Forget oil,the new global crisis is food:

[mikey]

Alia McMullen, Financial Post 
Published: Monday, January 07, 2008

Forget oil, the new global crisis is food
BMO strategist Donald Coxe warns credit crunch and soaring oil prices will pale in comparison to looming catastrophe



Rising demand for grain to make fuel, food and livestock feed has helped push the prices of corn and soybeans.
A new crisis is emerging, a global food catastrophe that will reach further and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen. The credit crunch and the reverberations of soaring oil prices around the world will pale in comparison to what is about to transpire, Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group said at the Empire Club's 14th annual investment outlook in Toronto on Thursday.

"It's not a matter of if, but when," he warned investors. "It's going to hit this year hard."

Mr. Coxe said the sharp rise in raw food prices in the past year will intensify in the next few years amid increased demand for meat and dairy products from the growing middle classes of countries such as China and India as well as heavy demand from the biofuels industry.

"The greatest challenge to the world is not US$100 oil; it's getting enough food so that the new middle class can eat the way our middle class does, and that means we've got to expand food output dramatically," he said.

The impact of tighter food supply is already evident in raw food prices, which have risen 22% in the past year.

Mr. Coxe said in an interview that this surge would begin to show in the prices of consumer foods in the next six months. Consumers already paid 6.5% more for food in the past year.

Wheat prices alone have risen 92% in the past year, and yesterday closed at US$9.45 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade.

At the centre of the imminent food catastrophe is corn - the main staple of the ethanol industry. The price of corn has risen about 44% over the past 15 months, closing at US$4.66 a bushel on the CBOT yesterday - its best finish since June 1996.

This not only impacts the price of food products made using grains, but also the price of meat, with feed prices for livestock also increasing.

"You're going to have real problems in countries that are food short, because we're already getting embargoes on food exports from countries, who were trying desperately to sell their stuff before, but now they're embargoing exports," he said, citing Russia and India as examples.

"Those who have food are going to have a big edge."

With 54% of the world's corn supply grown in America's mid-west, the U.S. is one of those countries with an edge.

But Mr. Coxe warned U.S. corn exports were in danger of seizing up in about three years if the country continues to subsidize ethanol production. Biofuels are expected to eat up about a third of America's grain harvest in 2007.

The amount of U.S. grain currently stored for following seasons was the lowest on record, relative to consumption, he said.

"You should be there for it fully-hedged by having access to those stocks that benefit from rising food prices."

He said there are about two dozen stocks in the world that are going to redefine the world's food supplies, and "those stocks will have a precious value as we move forward."

Mr. Coxe said crop yields around the world need to increase to something close to what is achieved in the state of Illinois, which produces over 200 corn bushes an acre compared with an average 30 bushes an acre in the rest of the world.

"That will be done with more fertilizer, with genetically modified seeds, and with advanced machinery and technology," he sai

[mikey]

Sharply rising prices have triggered food riots in recent weeks in Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Guinea, Mauritania and Yemen, and aid agencies around the world worry they may be unable to feed the poorest of the poor.

In the Philippines, officials are raiding warehouses in Manila looking for unscrupulous traders hoarding rice, while in South Korea, panicked housewives recently stripped grocery-store shelves of food when the cost of ramen, an instant noodle made from wheat, suddenly rose.

The shadow of "a new hunger" that has made food too expensive for millions is the result of a sudden and dramatic surge in food prices around the world.

Rising prices for all the world's crucial cereal crops and growing fears of scarcity are careening through international markets, creating turmoil.

Last Thursday, as world rice prices soared by as much as 30% in one day, Egypt decided to suspend rice exports for six months to meet domestic demand and to try to limit price increases.

That was bad news for its main rice customers -- Turkey, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

Egypt's move was matched by Vietnam, the world's second-largest rice exporter after Thailand, which cut exports by 25% and ordered officials not to sign any more export contracts this year.

India and Cambodia also rushed to curb their exports in order to have enough supplies to feed their own people.

With crude oil soaring above US$100 a barrel, higher fuel prices have driven up the cost of production and increased transportation costs for all foods.

Pests in Southeast Asia, a 10-year drought in Australia and a 45-day cold snap in China have combined to aggravate the situation.

At the same time, millions of people in China and India have suddenly become relatively wealthy and are changing their eating habits, consuming more meat and chicken, which places a huge demand on cereal stocks.

In China, per-capita meat consumption has increased 150% since the 1980s. But producing more meat requires more feed to raise more animals.

"You simply feed less people on maize [corn] via cattle than you do in maize direct," said John Powell, the UN World Food Program's (WFP) deputy director of external programs in Rome.

Also influencing the food crisis is the move in North America and Europe to biofuel in an effort to ease global warming and reduce reliance on imported energy.

A surge in demand for biofuel has resulted in a sharp decline in agricultural land planted for food crops. About 16% of U.S. agricultural land formerly planted with soybeans and wheat is now growing corn for biofuel.

"For the first time in history, there is a clear link between the price of fuel and the price of food," Mr. Powell said.

"If there were a miraculous 20% increase in the quantity of food production, we would not know what would go toward increased food consumption and what would go to biofuels.

"Where it would go is where the prices are best."

Rice is a staple food for half the world's population. But the sudden surge in prices and restrictions on exports come at a time when stockpiles of rice are at their lowest level in decades.

At the moment, world rice inventories are said to stand at a mere 72 million metric tonnes -- about 17% of what the world consumes annually.

The low stockpiles create a market in which any supply disruption will result in radical price swings.

They also complicate delivering foreign aid to those most in need.

