widespread hunger for millions looms as food prices explode. Two words not in common currency in recent years - famine and starvation - are now being raised as distinct possibilities in the poorest, food-importing countries.
Unlike past food crises, solved largely by throwing aid at hungry stomachs and boosting agricultural productivity, this one won't go away quickly, experts say. Prices are soaring and stand every chance of staying high because this crisis is different.
A swelling global population, soaring energy prices, the clamouring for meat from the rising Asian middle class, competition from biofuels and hot money pouring into the commodity markets are all factors that make this crisis unique and potentially calamitous. Even with concerted global action, such as rushing more land into cultivation, it will take years to fix the problem.
The price increases and food shortages have been nothing short of shocking. In February, stockpiles of wheat hit a 60-year low in the United States as prices soared. Almost all other commodities, from rice and soybeans to sugar and corn, have posted triple-digit price increases in the past year or two.
Yesterday in Rome, Jacques Diouf, director-general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, said the cereal-import bill for the poorest countries is expected to rise 56 per cent this year, on top of the 37 per cent recorded last year. "There is certainly a risk of [people] dying of starvation" unless urgent action is taken, he said. "I am surprised I have not been summoned to the Security Council to discuss these issues."
The UN's donor countries, he said, need to come up with as much as $1.7-billion (U.S.) to implement quick-fix food programs, such as topping up the World Food Programme, whose emergency food-buying power has been clobbered by the rising prices. Its budget shortfall, the difference between the food it intended to buy and can now afford, is $500-million.
Other UN officials have been equally blunt. Sir John Holmes, the UN's top humanitarian official and emergency relief co-ordinator, said this week that soaring food prices threaten political stability. The UN and national governments are especially worried about potentially violent situations in Africa's increasingly crowded urban areas. Rioting triggered by absent or unaffordable food could cripple cities. "The security implications should not be underestimated as food riots are being reported across the globe," Mr. Holmes said.
Nigeria's Kanayo Nwanze, vice-president of the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development, sees no short-term fix. "I wouldn't be surprised if there is an escalation of food riots in the next few months," he said. "It could lead to famine in certain parts of Africa if the international community and local governments do not put emergency actions into place."
And it's not just the UN that thinks so. Independent analysts, economists and agriculture consultants say the term most often used to describe the food prices and shortages - crisis - is not hyperbole.
How did it come to this? Surging food prices, now at 30-year highs, are actually a relatively new phenomenon. In the mid-1970s, prices began to fall as the green revolution around the world made farms dramatically more productive, thanks to improvements in irrigation and the widespread use of fertilizers, mechanized farm equipment and genetically engineered crops. If there was a crisis, it was food surpluses - too much food chasing too few stomachs - and dropping produce prices had often disastrous effects on farm incomes.
By 2001, the surpluses began to shrink and prices reversed. In the past year or so, the price curve has gone nearly vertical. The UN's food index rose 45 per cent in the past nine months alone, but some prices have climbed even faster. Wheat went up 108 per cent in the past 12 months; corn rose 66 per cent. Rice, the food that feeds half the world, went "from a staple to a delicacy," says Standard Chartered Bank food commodities analyst Abah Ofon.
The price of Thai medium-quality rice, a global benchmark, has more than doubled since the end of 2007. This week it reached a record $854 a tonne, which helps explain why World Food Programme trucks carrying rice in certain parts of Africa have come under attack.
Food prices in the first three months of 2008 reached their highest level in both nominal and real (inflation adjusted) terms in almost 30 years, the UN says. That's stoking double-digit inflation and prompting countries such as Egypt, Vietnam and India to eliminate or substantially reduce rice exports to keep a lid on prices and prevent rioting. But, by reducing global supply, this only increases prices for food-importing countries, many of them in West Africa.
