Here's another email going around getting everyones panties up in a twist.
Source: Mail and Guardian newspaper article on Nov 3rd
"Food crisis looms as climate change, fuel shortages bite"
Record world prices for most staple foods have led to 18% food price inflation in China, 13% in Indonesia and Pakistan, and 10% or more in Latin America, Russia and India, according to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). Wheat has doubled in price, maize is nearly 50% higher than a year ago and rice is 20% more expensive, says the UN. Next week the FAO is expected to say that global food reserves are at their lowest in 25 years and that prices will remain high for years.
Last week the Kremlin forced Russian companies to freeze the price of milk, bread and other foods until January 31, for fear of a public backlash with a parliamentary election looming. "The price of goods has risen sharply and that has hit the poor particularly hard," said Oleg Savelyev, of the Levada Centre polling institute.
India, Yemen, Mexico, Burkina Faso and several other countries have had, or been close to, food riots in the last year, something not seen in decades of low global food commodity prices. Meanwhile, there are shortages of beef, chicken and milk in Venezuela and other countries as governments try to keep a lid on food price inflation.
Boycotts have become commonplace. Argentinians shunned tomatoes during the recent presidential election campaign when they became more expensive than meat. Italians organised a one-day boycott of pasta in protest at rising prices. German left-wing politicians have called for an increase in welfare benefits so that people can cope with price rises.
"If you combine the increase of the oil prices and the increase of food prices then you have the elements of a very serious [social] crisis in the future," said Jacques Diouf, head of the FAO, in London last week.
The price rises are a result of record oil prices, United States farmers switching out of cereals to grow biofuel crops, extreme weather and growing demand from countries India and China, the UN said on Friday.
"There is no one cause but a lot of things are coming together to lead to this. It's hard to separate out the factors," said Ali Gurkan, head of the FAO's Food Outlook programme, on Friday.
He said cereal stocks had been declining for more than a decade but now stood at around 57 days, which made global food supplies vulnerable to an international crisis or big natural disaster such as a drought or flood.
"Any unforeseen flood or crisis can make prices rise very quickly. I do not think we should panic but we should be very careful about what may happen," he warned.
Lester Brown, president of the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute think tank, said: "The competition for grain between the world's 800-million motorists, who want to maintain their mobility, and its two billion poorest people, who are simply trying to survive, is emerging as an epic issue."
Last year, he said, US farmers distorted the world market for cereals by growing 14-million tonnes, or 20% of the whole maize crop, for ethanol for vehicles. This took millions of hectares of land out of food production and nearly doubled the price of maize. United States President George Bush this year called for steep rises in ethanol production as part of plans to reduce petrol demand by 20% by 2017.
Maize is a staple food in many countries which import from the US, including Japan, Egypt, and Mexico. US exports are 70% of the world total, and are used widely for animal feed. The shortages have disrupted livestock and poultry industries worldwide.
"The use of food as a source of fuel may have serious implications for the demand for food if the expansion of biofuels continues," said a spokesperson for the International Monetary Fund last week.
The outlook is widely expected to worsen as agro-industries prepare to switch to highly profitable biofuels. according to Grain, a Barcelona-based food resources group. Its research suggests that the Indian government is committed to planting 14-million hectares of land with jatropha, an exotic bush from which biodiesel can be manufactured. Brazil intends to grow 120-million hectares for biofuels, and Africa as much as 400-million hectares in the next few years. Much of the growth, the countries say, would be on unproductive land, but many millions of people are expected to be forced off the land.
This week Oxfam warned the EU that its policy of substituting 10% of all car fuel with biofuels threatened to displace poor farmers.
The food crisis is being compounded by growing populations, extreme weather and ecological stress, according to a number of recent reports. This week the UN Environment Programme said the planet's water, land, air, plants, animals and fish stocks were all in "inexorable decline". According to the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) 57 countries, including 29 in Africa, 19 in Asia and nine in Latin America, have been hit by catastrophic floods. Harvests have been affected by drought and heatwaves in south Asia, Europe, China, Sudan, Mozambique and Uruguay.