The WPF, which feeds 73 million of the world's most destitute each year, says its costs have increased 55% since June. Unless it gets US$500-million in emergency funding, it may soon have to reduce feeding programs.

Experts predict world food markets will be locked into an inflationary spiral for at least four years, but some say the crisis could linger for a decade or more.

"There is pretty much a sense that what we are seeing is a step change or a structural change and not a peak to be followed by a trough," Mr. Powell said.

"In other words, we are into an era of high food prices. It's not just volatility, it's a step increase."

[mikey]

Global food crisis on horizon, expert says
Days of big stockpiles are gone: Don Coxe
PAUL DELEAN, The Gazette
Published: Monday, February 18
Don Coxe is never at a loss for words. Especially when the topic of discussion is the new world order in economics.

Three years ago, the Chicago-based global portfolio strategist for BMO Financial Group predicted parity for the Canadian and U.S. dollars.

He also foresaw this decade's surge in oil and metal prices. Now, he sees a similar scenario shaping up for foodstuffs and agricultural products and services, where supply will be hard pressed to keep up with snowballing demand as developing countries, in particular China and India, get richer.


"The biggest threat we face is a global food crisis," he said in a wide-ranging discussion during a recent visit to Montreal. "Milk is the new oil."

Coxe said the world is entering a period of food shortages and swiftly rising prices, and expects to see government embargoes on food exports at some point.

China and India, he said, are "making up for 200 years of lost time" with their rapid growth, and " by the middle of this century, they will be the biggest economies on Earth."

Their appetite for raw materials and commodities is the reason the usual cyclical downturn in prices has not occurred, and probably won't, Coxe said. The days of massive stockpiles are long gone.

"Everyone's learned to manage inventories," he said. "It's the religion of just-in-time ."

As the populations of emerging countries develop a taste for animal protein and dairy products and the wealth to afford them, there will be huge pressure placed on the agricultural sector, Coxe said. Countries that have the foresight to reorient their economies to food production should be amply rewarded, he said, because "we need to produce more food."

While commodities have kept the Canadian economy buoyant, the U.S. has taken a turn for the worse. Coxe said the U.S. economy is in "a financial recession, not an economic recession."

The financial system is the trouble spot, not the economy as a whole, he said. Unemployment remains low, inflation and interest rates are low, and "there are no excess inventories ... except in houses and political hot air."

But with about a quarter of subprime mortgages in U.S. in default within six months, the U.S. housing market appears to be in for a lengthy slump, he said. And long-term prospects for housing aren't great either, in the U.S. and many other countries, since one of the consequences of an aging population will be reduced demand for homes.

"It'll become global. The U.S. just happened to be first because of these exotic mortgages."

Another consequence of the evolving demographics will be stress on the labour market.

Coxe anticipates "25 years of labour shortages" as competition heats up for a dwindling pool of young employees. Companies will have to try to hang on to skilled workers, he said, paying the price in significantly higher wages.

[mikey]

Africa: UN Warns Over Looming Global Food Crisis


 
The East African (Nairobi)

7 April 2008
Posted to the web 7 April 2008

Kevin J Kelley
Nairobi

The United Nations is appealing to donors for $500 million in emergency funding to help feed displaced Kenyans and other Africans in increasing danger of going hungry.

"A perfect storm" is threatening millions as food prices soar and as the need for aid grows rapidly, UN World Food Programme director Josette Sheeran warned last week. During a visit to East Africa, Ms Sheeran said food prices are likely to continue rising, making it harder and harder for the poorest Africans to maintain subsistence diets.

 
"We are seeing a new face of hunger," Ms Sheeran declared at a UN conference in Ethiopia last week. "We are seeing more urban hunger than ever before. Often, we are seeing food on the shelves but people being unable to afford it."

Intensifying economic pressures linked to the cost of food have resulted in civil disturbances in five African countries this year - Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal.

The World Food Programme has meanwhile launched an "extraordinary emergency appeal" so it can boost its aid budget for the current year from $2.9 billion to $3.4 billion. Food price increases are jeopardising the programme's ability to continue feeding 73 million people worldwide, UN officials say.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick sounded the alarm in a speech in Washington last week, saying "many more people will suffer and starve" unless the United States, the European Union, Japan and other prosperous countries meet the aid request.

Ms Sheeran assured President Mwai Kibaki last week that WFP will strive to increase its assistance to Kenyans displaced as a result of the post-election violence. Kenya is already set to benefit from a $250 million food aid package for about a dozen African countries recently approved by the European Union.

The WFP provides direct aid to the hungry in Kenya as well as help for local farmers. It also seeks to link the two components by purchasing produce from Kenyan farms for distribution to the needy.

The UN agency states in regard to Kenya that "poverty and vulnerability to food insecurity are highest in urban slums and among pastoralists and marginal agriculturalists in remote, arid and semi-arid lands." It notes persistently high malnutrition rates among children under five in those areas.

In Tanzania, 38 per cent of children under five are stunted in height due to chronic malnourishment, the programme reports. Tanzania, like Kenya, also hosts a large number of refugees who are heavily dependent on food aid.

Five per cent of Uganda's rural households continue to experience food insecurity, despite fertile soil and favourable climate, the UN agency adds.

The most acute food shortages in East Africa are currently being experienced in Somalia, where war and drought have produced what aid agencies are calling a catastrophic humanitarian crisis.

Steep increases in the price of oil play a key role in pushing food out of the reach of millions of Africans. Higher fuel costs drive up the price of fertilisers while making food processing more expensive as well.