Throughout history, the world has seen food shortages and famines triggered by drought, war, pestilence, crop failures and regional overpopulation. In the Chinese famine between 1958 and 1961, an estimated 30 million people died from malnutrition. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, severe food shortages hit India and parts of southeast Asia. Only the emergency shipment of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of grain from the U.S. prevented a humanitarian disaster. Drought, violent conflict, economic incompetence, misfortune and corruption created deadly famines in Ethiopia and Sudan in the first half of the 1980s.
In each case, the food shortages were alleviated through emergency aid or investment in farming and crop productivity. While no one so far is dying of hunger in this latest crisis, the UN and agriculture experts predict years of pain, at best, and severe shortages, possibly famine in the worst-hit countries. The reason: High prices are likely to persist for years.
Swelling population explains only part of the problem. The world's population, estimated at 6.6 billion, has doubled since 1965. But population growth rates are falling and, theoretically, there is enough food to feed everyone on the planet, said Peter Hazell, a British agriculture economist and a former World Bank principal economist.
Why millions may go hungry, he said, is because prices are so high, food is becoming unaffordable in some parts of the world.
The "rural poor" (to use the UN's term) in Burkina Faso, Niger, Somalia, Senegal, Cameroon and some other African countries exist on the equivalent of $1 a day or less. As much as 70 per cent of that meagre income goes to food purchases, compared with about 15 per cent in the U.S. and Canada. As prices, but not incomes, rise, the point may be reached where food portions shrink or meals are skipped. Malnutrition sets in.
The dramatic price rises have been driven by factors absent in previous food shortages.
They include turning food into fuel, climate change, high oil and natural gas prices (which boost trucking and fertilizer costs), greater consumption of meat and dairy products as incomes rise (which raises the demand for animal feedstuffs), and investment funds, whose billions of dollars of firepower can magnify price increases.
Driven by fears of global warming, biofuel has become big business in the U.S., Canada and the European Union. The incentive to produce the fuels is overwhelming because they are subsidized by taxpayers and, depending on the country or the region, come with content mandates.
Starting next week, Britain will require gasoline and diesel sold at the pumps be mixed with 2.5-per-cent biofuel, rising to 5.75 per cent by 2010 and 10 per cent by 2020, in line with European Union directives. Ontario's ethanol-content mandate is 5 per cent. As the content requirements rise, more and more land is devoted to growing crops for fuel, such as corn-based ethanol. In the EU alone, 15 per cent of the arable land is expected to be devoured by biofuel production by 2020.
That's raising alarm bells, especially given lingering doubts about the effectiveness of ethanol in combatting climate change. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said this week he's worried that ethanol production is pushing up food prices everywhere, and he called for an urgent review of the issue. Economist Dr. Hazell has said that filling an SUV tank once with ethanol consumes more maize than the typical African eats in a year.
Rising ethanol demand is one of the main reasons why Wall Street securities firm Goldman Sachs predicts high food prices for a long time. "We believe the recent rise in agriculture prices is not a transient spike, but rather represents the beginning of a structural increase in prices, much as has occurred in the energy and metals markets," Jeffrey Currie, Goldman's chief commodities analyst, said in a research note last month.
Severe weather has clobbered crop production among some big exporting countries. Drought in Australia, the third largest wheat exporter after the U.S. and Canada, has pushed wheat production down by half since the 2005-06 crop year. Statistics Canada said Canadian wheat production fell 20.6 per last year. Exports, as a result, are expected to fall by six million tonnes in the 2007-08 year.
While Australia and Canada could bounce back in the next season or the season after, depending on temperatures and rainfall, rising global temperatures do not bode well for agriculture in many parts of the world.
The UN has predicted that climate change could reduce production in developing countries by 9 to 21 per cent by 2080 and that sub-Saharan Africa could lose more than 30 per cent of its main crop, maize. Southern Asia, it said, could see millet, maize and rice production fall by 10 per cent. The challenge is to offset the losses with higher crop yields on arable land less affected by climate change.
