How the rich starved the world

[MikeWB]

How the rich starved the world
Mark Lynas
Published 17 April 2008
World cereal stocks are at an all-time low, food-aid programmes have run out of money and millions face starvation. Yet wealthy countries persist with plans to use grain for petrol. Plus Iain Macwhirter on how food prices are rocketing
 
The irony is extraordinary. At a time when world leaders are expressing grave concern about diminishing food stocks and a coming global food crisis, our government brings into force measures to increase the use of biofuels - a policy that will further increase food prices, and further worsen the plight of the world's poor.
What biofuels do is undeniable: they take food out of the mouths of starving people and divert them to be burned as fuel in the car engines of the world's rich consumers. This is, in the words of the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, nothing less than a "crime against humanity". It is a crime the UK government seems determined to play its part in abetting. The Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO), introduced on 15 April, mandates petrol retailers to mix 2.5 per cent biofuels into fuel sold to motorists. This will rise to 5.75 per cent by 2010, in line with European Union policy.
The message could not have been clearer if the Prime Min ister, Gordon Brown, had personally put a torch to a pyre of corn and rice in Parliament Square: even as you take to the streets to protest your empty bellies and hungry children, we will burn your food in our cars. The UK is not uniquely implicated in this scandal: the EU, the United States, India, Brazil and China all have targets to increase biofuels use. But a look at the raw data confirms today's dire situation. According to the World Bank, global maize production increased by 51 million tonnes between 2004 and 2007. During that time, biofuels use in the US alone (mostly ethanol) rose by 50 million tonnes, soaking up almost the entire global increase.
Next year, the use of US corn for ethanol is forecast to rise to 114 million tonnes - nearly a third of the whole projected US crop. American cars now burn enough corn to cover all the import needs of the 82 nations classed by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) as "low-income food-deficit countries". There could scarcely be a better way to starve the poor.
The threat posed by biofuels affects all of us. Global grain stockpiles - on which all of humanity depends - are now perilously depleted. Cereal stocks are at their lowest level for 25 years, according to the FAO. The world has consumed more grain than it has produced for seven of the past eight years, and supplies, at roughly only 54 days of consumption, are the lowest on record.
The president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, has already warned that 100 million people could be pushed deeper into poverty because of food price rises caused directly by this imbalance between supply and demand. Even consumers in rich countries are suffering. We now pay higher prices for our food in order to subsidise the biofuels industry, thanks to measures such as the renewable fuels directive.
This is not just a short-term price blip, but the beginnings of a major structural change in the world food market. Population pressure - still something of a taboo subject - is also certainly playing a part. With the world population growing by 78 million a year, and expected to reach nine billion by the middle of the century, there are simply many more mouths to feed.
In addition, rapid economic growth in India and China has created tens of millions of new middle-class consumers, all demanding western-style diets high in meat and dairy products, thereby vastly increasing the quantity of grain required for livestock production.
Weather plays a major role, too: the FAO's latest food situation brief reports that, in 2007, "unfavourable climatic conditions devastated crops in Australia and reduced harvests in many other countries, particularly in Europe", while Southern Africa and the western United States have been hit hard by severe drought. Rising oil prices also increase the cost of food, as fossil fuels are important throughout the agricultural process, from tractor diesel to fertiliser production.
Inconsistency
The most important structural change, however, is the increasing interlinking of world energy and food markets. Once, food was just for people. Now rising demand for transport fuel - particularly in rich countries - is sucking supply away from the world food market and increasing the upward pressure on prices. In the words of Josette Sheeran, executive director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP): "We are seeing food in many places in the world priced at fuel levels," with increasing quantities of food "being bought by energy markets" for biofuels.
Rising oil prices feed back into the process. With food and fuel markets intertwined, increases in the price of oil are shadowed by increases in the price of grain. The real-world result from this structural shift may be that hundreds of thousands of people starve in the next few years - unless policies promoting biofuels are urgently reversed.
This is not to suggest that government targets on biofuels are driven by some kind of malicious desire to starve the world's poor. Indeed, both Brown and his Chancellor, Alistair Darling, have expressed concern about the food supply crisis and the role of biofuels in causing it. But for these two political leaders to voice their concerns while allowing the increased use of biofuels in the UK to be pushed forward - all in the same week - is nothing short of bizarre.
As Oxfam's Robert Bailey puts it: "This inconsistency at the highest levels simply beggars belief." The aid agency calculates that the RTFO represents a

[zulu]

All is on track.  It's quite evident in the "developing countries" / client states that all is in order where the starvation levels, corruption, crime & poverty (to name a few issues) are concerned.  After all, ORDER OUT OF CHAOS is/was/is on their agenda, nes pas?

Items of news including statistics not revealed in the controlled media environment not always easy to come by.  One thing is for sure - our economies are being raped.

Brown to hold talks with Zuma21/04/2008 17:04  - (SA)  
London - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's office says the leader will hold talks with African National Congress president Jacob Zuma in London on Wednesday.
The two are likely to discuss the crisis in Zimbabwe. No result has been declared in Zimbabwe's presidential election, three weeks after votes were cast.
Brown's office said on Monday that Zuma is in London for meetings with lawmakers and officials.
He is leading an ANC delegation on a tour of Germany, Britain and France.