Relevant Links
 
Food, Agriculture and Rural Issues
Aid and Assistance
Capital Flows
International Organizations and Africa
Sustainable Development
 
 
 
Transporting farm products to markets has also grown costlier, adding to inflation rates that surpassed 40 per cent for many types of grain lastyear.

Growing demand for so-called biofuels is contributing further to the rising cost of food. About 14 per cent of the maize crop in the United States was converted into ethanol last year, with the proportion expected to reach 30 per cent by 2010.

This switchover to crops grown for fuel rather than for food causes a ripple effect that raises maize prices worldwide, since the US accounts for about 40 per cent of the global maize trade.

[mikey]

China's rising grain prices could signal global food crisis


BEIJING



US environmentalist Lester Brown warned Wednesday that sudden food price hikes in China could be the sign of a coming world food crisis brought on by global warming and increasingly scarce water supplies among major grain producers.

"I view the price rises as an indication, as the warning tremors before the earthquake," Brown, director of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, told an audience of Chinese environmental non-governmental organizations. "World grain harvests have fallen for four consecutive years and world grain stocks are at the lowest level in 30 years. If farmers can't raise production by (late next year) we may see soaring grain and food prices worldwide."

In the past few months, wheat prices in northeast China have shot up 32 percent, maize prices have doubled and rice prices are up by as much as 13 percent, official reports show. China faces a 40 million ton grain shortfall this year, following five years of smaller harvests. Brown said that the world will be facing a 96 million ton shortfall in grain this year following poor harvests in the United States and India in 2002, and a poor harvest in Europe due to scorching temperatures this year. Shortfalls worldwide have been made up through dwindling grain reserves. Brown, described by the Washington Post as "one of the world's most influential thinkers," was in China to unveil the translation of his new book "Plan B, Rescuing a Planet Under Stress."

While grain producers revel in rising prices, Brown said the trends are unsustainable, especially as the world population approaches eight billion by mid-century and as the main grain producers -- China, India and the United States -- face increasing water shortages. As China's population grows, and its people demand a more meat-based diet with rising living standards, China will increasingly have to look to world markets to satisfy grain needs for both food and feed for livestock, he said.

"When China turns to the world market for grain, it will need 30, 40, 50 million tons, more than anyone else in the world imports," Brown said. "They will first come to US markets, which is going to make a fascinating geo-political situation."

With a 100 billion dollar trade surplus with the United States in 2002,China has "enormous purchasing power" to buy US grain, which "could drive up prices by two times." Already an increase in Chinese demand for American soybeans, plus last year's bad soybean harvest, have seen prices jump from five dollars a bushel to eight dollars a bushel.

China is expected to announce substantial grain purchases from the US in the weeks ahead of a visit to Washington by Premier Wen Jiabao in December. Further exacerbating falling grain harvests will be the effects of global warming as increasing scientific evidence reveals that grain production falls when temperatures mount, Brown said. Studies by the International Rice Institute and the US-based Carnegie Institution have shown that grain production can fall 10 percent with a one degree Celsius (1.7 degree Fahrenheit) increase in temperature, as the increased heat stresses the plants.

The UN's International Panel on Climate Control has come to the conclusion that global warming from greenhouse gases caused by the burning of fossil fuels will lead to temperature rises from two to five degrees Celsius this century.

"This is not encouraging for food security and we may very well be seeing that decisions made at ministries of energy will have a greater effect on food than decisions made at ministries of agriculture," Brown said.

[mikey]

Global food crisis looms as climate change and population growth strip fertile land. 'Ignorance, need and greed' depleting soil
. Experts warn competition will lead to conflict
Ian Sample in science correspondent The Guardian, Friday August 31 2007 Article historyAbout this articleClose This article appeared in the Guardian on Friday August 31 2007 on p12 of the UK news and analysis section. It was last updated at 14:04 on October 11 2007. Climate change and an increasing population could trigger a global food crisis in the next half century as countries struggle for fertile land to grow crops and rear animals, scientists warned yesterday.

To keep up with the growth in human population, more food will have to be produced worldwide over the next 50 years than has been during the past 10,000 years combined, the experts said.

But in many countries a combination of poor farming practices and deforestation will be exacerbated by climate change to steadily degrade soil fertility, leaving vast areas unsuitable for crops or grazing.

Competition over sparse resources may lead to conflicts and environmental destruction, the scientists fear.

The warnings came as researchers from around the world convened at a UN-backed forum in Iceland on sustainable development to address the organisation's millennium development goals to halve hunger and extreme poverty by 2015.

The researchers will use the meeting to call on countries to impose strict farming guidelines to ensure that soils are not degraded so badly they cannot recover.

"Policy changes that result in improved conservation of soil and vegetation and restoration of degraded land are fundamental to humanity's future livelihood," said Zafar Adeel, director of the international network on water, environment and health at the UN University in Toronto and co-organiser of the meeting.

"This is an urgent task as the quality of land for food production, as well as water storage, is fundamental to future peace. Securing food and reducing poverty ... can have a strong impact on efforts to curb the flow of people, environmental refugees, inside countries as well as across national borders," he added.

The UN millennium ecosystem assessment ranked land degradation among the world's greatest environmental challenges, claiming it risked destabilising societies, endangering food security and increasing poverty.

Some 40% of the world's agricultural land is seriously degraded. Among the worst affected regions are Central America, where 75% of land is infertile, Africa, where a fifth of soil is degraded, and Asia, where 11% is unsuitable for farming.

The majority of soil erosion is caused by water, either through flooding or poor irrigation, with the rest lost to winds. Farming practices such as ploughing also damage soil, as does repeated planting in fields, which depletes the soil of nutrients.