Mr. Ofon, of Standard Chartered Bank, said rising demand in the face of production shortfalls does not fully explain the dramatic price increases. Investors are the other driver. They have discovered they can make money from food commodities as easily as they can in oil, gold or nickel. "Fund money flowing into agriculture has boosted prices," he said. "It's fashionable. This is the year of agricultural commodities."
But Mr. Currie of Goldman Sachs dismisses the theory that funds are pushing prices higher than they would be otherwise, though the funds can make prices rise and fall quickly in the short term. "The simple truth is that the funds don't take delivery of the commodity," he said in an interview. "Therefore they cannot sit on them and put them in silos. Therefore they can't affect prices over the long term."
In other words, the rally in food prices is being caused by demand exceeding production, resulting in dwindling food stockpiles. UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development, for one, assumes prices will stay high for as long as 10 years.
Agriculture economists and the UN have not lost all hope. New irrigation systems are inevitable in Africa and have the potential to boost crop production dramatically. Ditto for the use of fertilizers. Only three to five kilos of fertilizer per hectare is used in Africa, compared with about 250 kilos in the U.S. The problem with using more fertilizer is cost. Fertilizers such as urea are derived from natural gas, and gas prices have climbed, too. The price of urea has almost tripled since 2003, to $400 a tonne.
Dr. Hazell said some big countries, notably the U.S., Canada and Ukraine, have the capacity to increase crop production substantially. Already world cereal production is on the rise, although not nearly fast enough to end the crisis. The Food and Agriculture Organization yesterday forecast a 2.6-per-cent rise in cereal production in 2008.
Cutting back on ethanol production alone would go some way to restoring supply-demand balance in the food markets. "If we decide to do something about it, we can just use less food for fuel," he said.
But everyone - analysts, economists, agriculture experts, the UN - thinks all bets are off in the next two or three years. It's almost impossible to boost production quickly, because of land and water shortages and competition from biofuels.
"I can say with some degree of confidence that if governments and international development agencies do not put in place a concerted effort quickly, then we are looking at a very serious problem," Mr. Nwanze said. |
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Aja
Reggae Ambassador
Joined: 24 Jun 2006
Location: Lost Londoner ..Nr Philly. PA
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| Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2008 12:50 am Post subject: |
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Hi My names Aja and I am a food Hoarder .....And I have been.... since I was old enough to buy my own food (14) the reason being ....I spent so many years hungry as a child .......I guess my mum did not think food was important for us  I will not go into that story ......but i have always hoarded food .......as a matter of fact my fridge and freezer are so full right now .....I cant fit another thing in ...... I have no smileys for that .......its just the way I am .......and the way food prices are going are sending me into panic attacks hence the full fridge ..... grrr and grr at my self ........ I watched a show last night on the Philippines and omg there are about to be riots there..they cannot produce enuff rice ..... and thats there staple ......u have to get a ticket now ......for 3 kilo bags of rice ....... the rice trucks are heavily guarded guns and all.......what the fuck is happening in this mad and crazy world ......... |
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pirtybirdy
'Native New Yorker'
Joined: 29 Apr 2006
Location: FL USA
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| Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2008 9:59 am Post subject: |
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I've heard of the Rice shortage this year a month or two ago. They had stated it will effect those who are big rice eaters in their daily lives. I see here in Denmark that everything is expensive, not just food. I've not noticed food being expensive in America yet. None of my family at least has told me anything has changed since I left. I don't know if that is going to change in the near future. I hope not. I love dinner. 
I'm sorry to hear that you went hungry as a child Aja. From your pictures it doesn't look like you have weight issues or anything so thankfully you haven't gained any eating disorders, right? Also yer a fantastic cook and a good teacher to your grand kiddies. :-) |
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Brown Sauce
Joined: 07 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2008 11:05 am Post subject: |
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well as much as I love basmati rice, no more for me. I'll not be supporting the export of this local staple. It's about the only long distance foodstuff I do buy, apart from bananas I 'spose. I'll be looking out for Italian rice from now on.
| Quote: | | Economist Dr. Hazell has said that filling an SUV tank once with ethanol consumes more maize than the typical African eats in a year. |
time to wake up and smell the coffee .. or maybe a more local drink ....