[zulu]

April 11, 2008  
Israel Loves Mugabe
Why is that?  
by Justin Raimondo
Two years ago, when I was in Kuala Lumpur as a guest of the Perdana Peace Forum, I had the singularly unpleasant experience of meeting Robert Mugabe. Well, "meeting" him is hardly the word: rather, I espied him, sitting directly across from me, at the opening banquet of the conference. Turning to the person next to me, I asked: "Isn't that guy sitting over there Robert Mugabe?" My friend squinted, and replied: "Sure looks like it."

The table was loaded down with lots of really good food: Malaysian fare, with all its wonderful color and variety. But I seemed to have lost my appetite rather suddenly.

"You mean I have to eat at the same table with that murdering despot?" As is my wont, I was speaking rather loudly. Mugabe looked up, and straight at me. I felt like giving him the finger, but, instead, I got up and exited the room. Better not to make a scene quite yet.

I was upset. I had no idea Mugabe would be attending

[sullivan]

All is on track.  It's quite evident in the "developing countries" / client states that all is in order where the starvation levels, corruption, crime & poverty (to name a few issues) are concerned.  After all, ORDER OUT OF CHAOS is/was/is on their agenda, nes pas?

Quite the contrary. They are believers in creative destruction - chaos where once there was some semblance of order.

[zulu]

ZIMBABWE - This country was known as the bread basket of Africa.
This letter of appeal from a teen is from Margaret Kriel's Morning Mirror, please try and pass it on to as many people as you can, Many thanks

Dear World,

I am a 16 year old person living in Zimbabwe. I think the time has come for a more direct
appeal, and so I am writing to you, the world.

Maybe, just maybe, there might be someone out there who can help us...

It's tough here now. The inflation rate is so high that if you don't change money within 6 hours you could get half the amount of foreign currency that you would have originally received.

We're starving now; people die around us. In the last year alone at least ten people associated personally with my family have died despite the fact that they were only middle-aged. Other people don't make it to middle age. They don't even make it past childhood.

Our once-proud nation is on it's knees. We flee or die. This beautiful, bountiful once-rich land has become a living hell. We have dealt with it until now; we have made a plan. That was the Zimbabwean motto: "MAKE A PLAN".

But now we can't make a plan. We're too tired, too broken, too bankrupt. We can't afford life, and life does not cost much, not really. We cannot afford to eat, we cannot afford to drink, and we cannot afford to make mistakes, because if we do we die. We don't have the capital to support ourselves, and those few who do, have to deal with the horror of watching their friends and family fall into absolute poverty as they cannot afford to help them.

We're waiting desperately for a great hand to pick us up out of the dirt because at the moment we are outnumbered by Fate herself, and so we close our eyes and pray. We have fought for too long, and have been brought to breaking point. We simply stand, heads down, and bear it. Our spirit has gone; we are defeated. After a valiant struggle of over fifteen years, we have been broken.  
There is no will left, no spirit. Like a horse that has been beaten until it cannot fight anymore; we are the same, and, like that horse, we stand dusty, scarred and alone, with dried blood on our sides and lash marks along our flanks. Our ribs too stand out; our hide is also dull.  
Our eyes are glazed, our throats are parched, and our knees struggle to support us so that we stand with splayed legs to bear the brunt of the next beating, too dejected even to whimper...

This is my plea. The thought of picking ourselves up again is sickening; one can only take so many blows before oblivion is reached, and we are teetering on the rim of the bottomless void. One more push will be the end of us all...
There must be someone out there who can do something. There must be someone out there who cares! We are a destroyed nation, and the world sits back and watches, pretending they cannot hear our cries. I appeal to you all...

HELP US!
A 16 YEAR OLD ZIMBABWEAN......

[zulu]

All is on track.  It's quite evident in the "developing countries" / client states that all is in order where the starvation levels, corruption, crime & poverty (to name a few issues) are concerned.  After all, ORDER OUT OF CHAOS is/was/is on their agenda, nes pas?

Quite the contrary. They are believers in creative destruction - chaos where once there was some semblance of order.

True - it's a two edged sword.
Although this seems contradictory - we have full blown creative destroyers on the inside and greed on the outside.
Whilst true benevolence is evident now and then, there are these SEEMINGLY benevolent powers on the other hand, who have all this rhetoric about assisting the poor, the AIDs victims etc (usually the EU talking about it...)  Very little of this benevolence appears to reach the afflicted (if it exists) but probably goes into the pockets of the new, corrupt, government 'elite' pockets - a la Mugabe.  

Solana, Zoellick and the likes come for a visit, this country takes out massive loans and hey presto, we suddenly have a multitude of other "problems" - electricity shortages (humph), quadrupling property rates and all the other creations which all third world countries are experiencing.

A contributer at this forum posted this which I thought summarises well the 'other edge' of the sword:

In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.
-Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution (1991)