"You can sum it up as need, greed and ignorance," said Andrew Campbell, an Australian environmental consultant. "Some pressures on soil resources come from simple human needs, where people don't have any option but to grow crops or farm animals. But in other instances world markets demand produce, so farmers try to meet those markets. And sometimes, there will be land that's cleared that should not have been, or grazed when it shouldn't have been. All these place great pressures on soil resources."

He warned that increased competition over depleted resources would lead to conflict - "and the losers will inevitably be the environment and poor people".

According to the UN's food and agriculture programme, 854 million people do not have sufficient food for an active and healthy life.

The global population has risen substantially in recent decades. Between 1980 and 2000 it rose from 4.4bn to 6.1bn and food production increased 50%. By 2050 the population is expected to reach 9bn.

The threat of a food crisis is exacerbated by fears over energy security, with many countries opting to plant biofuel crops in place of traditional food crops. India, for example, has pledged to meet 10% of its vehicle fuel needs with biofuels.

Andres Arnalds, of the Icelandic soil conservation service, said the pressures on food production would have knock-on effects all over the world because of the international links in food supply.

Mr Campbell said: "If we can improve agricultural practices across the board we can dramatically increase our food production from existing lands, without having to clear more or put more pressure on soils. Simple things like good crop rotation, sowing at the right time of year, basic weed control, are what is needed. They're very well known but not always used."

[mikey]

Tue, April 8, 2008

Global food crisis warningRiots begin as UN fears could unrest
By Barbara Surk, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tear gas fired at food price protest in Haiti 
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The recent outbreak of food riots is a warning sign that rising food prices could cause unrest and instability across the world, the UN’s top humanitarian official said Tuesday.

Combined with the negative impact of climate change and soaring fuel prices, a “perfect storm” is brewing for much of the world’s population, said John Holmes, undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief co-ordinator.

“The security implications (of the food crisis) should also not be underestimated as food riots are already being reported across the globe,” Holmes told a conference in Dubai, addressing challenges facing humanitarian work.

His comments came after two days of rioting in Egypt, where the prices for many staples has doubled in the past year. And violent food protests were continuing for a second day in the capital of Haiti.

“Current food price trends are likely to increase sharply both the incidence and depth of food insecurity,” Holmes said, noting a 40-per-cent average rise in prices worldwide since the middle of last year.


 

Holmes said that the biggest challenge to humanitarian work is the effects of climate change and the resulting “extreme weather” that has doubled the number of recorded disasters — from an average of 200 a year to 400 per year in the past two decades.

Adding food scarcity and expensive fuel to the mix have made for a very volatile situation, he said.

“Compounding the challenges of climate change in what some have labelled the perfect storm are the recent dramatic trends in soaring food and fuel prices,” he said.

One of the factors pushing food prices higher and sparking protests all over the world is more expensive diesel fuel, which is used to transport most of the world’s food.

Along with the riots over food scarcity in Haiti and clashes with police over high prices in northern Egypt, UN employees in Jordan staged a day-long strike for pay raises due to a 50-per-cent rise in prices there.

A teenager injured in the clashes in the northern Egyptian city of Mahalla al-Kobra has died from his wounds.

In Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, UN peacekeepers fired rubber bullets and tear gas into a crowd outside the presidential palace Tuesday on the second day of protests over soaring food prices.

Some protesters were trying to break down the palace gates before the UN troops established a security perimeter around the building. “We are trying to deal with the situation,” said Fritz Longchamp, chief of staff to President Rene Preval who was at work inside the palace.

The food unrest began last week when Haitians burned cars and attacked a UN police base in the southern city of Les Cayes. At least five people were killed there. The demonstrations reached the capital Monday as thousands marched past the National Palace, some of them crying out: “We’re hungry!”

John Powell, the deputy executive director of The United Nation’s World Food Program, emphasized the need for developed countries to help governments in the developing world.

Developing countries experiencing unrest over high food prices need help in developing “social safety net programs,” he said.

“Riots today mean you need a solution tomorrow,” Powell said. Governments with no “policy space” and under pressure from organized discontent in urban centres “is not likely to be the best decision” in trying to solve the problem, he said.

Powell said the planet is getting hungrier with four million people added to the list of those in most dire need for food to survive.

The rise of fuel and food prices is unlikely to stop soon and it affects everyone, Powell said. In the past, natural disasters, wars and ethnic conflict made the rural areas most vulnerable to poverty and hunger.

Now, the most vulnerable live in the cities, Powell said.

“They see food on the shelves but they cannot afford to buy it,” said Powell. He called urban poverty the “new face of hunger.”

 
 

[mikey]

No butter in Japan due to feed shortages
// 23 apr 2008

Japan's acute butter shortage, which has confounded bakeries, restaurants and now families across the country, is the latest unforeseen result of the global agricultural commodities crisis.

A sharp increase in the cost of imported cattle feed and a decline in milk imports, both of which are typically provided in large part by Australia, have prevented dairy farmers from keeping pace with demand.

A 130% rise in the global cost of wheat in the past year, caused partly by surging demand from China and India and a huge injection of speculative funds into wheat futures, has forced the Government to hit flour millers with three rounds of stiff mark-ups.

The latest — a 30% increase this month — has given rise to speculation that Japan, which relies on imports for 90% of its annual wheat consumption, is no longer on the brink of a food crisis, but has fallen off the cliff.

According to one government poll, 80% of Japanese are frightened about what the future holds for their food supply.

Last week, as the prices of wheat and barley continued their relentless climb, the Japanese Government discovered it had exhausted its ¥230 billion (€1.4 billion) budget for the grains with two months remaining.