I used to live in a commune in France years ago, and we didn't eat on a friday - unless work was heavy, to support the hungry. It wasn't only symbolic. Maybe we should start this kind of thing on a larger scale ... |
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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| Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 4:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Brown Sauce wrote: | | Quote: | | Economist Dr. Hazell has said that filling an SUV tank once with ethanol consumes more maize than the typical African eats in a year. |
time to wake up and smell the coffee .. or maybe a more local drink .... |
that statistic blew me away - it just shows how crazy things are 
| Brown Sauce wrote: | | I used to live in a commune in France years ago, and we didn't eat on a friday - unless work was heavy, to support the hungry. It wasn't only symbolic. Maybe we should start this kind of thing on a larger scale ... |
what was that like, living on a commune? what sort of stuff did you do?
| Quote: | Hunger. Strikes. Riots. The food crisis bites
Across the world a crisis is unfolding at alarming speed. Climate change, China's increasing consumption and the dash for biofuels are causing food shortages and rocketing prices - sparking riots in cities from the Caribbean to the Far East. Robin McKie and Heather Stewart report on the millions facing starvation - and the growing threat to global security
It is the constant sensation of hunger that makes Kamla Devi so angry. She argues with shopkeepers in New Delhi over prices and quarrels with her husband, a casual labourer, over his wages - about 50 rupees (60p) a day.
'When I go to the market and see how little I can get for my money, it makes me want to hit the shopkeepers and thrash the government,' she says. A few months ago, Kamla - who is 42 - decided she and her husband could no longer afford to eat twice a day. The couple, who have already sent their two teenage sons to live with more prosperous relatives, now exist on only one daily meal. At midday Kamla cooks a dozen roti (a round, flat Indian bread) with some vegetables fried with onions and spices. If there are some left, they will eat them at night. The only other sustenance that the couple have are occasional cups of sugared tea.
'My husband and I would argue every night. In the end he told me it wouldn't make his wages grow larger. Instead we went down to one meal a day to cut costs.'
It is a grim, unsettling story. Yet it is certainly not an exceptional one. Across the world, a food crisis is now unfolding with frightening speed. Hundreds of millions of men and women who, only a few months ago, were able to provide food for their families have found rocketing prices of wheat, rice and cooking oil have left them facing the imminent prospect of starvation. The spectre of catastrophe now looms over much of the planet.
In less than a year, the price of wheat has risen 130 per cent, soya by 87 per cent and rice by 74 per cent. According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, there are only eight to 12 weeks of cereal stocks in the world, while grain supplies are at their lowest since the 1980s.
For the Devi family, and hundreds of millions of others like them, the impact has been calamitous, as Robert Zoellick, the World Bank President, warned at this weekend's G7 meeting in Washington. Brandishing a bag of rice, he told startled delegates from the world's richest nations that the world was now perched at the edge of catastrophe.
'This is not just about meals forgone today, or about increasing social unrest, it is about lost learning potential for children and adults in the future, stunted intellectual and physical growth,' he said. Without urgent action to resolve the crisis, he added, the fight against poverty could be set back by seven years.
Not surprisingly, these swiftly rising prices have unleashed serious political unrest in many places. In Dhaka yesterday 10,000 Bangladeshi textile workers clashed with police. Dozens were injured, including 20 policemen, in a protest triggered by food costs that was eventually quelled by baton charges and teargas. In Haiti, demonstrators recently tried to storm the presidential palace after prices of staple foods leaped 50 per cent.
In Egypt, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique, Senegal and Cameroon there have been demonstrations, sometimes involving fatalities, as starving, desperate people have taken to the streets. And in Vietnam the new crime of rice rustling - in which crops are stripped at night from fields by raiders - has led to the banning of all harvesting machines from roads after sunset and to farmers, armed with shotguns, camping around their fields 24 hours a day.