This week the Australian government said drought had slashed predictions of winter harvests by nearly 40%, or four million tonnes. "It is likely to be even smaller than the disastrous drought-ravaged 2006/07 harvest and the worst in more than a decade," said the Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
According to Josette Sheeran, director of the WFP, "There are 854-million hungry people in the world and four million more join their ranks every year. We are facing the tightest food supplies in recent history. For the world's most vulnerable, food is simply being priced out of their reach."
Food for thought -- possible scenarios
Experts describe various scenarios for the precarious food supply balance in coming years. An optimistic version would see markets automatically readjust to shortages, as higher prices make it more profitable once again to grow crops for people rather than cars.
There are hopes that new crop varieties and technologies will help crops adapt to capricious climactic conditions. And if people move on to a path of eating less meat, more land can be freed up for human food rather than animal feed.
A slowdown in population growth would naturally ease pressures on the food market, while the cultivation of hitherto unproductive land could also help supply.
But fears for even tighter conditions revolve around deepening climate change, which generates worsening floods and droughts, diminishing food supplies. If the price of oil rises further it will make fertilisers and transport more expensive, and at the same time make it more profitable to grow biofuel crops.
Supply will be further restricted if fish stocks continue to decline due to overfishing, and if soils become exhausted and erosion decreases the arable area. - Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007
THAT'S IT!!!!!! I HAVE PROOF, THE END IS HERE!!!!!!!!
by whereami 16 Replies latest jw friends
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whereami
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Brother Apostate
Do you ignore storm clouds and thunder when the wind is blowing the storm your way?
"and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man." -Matthew 24:39
BA- It's coming.
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marmot
Not gonna be the end of the world, but it will definitely shake things up. I personally think the whole E85 project is disgusting because it doesn't address the root issues of oil dependency but simply tries to replace the oil with something else, which happens to be a food crop.
The world is definitely headed for another cultural shift in the coming century but it's not going to catastrophically end or anything. -
Anti-Christ
I do believe that this way of life will come to a end, one way or an other. History does not repeat its self we repeat history. We are still accepting the same basic kind of ruling that has been force upon the human race for thousands of years. As long as we depend on our masters for food and shelter and we accept domination, we will experience different kind of "ends". Almost all powerful civilization came to a end, the same will probably happen to this one.
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nvrgnbk
Do you ignore storm clouds and thunder when the wind is blowing the storm your way?
"and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man." -Matthew 24:39
BA- It's coming.
Hmmmmmm.
Just the other day when climate change was being discussed you cited the Biblical passage about 'nothing new under the sun'.
Couldn't the same be said about the above-mentioned situations?
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marmot
Anti-Christ, couldn't agree more.
What I DON'T see happening is a cosmic end of the human race à-la Armageddon. -
Anti-Christ
What I DON'T see happening is a cosmic end of the human race à-la Armageddon.
Same here.
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5go
Why am I a nut because I say the end of american world hedgemony is here, but BA is normal when BA cries
BA you are a nut.
P.S. This is mainly directed at BA most of the posters on this board know the US is on the decline.
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erynw
This is the way the world will end.
This is the way the world will end.
This is the way the world will end;
Not with a bang, but a whimper.T.S. Eliot
"The Wasteland" -
Brother Apostate
Hmmmmmm.
Just the other day when climate change was being discussed you cited the Biblical passage about 'nothing new under the sun'.
Couldn't the same be said about the above-mentioned situations?
Yes, there is "nothing new under the sun", nvr.
The foretold "end of the world", however, will utilize all those things that have occured before in a quantity and quality that has not occured before.
Unlike those who try to guess dates, I simply say "it's coming", as a matter of fact. I don't pretend to know when, and I have often been the first to point out that, just as with Global Warming, when you net it out, things these days are different, but not necessarily worse than, the past centuries.
Having said that, I do now believe that:
-the world monetary/financial systems are falling apart,
-the world ecological/climate systems are falling apart,
-the world political systems are falling apart,
-the world educational systems are falling apart,
-and the world religious systems are falling apart.
That is simply based on my reading the news, watching what is happening within all these systems.
I don't know when the end is coming, but I don't think it at all unlikely that it will occur in my lifetime. Yes, there have been plenty of others who thought the same. It's called mental preparedness.
Better to be prepared for the odd bear attack when camping than to say "it won't happen", imo.
BA- Doing his best to prepare.
PS- edited to add: 5go, go get a job, kid. Sheesh, that boy's about as sharp as a bowlin' ball.