It was forced to call on an emergency ¥55 billion (€335 million) reserve to ensure it could continue feeding the nation.

In the wake of the decision this week by Kazakhstan, the world's fifth biggest wheat exporter, to join Russia, Ukraine and Argentina in stopping exports to satisfy domestic demand, the situation in Japan is expected to worsen.

Self sufficiency declines
Arguably Japan's biggest concern, however, is its weakening ability to sustain its population with domestic produce. In 2006 the country's self-sufficiency rate fell to 39%, according to the Agriculture Ministry.

It was only the second time since the ministry began keeping records in 1960 that the population derived less than 40% of its daily calorie intake from domestically grown food

[mikey]

UN warns of world food crisis

By Barbara Surk, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
     




People walk past a burning barricade during an anti-government demonstration in Port-au-Prince, Monday, April 7, 2008. Protesters angered by high food prices flooded the streets of Port-au-Prince, forcing businesses and schools to close as unrest spread from the countryside. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/Ariana Cubillos

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - The recent outbreak of food riots is a warning sign that rising food prices could cause unrest and instability across the world, the UN's top humanitarian official said Tuesday.

Combined with the negative impact of climate change and soaring fuel prices, a "perfect storm" is brewing for much of the world's population, said John Holmes, undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief co-ordinator.

"The security implications (of the food crisis) should also not be underestimated as food riots are already being reported across the globe," Holmes told a conference in Dubai, addressing challenges facing humanitarian work.

His comments came after two days of rioting in Egypt, where the prices for many staples has doubled in the past year. And violent food protests were continuing for a second day in the capital of Haiti.

"Current food price trends are likely to increase sharply both the incidence and depth of food insecurity," Holmes said, noting a 40-per-cent average rise in prices worldwide since the middle of last year.

Holmes said that the biggest challenge to humanitarian work is the effects of climate change and the resulting "extreme weather" that has doubled the number of recorded disasters - from an average of 200 a year to 400 per year in the past two decades. 

Your Ad Here
 

Adding food scarcity and expensive fuel to the mix have made for a very volatile situation, he said.

"Compounding the challenges of climate change in what some have labelled the perfect storm are the recent dramatic trends in soaring food and fuel prices," he said.

One of the factors pushing food prices higher and sparking protests all over the world is more expensive diesel fuel, which is used to transport most of the world's food.

Along with the riots over food scarcity in Haiti and clashes with police over high prices in northern Egypt, UN employees in Jordan staged a day-long strike for pay raises due to a 50-per-cent rise in prices there.

A teenager injured in the clashes in the northern Egyptian city of Mahalla al-Kobra has died from his wounds.

In Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, UN peacekeepers fired rubber bullets and tear gas into a crowd outside the presidential palace Tuesday on the second day of protests over soaring food prices.

Some protesters were trying to break down the palace gates before the UN troops established a security perimeter around the building. "We are trying to deal with the situation," said Fritz Longchamp, chief of staff to President Rene Preval who was at work inside the palace.

The food unrest began last week when Haitians burned cars and attacked a UN police base in the southern city of Les Cayes. At least five people were killed there. The demonstrations reached the capital Monday as thousands marched past the National Palace, some of them crying out: "We're hungry!"

John Powell, the deputy executive director of The United Nation's World Food Program, emphasized the need for developed countries to help governments in the developing world.

Developing countries experiencing unrest over high food prices need help in developing "social safety net programs," he said.

"Riots today mean you need a solution tomorrow," Powell said.

Governments with no "policy space" and under pressure from organized discontent in urban centres "is not likely to be the best decision" in trying to solve the problem, he said.

Powell said the planet is getting hungrier with four million people added to the list of those in most dire need for food to survive.

The rise of fuel and food prices is unlikely to stop soon and it affects everyone, Powell said. In the past, natural disasters, wars and ethnic conflict made the rural areas most vulnerable to poverty and hunger.

Now, the most vulnerable live in the cities, Powell said.

"They see food on the shelves but they cannot afford to buy it," said Powell.

He called urban poverty the "new face of hunger."
 
 
 
 



 

   

[mikey]

THE WORLD FOOD CRISIS
Monday, Nov. 11, 1974 Article ToolsPrintEmailReprintsSphereAddThisRSSYahoo! Buzz  For nation shall rise against nation . . . and there shall be famines and troubles; these are the beginnings of sorrows. —Mark 13:8

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Nothing is older to man than his struggle for food. From the time the early hunters stalked the mammoths and the first sedentary "farmers" scratched the soil to coax scrawny grain to grow, man has battled hunger. History is replete with his failures. The Bible chronicles one famine after an other; food was in such short supply in ancient Athens that visiting ships had to share their stores with the city; Romans prayed at the threshold of Olympus for food.

Every generation in medieval Europe suffered famine. The poor ate cats, dogs and the droppings of birds; some starving mothers ate their children. In the 20th century, periods of extreme hunger drove Soviet citizens to cannibalism, and as late as 1943, floods destroyed so much of Bengal's crops that deaths from starvation reached the millions.

After World War II, however, it seemed that man at long last was winning the battle against hunger. Bumper harvests in many nations, notably the U.S., created food surpluses in the West, while the development of "miracle seeds" brought the hope that the densely populated poor countries would soon attain self-sufficiency. Then, in the past two years, this optimism turned to despair as hunger and famine began ravaging hundreds of millions of the poorest citizens in at least 40 nations. Much of the ground gained in the battle for food seemed lost as the world's harvest in 1972 was roughly 3% short of meeting demands. This year's harvest has also been disappointing, and experts now question whether man can prevent widespread starvation.