But what are the factors that led to this global unrest? What has triggered the price rises that have put the world's basic foodstuffs out of reach for a rising fraction of its population? And what measures must be taken by politicians, world leaders and monetary chiefs to rectify the crisis? Not surprisingly, the first two of these questions tend to be the easier ones to answer. Economists and financiers point to a number of factors that have combined to create the current crisis, a perfect storm in which several apparently unconnected events come together with disastrous effects.
One key issue highlighted at the G7 meeting was the decision by the US government, made several years ago, to give domestic subsidies to its farmers so that they could grow corn that can then be fermented and distilled into ethanol, a biofuel which can be mixed with petrol. This policy helps limit US dependence on oil imports and also gives support to the nation's farmers. However, by taking over land - about 20 million acres so far in the United States - that would otherwise have been used to grow wheat and other food crops, US food production has dropped dramatically. Prices of wheat, soya and other crops have been pushed up significantly as a result.
Other nations, including Argentina, Canada and some European countries, have adopted similar, but more restrained, biofuel policies. But without mentioning any countries by name, Zoellick clearly pointed the finger of blame at the US. Everyone should 'look closely at the effects of the dash for biofuels', he said. 'I would hope that countries that, for whatever reason, energy security and others, have emphasised biofuel development will be particularly sensitive to the call to meet the emergency needs for people who may not have enough food to eat.'
This point has also been stressed recently by the UK government's chief scientific adviser, Professor John Beddington. 'It is very hard to imagine how we can see the world growing enough crops to produce renewable energy and at the same time meet the enormous demand for food,' he said. 'The supply of food really isn't keeping up.'
For his part, Hank Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary - asked about the impact of US energy policies on food prices on Friday - tried to bat away the question. 'This is a complex area, with a number of causes,' he told reporters. The first priority, he added, was to get food supplies to people who need them, before considering the longer-term reasons for the rising prices.
It was not a point shared by the chief of staff in the United Nations trade and development division, Taffere Tesfachew, who flew to London last week ahead of a vital meeting of the leaders of the world's poorest nations in Accra, the capital of Ghana. Instead of an agenda designed to achieve economic progress in the developing world, the meeting will instead focus on the pressing issue of food. Tesfachew said that decades of aid has been skewed to ambitious industrialisation programmes and that the World Bank and others have failed to invest in the agricultural sector. 'We believe these high food prices won't disappear in the next two years, so now is the time to redress imbalances in terms of ethanol subsidies,' he said.
Zoellick was also clear that action was now urgently needed. 'In the US and Europe over the last year we have been focusing on the prices of gasoline at the pumps. While many worry about filling their tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs. And it's getting more and more difficult every day,' added Zoellick, who made an impassioned plea to the world's rich nations to provide emergency help, including $500m in extra funding to the UN World Food Programme.
This call was backed by finance ministers from the G24, who represent the leading developing countries, who also demanded extra cash to help cushion the poor against the shock of rising food prices. As well as causing hunger and malnutrition, the rising cost of basic foodstuffs risks blowing a hole in the budgets of food-importing countries, many of them in Africa, they argued.
As to the other factors that have combined to trigger the current food crisis, experts also point to the connected issue of climate change. As the levels of carbon dioxide rise in the atmosphere, meteorologists have warned that weather patterns are becoming increasingly disturbed, causing devastation in many areas. For several consecutive years, Australia - once a prime grower of wheat - has found its production ruined by drought, for example. Scarcity, particularly on Asia's grain markets, has then driven up prices even further.
Some campaigners see climate change as the most pressing challenge facing the world while others now say that biofuels - grown to offset fossil fuel use - is taking food out of the mouths of some of the world's poorest people. The net result will be eco-warriers battling with poverty campaigners for the moral high ground.
On top of these issues, there is the growing wealth of China and its 1 billion inhabitants. Once the possessor of a relatively poor rural economy, China has becoming increasingly industrialised and its middle classes have swelled in numbers.
One impact has been to trigger a doubling in meat consumption, particularly pork. As the country's farmers have sought to feed more and more pigs, more and more grain has been bought by them. However, China has only 7 per cent of the world's arable land and that figure is shrinking as farmland has been ravaged by pollution and water shortages.
The net result has been to decrease domestic supplies of grain just as demand for it has started to boom. Again the impact has struck worst in the Third World, with wheat and other grain prices soaring.
And finally there is the issue of vegetable oils. Soya and palm oils are a major source of calories in Asia. But flooding in Malaysia and a drought in Indonesia have limited supplies.
In addition, these oils are now being sought as bio-diesel, which is used as a direct substitute for diesel in many countries, including Australia. The impact has been all too familiar: an alarming drop in supplies for the people of the Third World as prices of this basic commodity have soared.
One such victim is Kamla Devi. She has already had to abandon dhal, a central, protein-rich dish of lentils that was a key part of her family's diet for several months. Now the cooking of fried food - in particular, pooris: hot, puffed, oil-soaked bread - has had to follow suit for the simple reason that cooking oil has become unaffordable.
'It has affected my health,' she says. 'The rich are becoming richer. They go to shopping malls and they don't need to worry. The problem with prices only matters for the poor people like me.'
Four key factors behind the spreading fear of starvation across the globe
Growing consumption
Six months ago Zhou Jian closed down his car parts business and launched himself as a pork butcher. Since then the 26-year-old businessman's Shanghai shop has been crowded out - despite a 58 per cent rise in the price of pork in the past year - and his income has trebled.
As China's emerging middle classes become richer, their consumption of meat has increased by more than 150 per cent per head since 1980. In those days, meat was scarce, rationed at around 1kg per person per month and used sparingly in rice and noodle dishes, stir fried to preserve cooking oil.
Today, the average Chinese consumer eats more than 50kg of meat a year. To feed the millions of pigs on its farms, China is now importing grain on a huge scale, pushing up its prices worldwide.
Palm oil crisis
The oil palm tree is the most highly efficient producer of vegetable oil, with one acre yielding as much oil as eight acres of soybeans. Unfortunately, it takes eight years to grow to maturity and demand has outstripped supply. Vegetable oils provide an important source of calories in the developing world, and their shortage has contributed to the food crisis.
A drought in Indonesia and flooding in Malaysia has also hit the crop. While farmers and plantation companies hurriedly clear land to replant, it will take time before their efforts bear fruit. Palm oil prices jumped nearly 70 per cent last year, hitting the poorest families. When a store in Chongqing in China announced a cooking-oil promotion in November, a stampede left three dead and 31 injured.
Biofuel demand
The rising demand for ethanol, a biofuel that is mixed with petrol to bring down prices at the pump, has transformed the landscape of Iowa. Today this heartland of the Midwest is America's cornbelt, with the corn crop stretching as far as the eye can see.
Iowa produces almost half of the entire output of ethanol in the US, with 21 ethanol-producing plants as farmers tear down fences, dig out old soya bean crops, buy up land and plant yet more corn. It has been likened to a new gold rush.
But none of it is for food. And as the demand for ethanol increases, yet more farmers will pile in for the great scramble to plant corn - instead of grain. The effect will be to further worsen world grain shortages.
Global warming
The massive grain storage complex outside Tottenham, New South Wales, today lies virtually empty. Normally, it would be half-full. As the second largest exporter of grain after the US, Australia usually expects to harvest around 25 million tonnes a year. But, because of a five-year drought, thought to have been caused by climate change, it managed just 9.8 million tonnes in 2006.
Farmers such as George Grieg, who has farmed here for 50 years, have rarely known it to be so bad. Many have not even recovered the cost of planting and caring for their crops, and are being forced into debt. With global wheat prices at an all-time high, all they can do is cling on in the hope of a bumper crop next time - if they are lucky.