The world's reserves* of grain have reached a 22-year low, equal to about 26 days' supply, compared with a 95-day supply in 1961, according to Lester Brown, a leading U.S. food expert. Low harvests and high prices have forced the traditional surplus-producing nations to curtail the amount of food that they normally give as aid to the hungry nations. For example, unless the U.S. adopts an expanded program, American aid this year will drop 50% in some categories. Sales of food are also shrinking. Argentina, Brazil, Thailand, Burma and the Common Market nations have restricted food exports. Several weeks ago, President Ford blocked the sale of some 10 million metric tons of grain to the Soviets and is permitting them to buy scarcely one-fifth of that amount. Ford feared that massive sales to the Soviet Union could inflate food prices in the U.S.

[mikey]

Who caused the world food crisis?
Terence Corcoran, National Post 
Published: Tuesday, April 08, 2008

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Shaun Best/ReutersCanadian wheat grows in a field near Teulon, Man., on July 26, 2006.
We are now by all accounts in the midst of a global food crisis: key grain prices were up 40% to 130% in the last year, people are protesting and hardship is mounting. But it could soon be worse. Governments and agencies all over the world are gearing up for a global "New Deal" on agriculture policy to solve the food crisis, which means the people who brought us the food crisis are the same people who now want to fix it.

The World Bank reports that prices of staples have jumped 80% since 2005. The price of rice hit a 19-year high last month, and wheat rose to a 28-year high, twice the average price of the last 25 years. Factors behind the surge in prices are varied, including bad weather in some regions, soaring demand from growing populations, and US$100-a-barrel oil.

But no factor gets more consistent credit for food price turmoil than the international biofuels stampede. Spurred on by what can only be described as massive subsidies and supporting regulations, farmers all over the planet are giving up on food production and shifting to fuel production.

The biggest biofuels boosters are in the United States, Europe and Canada. In the U.S., the leading Democratic candidates are campaigning on even more aid for ethanol. Canada's Conservative government, playing to the farm lobby and a coterie of rent-seeking corporations, has showered millions on the biofuels market. Regulations forcing consumers to convert to biofuel automobiles are in the works.

As the world food market is thrown into chaos, no Canadian politician has yet been asked to answer for Canada's role. Canada's agriculture policy is largely aimed at dodging trade bullets at the Doha Round of talks that could undermine Canada's trade-killing farm policies. The biofuels subsidies and mandates sink Canada's farm economy deeper into the arms of government policy.

Developing countries are also promoting biofuel programs. In the Philippines, where people are protesting soaring prices for rice, the government recently passed the Biofuels Act to mandate and subsidize biofuel production. Meantime, the Philippine government is considering using

policy powers to to take over rice warehouses to prevent merchants from stockpiling.

Warnings that ethanol programs, brought on by absurd national energy policies and myths about reducing the risk of climate change, could severely disturb food production and prices, have been issued for years. Now that the consequences have materialized, a new policy stampede is in the making.

It starts at the top, where the G8 -- home of the world's leading biofuels subsidies -- is being called on to do something. At the World Bank, president Robert B. Zoellick last week proposed a "New Deal for Global Food Policy." The bank estimates that 33 countries face potential social unrest because of the "acute hike in food and energy prices."

The United Nations, previously a big booster of biofuels, is now issuing warnings. The head of the UN panel on climate change, Rajendra Pachauri, said the other day that the world must take great care in developing biofuels. "Several questions have arisen on even the emissions implications of that route, and the fact that this has clearly raised corn prices," he said. "We should be very, very careful about coming up with biofuel solutions that have major impacts on production of food grains and may have an implication for overall food security."

Too late for that science alert from the UN. So now what is to be done? Agencies and governments all over the world are now busy dreaming up and imposing fix-it programs. Countries are banning exports of grains, imposing price controls and drafting new laws and regulations to counter the price surges.

There are rumours that the Doha trade talks are about to produce an agreement, or at least a meeting about a possible agreement. That might help, but not much. Farm production and food trade, even after some liberalization, would still be too much the domain of governments and the United Nations. Food is a trade issue before it is a food issue. In the case of biofuels, it became a climate-policy game that lost sight of food.

[mikey]

Food crisis being felt around world
Market Chaos, Riots

Peter Goodspeed, National Post 
Published: Wednesday, April 02, 2008

More On This Story
Forget oil, the new global crisis is food

Grains likely to be more volatile
Related Topics
United Nations World Food Programme

John Powell

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David Silverman, Getty ImagesA farmer turns hay outside the town of Hod Hasharon in central Israel. World food prices are soaring as a result of shortages caused by poor weather, changing consumption patterns and the diversion of ...
Sharply rising prices have triggered food riots in recent weeks in Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Guinea, Mauritania and Yemen, and aid agencies around the world worry they may be unable to feed the poorest of the poor.

In the Philippines, officials are raiding warehouses in Manila looking for unscrupulous traders hoarding rice, while in South Korea, panicked housewives recently stripped grocery-store shelves of food when the cost of ramen, an instant noodle made from wheat, suddenly rose.

The shadow of "a new hunger" that has made food too expensive for millions is the result of a sudden and dramatic surge in food prices around the world.

Rising prices for all the world's crucial cereal crops and growing fears of scarcity are careening through international markets, creating turmoil.

Last Thursday, as world rice prices soared by as much as 30% in one day, Egypt decided to suspend rice exports for six months to meet domestic demand and to try to limit price increases.

That was bad news for its main rice customers -- Turkey, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

Egypt's move was matched by Vietnam, the world's second-largest rice exporter after Thailand, which cut exports by 25% and ordered officials not to sign any more export contracts this year.