Food in figures
93,000,000 Acres of corn planted by US farmers last year, up 19 per cent on 2006.
76% Amount of US corn used for animal feed.
8kg Amount of grain it takes to produce 1kg of beef.
20% Portion of US corn used to produce five billion gallons of ethanol in 2006-07.
50kg Quantity of meat consumed annually by the average Chinese person, up from 20kg in 1985.
10% Anticipated share of biofuels used for transport in the EU by 2020.
$500m The UN World Food Programme's shortfall this year, in attempting to feed 89 million needy people.
9.2bn The world's predicted population by 2050. It's 6.6bn now.
130% The rise in the cost of wheat in 12 months.
16 times The overall food consumption of the world's richest 20 per cent compared with that of the poorest 20 per cent.
58% Jump in the price of pork in China in the past year.
$900 The cost of one tonne of Thai premier rice, up 30 per cent in a month. |
from http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/13/food.climatechange?gusrc=rss&feed=worldnews |
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faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 4:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Vegetarianism seems to be an answer to most of these problems, but most people are addicted to meat. Ergo, we're fucked! |
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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| Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 5:14 pm Post subject: |
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| faceless wrote: | | Vegetarianism seems to be an answer to most of these problems, but most people are addicted to meat. Ergo, we're fucked! |
i can't remember where i read it, but i think it was the un or something worked out how we could survive - and yeah, meat was out! |
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Brown Sauce
Joined: 07 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 6:51 pm Post subject: |
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Luke, living in the commune was great. 6 hours work a day, good company. Very agriculturally based, my job was to keep the horses happy. They didn't want the horses, but had to have cows to fertilise the poor ground to grow the food. Cows have to be fed in the winter of course with hay, and cutting and transporting the hay without the help of horses was far too much, so they got horses. A thought out process. They also didn't have electricity for everything. They weren't against it, but hated the idea of nuclear fuelled electricity. So the electricity was for charging the car battery, and the record player. They liked a dance.
here's a link to a page about it, I was there for a few months in the late eighties.
http://www.markshep.com/nonviolence/Ark.html
there are lots of communities, but very few that last. Whilst I was there there were people that came to see how a community was managed and how it worked. Then they set off to make their own. Why? There is a perfectly good one at Roquerderonde, so what do you want. Ah, they'd say, I want to make my own. Pound to a penny they either never made it or it didn't last for more than a year.
It was good fun. Summer solstice on previous occasions, was spent in various shades of hazy purple. Not there of course, strawberries and cream, as much as you wanted ...
btw, if you remember our conversation about the poll tax riots, and Danny Burns, well it was there that I met him. The wife of an ozrics tentacle, can't remember which one, and all sorts of crazy nice folk .. well worth a visit.
edit: if you google "La Communauté de l’Arche", you will see - http://larche.org - it definitely isn't them ... |
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faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 7:20 pm Post subject: |
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The wife of an Ozric? Now that's a cool claim to fame!
There's a commune type place called Talamh about 20 miles south of Glasgow. One time I was helping them build a willow-branch enclosure for their horses and this one guy (not a resident but a visitor) freaked out because someone had stuck the machete we were using the strip the small branches in the ground. I thought he was pissed off because it might damage the blade, but no - he was pissed off because it was an insult to the earth... I pointed out to him that there's a fecking quarry in the next field and that we should have some perspective. He never spoke to me again - haha
But I've also been to some great parties down there and the long-term residents have done some great work in the local community.
http://microsites.theguidlife.net/tlc/home/page |
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Brown Sauce
Joined: 07 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2008 7:07 am Post subject: |
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It would normally be the visitors coming out with acid casualty garbage like this if the commune had any real history. If a commune was based on this sort of stuff how long would it last?
Looks like a nice place, there are lots of them around, you have to be in the "scene" only for a short time to get contacts everywhere ... |
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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| Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 2:40 pm Post subject: |
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thanks brown sauce, sounds really interesting, i'd like to give something like that a go sometime  |
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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| Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 3:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | The worst thing is, if everything continues the way it is, the situation will become even more serious
Speech by the head of the Cuban delegation, José Ramón Machado Ventura, at the High Level Conference on International Food Security: the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy
Mr. President:
In this same place 12 years ago, the international community agreed to eradicate hunger in the world. The objective was established at the time to reduce the number of malnourished people by half by the year 2015. That goal, timid and insufficient, would now seem like a pipe dream.
The world food crisis is not a circumstantial phenomenon. The seriousness of its recent manifestations, in a world that produces enough food for everyone, is a clear reflection of its systemic and structural nature.
Hunger and malnutrition are the consequences of an international economic order that sustains and deepens poverty, inequality and injustice.
The countries of the North hold undeniable responsibility for the hunger and malnutrition of 854 million people. They imposed trade liberalization among clearly unequal actors and financial formulas of structural adjustment. They caused the ruin of many small producers in the South, and turned countries that were previously self-sufficient or even exporters of food into net importers.
The governments of the developed countries are refusing to eliminate their outrageous agricultural subsidies, while imposing their rules on international trade. Their voracious transnational corporations set prices, monopolize technology, impose unjust certifications and manipulate distribution channels, sources of financing, trade and supplies for world food production. They also control transport, scientific research, genetic pools and fertilizer and pesticide production.
The worst thing is, if everything continues the way it is, the situation will become even more serious. The production and consumption patterns of the developed countries are accelerating climate change, which is threatening the very existence of humanity. They must be replaced. The irrational intention to continue that disastrous consumerism is what propelled the sinister strategy of turning grains and cereals into fuel.
The Non-Aligned Movement called, in Havana, for the establishment of a peaceful and prosperous world and a just, equitable global order. This is the only way to reach a real solution in the food crisis.
Food is an inalienable human right. At the initiative of Cuba, that has been confirmed since 1997 in successive resolutions passed by the former Human Rights Commission and later by the Council, and by the United Nations General Assembly. Our country, representing the Non-Aligned Movement, and with the co-sponsorship of more than two-thirds of UN members, also advocated the convening of the seventh extraordinary session of the Human Rights Council, which has just urged that concrete measures be taken to solve the world food crisis.
Hunger and malnutrition cannot be eradicated with palliative measures. Or with symbolic donations that, let’s be frank, will not meet needs and is not sustainable.
What is needed at the least is to rebuild and develop the agricultural production of the countries of the South. The developed have more than enough resources for that. What is needed is the political will of their governments.
If the military spending of NATO in one year were reduced by just 10%, almost $100 billion would be freed up.
If the foreign debt of developing countries— which we have already paid more than once — is cancelled, we countries of the South would have the $345 billion yearly that is now dedicated to servicing that debt.
If the developed countries kept their promise to allocate 0.7% of their gross domestic product to Official Development Assistance, we countries of the South would have at least an additional $130 billion per year.
If just one-fourth of the money wasted every year on advertising were spent on food, almost $250 billion could be used for fighting hunger and malnutrition.
If the money used for agricultural subsidies in the North were used for agricultural development in the South, our countries would have approximately $1 billion for investing in food production.
Mr. President:
This is the message from Cuba, ferociously blockaded but upright in its principles and the unity of its people: this food crisis can be successfully confronted, but it is necessary to go to the root of the problem, address its profound causes and reject demagogy, hypocrisy and false promises.
I conclude by recalling the words of Fidel Castro before the United Nations General Assembly in New York, in October 1979:
"The rattling of weapons, threatening language and arrogance on the international scene must cease. That’s enough of the illusion that the world’s problems can be solved with nuclear weapons. Bombs may kill the hungry, the sick and the ignorant, but they cannot kill hunger, disease or ignorance."
Thank you very much. |
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