India and Cambodia also rushed to curb their exports in order to have enough supplies to feed their own people.

With crude oil soaring above US$100 a barrel, higher fuel prices have driven up the cost of production and increased transportation costs for all foods.

Pests in Southeast Asia, a 10-year drought in Australia and a 45-day cold snap in China have combined to aggravate the situation.

At the same time, millions of people in China and India have suddenly become relatively wealthy and are changing their eating habits, consuming more meat and chicken, which places a huge demand on cereal stocks.

In China, per-capita meat consumption has increased 150% since the 1980s. But producing more meat requires more feed to raise more animals.

"You simply feed less people on maize [corn] via cattle than you do in maize direct," said John Powell, the UN World Food Program's (WFP) deputy director of external programs in Rome.

Also influencing the food crisis is the move in North America and Europe to biofuel in an effort to ease global warming and reduce reliance on imported energy.

A surge in demand for biofuel has resulted in a sharp decline in agricultural land planted for food crops. About 16% of U.S. agricultural land formerly planted with soybeans and wheat is now growing corn for biofuel.

"For the first time in history, there is a clear link between the price of fuel and the price of food," Mr. Powell said.

"If there were a miraculous 20% increase in the quantity of food production, we would not know what would go toward increased food consumption and what would go to biofuels.

"Where it would go is where the prices are best."

Rice is a staple food for half the world's population. But the sudden surge in prices and restrictions on exports come at a time when stockpiles of rice are at their lowest level in decades.

At the moment, world rice inventories are said to stand at a mere 72 million metric tonnes -- about 17% of what the world consumes annually.

The low stockpiles create a market in which any supply disruption will result in radical price swings.

They also complicate delivering foreign aid to those most in need.

The WPF, which feeds 73 million of the world's most destitute each year, says its costs have increased 55% since June. Unless it gets US$500-million in emergency funding, it may soon have to reduce feeding programs.

Experts predict world food markets will be locked into an inflationary spiral for at least four years, but some say the crisis could linger for a decade or more.

"There is pretty much a sense that what we are seeing is a step change or a structural change and not a peak to be followed by a trough," Mr. Powell said.

"In other words, we are into an era of high food prices. It's not just volatility, it's a step increase."

[mikey]

World food crisis threatens rich nations (that's us), too
Stephen Hume, Special to the Sun
Published: Wednesday, April 16, 2008
The first food crisis to topple a national government in the 21st century occurred last weekend in one of the world's most desperate countries.

Haiti sacked its prime minister as food prices reached levels the already hungry poor could no longer pay. This is likely a first tremor of fulminating global instability should growing food insecurity push 100 million people closer to starvation.

Yet, while the demand-side drama of spiking food prices garners headlines today, the re-emergence of a virulent plant disease that threatened world food supply before the "green revolution" is of equal concern.


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Font:****In the first half of the 20th century, wheat rust destroyed hundreds of millions of bushels in Canada and the United States, two of the world's biggest food producers. But the world population has tripled since 1950. Now, with four billion additional people to feed, wheat rust is on the march again and resistant strains bred to defeat it are no longer immune.

A strain named Ug99 emerged in Africa in 1999. Despite containment efforts, winds carried spores to the bread baskets of the Middle East. It is now poised to infect prime wheat growing regions in Europe, Ukraine, Russia, India and Pakistan.

Should even one major wheat producer have a crop failure, the effect on the world's ability to feed itself would be immense, which explains why crash programs to develop new rust resistant strains are now underway.

However, if Ug99 spreads swiftly, devastating crops before science can breed resistant strains, already grave food security problems will expand. So this isn't simply a distant problem for poor nations, it looms over rich ones like Canada and the United States, too.

On Sunday, Britain's Observer newspaper reported World Bank president Robert Zoellick's blunt warning to the world's richest countries that a potential planetary catastrophe is unfolding with frightening speed.

In Rome, Reuters reported Jacques Diouf, head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, warning that with 37 countries already in crisis, each day brings greater risk of global famine. "I'm surprised that I have not been summoned to the UN Security Council," Diouf said. "Naturally people won't be sitting dying of starvation, they will react."

India's finance minister was more direct. "It is becoming starker by the day," Palaniappan Chidambaram said. "Unless we act fast for a global consensus on the price spiral, the social unrest induced by food prices in several countries will conflagrate into a global contagion, leaving no country -- developed or otherwise -- unscathed."

Demonstrations and food riots have now occurred in Austria, Egypt, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Cameroon, Mozambique, Senegal, Mexico, China, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Italy, Hungary, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Guinea and Burkina Faso.

Russia and Pakistan have imposed selective food rationing. India, Egypt, Vietnam and Cambodia have placed controls on rice exports. In Vietnam, armed guards protect paddies from rice thieves. In South Korea, a food panic stripped supermarket shelves.

[mikey]

World Food Crisis Worsening
By Carolyn Presutti
Washington
25 April 2008
 
World Hunger Global Instability report / Broadband - Download (WM)
World Hunger Global Instability report / Broadband - Watch (WM) 
World Hunger Global Instability report / Dialup - Download (WM)
World Hunger Global Instability report / Dialup - Watch (WM) 


Increasing food prices have sparked protests in five African nations and several more countries worldwide.  United Nations officials are warning that food prices are likely to keep rising. Humanitarians worry about the effect on lives, while some terrorism experts caution about an increase in violence and a situation ripe for terrorism recruitment.  VOA's Carolyn Presutti explains the connection.

 
North Korean boys eat lunch at government-run orphanage
One sees the faces of the hungry in many areas of the world, where food costs too much to afford.

The United Nation's World Food Program says at least 850 million people worldwide are hungry. Executive Director Josette Sheeran says, “The world's misery index is rising to a silent tsunami that respects no borders - most don't know what hit them."

In Somalia, the price of the food staple sorghum has doubled since February. 

Peter Smerdon of the World Food Program predicts the rising prices will push poor people into destitution or even death. "We may have to cut rations or cut the number of people that we feed in Somalia because of these increased costs," he said.

The World Bank says wheat prices have increased 120 percent over the past year. The Peruvian defense minister says his country copes by making potato bread.

"Wheat isn't produced here; it's imported and every day it costs more," explains Peruvian Defense Minister Antero Flores-Araoz. "With the potato mixed into the bread, we try to avoid, to control as much as possible, the cost of the bread."

 
People wait as WFP staff unload food aid for residents of Kibera slum, at Woodley stadium in Nairobi, Kenya (file photo)
"Poor people in Yemen are now spending more than a quarter of their incomes just on bread before they pay for other essential foods for their children, let alone basic healthcare or shelter," Robert Zoellick, with the World Bank said.

In Asia, the military guards are precious cargo.  The price of rice, the staple for Asian countries, has tripled since January.  Prices in Thailand surged to a record high on Thursday, 24 April.   

The hungry are driven to desperate acts, as desperation becomes the substitute for food.  In Haiti, there has been violence.  In Egypt, the same.

Professor Vanda Felbab-Brown of Georgetown University says world hunger threatens global security. "Anti-American groups such as al-Qaida will be able to mobilize marginalized, frustrated populations that are especially affected by the food crisis," noted Brown.

Some terrorism experts say al-Qaida will blame Western countries for the lack of food, then use modern technology for recruitment.

Jan Lane is with the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University. “People aren't pushed into radical ideology," she says. "They are pulled into rebellion through those social networks."

Lane says the U.S. and its allies need to counter the radical ideas with long-term solutions. "It's not an American [public relations] campaign,” she said. “It's not an American image campaign.  We have to offer and encourage alternative visions and hopes and dreams for these youth to come forward.  How can we work to insure they can have an alternative future, other than one that pulls them into extremism."

Lane says global counter-action needs to start now before the deepening food crisis worsens. The U.N. is already predicting that more than 100 million additional people could be plunged into hunger and malnutrition because of the crisis.

 

[mikey]

UN meets with dev't agencies on how to solve food crisis

Agence France-Presse

BERNE - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday held talks with key development agencies on how to tackle the crisis provoked by soaring food and fuel prices.

"This is an exciting time for the United Nations, but it is also a time when we are challenged to exert our best efforts to rise to the expectations that the world is placing on us," Ban said ahead of meetings in the Swiss capital.

The United Nations was to hammer out a battle plan of emergency measures at the two-day conference in Berne, while exploring other longer-term measures to solve the global food crisis.

The talks were expected to see advocates of protectionism face off against those who favour opening up markets, as well as arguments between both supporters and opponents of biofuels.

Rising populations, strong demand from developing countries, increased cultivation of crops for biofuels and increasing floods and droughts have sent food prices soaring across the globe.

Ban met first with officials from the Universal Postal Union before holding main talks with 27 key UN agencies.

Also in Berne were Josette Sheeran, Executive Director of the UN's World Food Programme; World Bank President Robert Zoellick; Jacques Diouf, head of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO); and Lennart Baage, president of the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD).

"I would like to thank you for your hospitality and your active support of the United Nations," Ban told Swiss President Pascal Couchepin at a reception in the Swiss parliament.

Despite hosting the European headquarters of the organisation, Switzerland did not formally join the United Nations until 2002 after a hotly-contested popular referendum.

Couchepin assured Ban he could count on continued Swiss support and participation in UN activities for "many years to come".

Ban was expected to issue a statement and hold a press conference on Tuesday at 9 a.m. (0700 GMT).

In a statement on IFAD's website, Baage said the international community needed to come up with an urgent response to the crisis, warning that the parallel threat of climate change would only heighten the risks for the world's poor.

"Responding effectively to the impact of higher food prices must be a top priority for the global community," he said.

But he criticised protectionist measures by developing countries such as Brazil, Egypt and Ghana, saying they would prove counter-effective in the long run.

"Some of these measures ... have not only contributed to the instability on global markets, but have also undermined the prices that producers are able to realise," Baage said.

Instead he hailed moves by countries such as Yemen and China, who have promoted credit facilities for those hardest hit by rising prices, and subsidies for production in Pakistan, the Philippines and Jordan.

Besides seeing Couchepin, Ban met Monday evening with Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey to discuss development issues, climate change and the current food crisis.

In Geneva, the United Nations' outspoken independent expert on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said the meeting on Monday marked "an essential day for hungry people around the world."

Ziegler, who is from Switzerland, criticised the World Trade Organisation's trade liberalisation talks, saying that they worked against those who are dying from hunger.

"The line taken by Pascal Lamy (director general of the WTO) is completely against the interests of people dying of hunger because it's exactly the protectionist taxes that allow farmers to cultivate food crops," he said.

Ziegler also called for a suspension of biofuels which he said are one of the causes of the sharp increase in food prices.

His call was echoed by international development charity Oxfam which on Monday called for an end to the biofuels mandates in rich countries.

Celine Charveriat, Oxfam International's deputy advocacy director said: "Biofuels are not only a major cause of increasing prices but are also linked to labour rights abuses and land grabs in developing countries.

"Furthermore, research suggests they may make climate change worse. In this context it is absolute madness to have mandatory targets."