tagged w/ Food Prices
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By Andrea Carlson and Elizabeth Frazão
Economic Information Bulletin No. (EIB-96) 50 pp, May 2012
Most Americans consume diets that do not meet Federal dietary recommendations. A common explanation is that healthier foods are more expensive than less healthy foods. To investigate this assumption, the authors compare prices of healthy and less healthy foods using three different price metrics: the price of food energy ($/calorie), the price of edible weight ($/100 edible grams), and the price of an average portion ($/average portion). They also calculate the cost of meeting the recommendations for each food group. For all metrics except the price of food energy, the authors find that healthy foods cost less than less healthy foods (defined for this study as foods that are high in saturated fat, added sugar, and/or sodium, or that contribute little to meeting dietary recommendations).
Study: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB96/By Andrea Carlson and Elizabeth Frazão
Economic Information Bulletin No.... more
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Spain has faced the driest winter ever recorded. It has raised red flags in Spain, where farmers face the threat of extreme drought. Grain crops in Spain are suffering after an unusually dry autumn and winter. The amount of rainfall has been just half of normal in key grain producing regions.
The map of the impact of the drought on plants throughout the country made with Normalized Vegetation Difference Index (NDVI) data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer(MODIS) instrument on the Terra satellite. It compares plant growth between April 6 and April 21, 2012, with average conditions for the same period. Brown indicates areas where plants are growing less vigorously than usual for this time of year. Gray indicates areas where data were not available. (NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using data provided by Inbal Reshef, Global Agricultural Monitoring Project. Caption by Adam Voiland.)
In an analysis released on May 10, 2012, the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, projected Spain’s wheat production would drop by 20 percent, oats by 18 percent, and barley by 14 percent in comparison to last year. Overall, the USDA expects Spain will need to import 11 million metric tons of grain from other European countries because of the drought.
In late April, increasing rainfall has started to improve the situation, particularly in the northern half of the country. If rain continues to fall regularly throughout May, there’s a chance that barley and wheat yields could rebound.
A closer view of Andalucía, a region in southern Spain that produces almost all of the country’s durum wheat. Only about half the normal amount of rainfall fell in Andalucía between January and April. In the other key wheat producing states of Castilla y Leon, Castilla-La Mancha, and Aragón, rainfall has been low as well. (NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using data provided by Inbal Reshef, Global Agricultural Monitoring Project. Caption by Adam Voiland.)
Spain is not the only European country grappling with a weak wheat crop. Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, and other countries will likely see reduced yields as well due to dry weather. A cold spell at the end of February in Poland and Germany has also harmed crops. (EarthObservatory)
More at the linkSpain has faced the driest winter ever recorded. It has raised red flags in Spain,... more
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Every five years, the federal farm bill sets our nation's food policies -- it's the single biggest factor in determining what ends up on your plate.
Right now Congress is only providing minimal support for healthy, local and organic foods while expanding wasteful subsidies and giveaways that support the wealthiest agribusinesses -- at the expense of family farmers. This year's bill could be even worse.
The Senate Agriculture Committee just released a draft version of the 2012 Farm Bill which preserves these handouts while cutting vital conservation programs. The House version of the bill be even worse.2
It's incredibly important that Congress get this right -- so CREDO Action is teaming up with Environmental Working Group to stop the giveaway to Big Ag and support food and farm policies that protect our environment and expand access to healthy food.
Tell the Senate: Stop the giveaway to Big Ag. Pass a Farm Bill that supports local, healthy and organic food.
The Farm Bill affects everything from the food you eat to conservation and nutrition programs. And right now, vital nutrition programs that help feed low-income children and decades-old conservation programs that protect wetlands, grasslands and soil health could be on the chopping block.2
Meanwhile, Big Ag is working hard to keep open the spigot that sends billions of dollars a year in subsidies to growers of commodity crops like corn, soy and cotton. More than 74 percent of that money goes to wealthy agribusinesses, not to small-scale family farmers who need them.
The bill that emerges from the Senate Agriculture Committee will likely be the best version we can hope for right now -- as it will only get more unbalanced in negotiations with the House. It's vital that the committee members hear from you now.
Tell the Senate: Stop the giveaway to Big Ag. Pass a Farm Bill that supports local, healthy and organic food.
Thanks for supporting a healthy food system.Every five years, the federal farm bill sets our nation's food policies --... more
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CNN's Fareed Zakaria looks at rising food prices in Southeast Asia and the Middle East and global financial recovery.CNN's Fareed Zakaria looks at rising food prices in Southeast Asia and the Middle... more
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1. Food prices have gone up, and more people need help feeding their families
The fact that 46 million people -- about a seventh of the U.S. population -- now receive food stamps (i.e. help from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)) should be enough to tell us that something is wrong with America's food system. But thanks to the way public food assistance is now set up, the problem is all but invisible to the rest of us.
Why are so many Americans using food stamps? Beyond our collective economic woes, a large part of the problem lies in the cost of food itself, which rose considerably in the last few years. Then there's the speculation market, which drives up the cost of commodity crops. Ethanol doesn't help, either.
2. The food we can afford could make us sick (or even kill us)
2011 saw the largest Class 1 (i.e. potentially lethal) meat recall in history, involving 36 million pounds of Cargill turkey tainted with multi-drug resistant Salmonella.
The listeria outbreak in cantaloupes was also the deadliest U.S. foodborne illness outbreak in 100 years.
Germany's E. coli outbreak over the summer was also the deadliest on record -- anywhere.
What happened to last winter's Food Safety Modernization Act -- the much-debated legislation that might have updated the regulations that would stop outbreaks like these? Well, to make a long story short, it was never funded. Who's hungry now?
3. GMOs aren't going anywhere
"Superweeds," resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, raise red flags.
Photo: Lost in FogTake a deep breath: 2011 began with the approval of GMO alfalfa (which could permanently change the organic milk industry for the worse). Less than two weeks later, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) defied a court order and partially deregulated GMO sugar beets without completing an environmental impact assessment.
Meanwhile, concern about "superweeds," which are resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, raised red flags beyond the foodie and environmentalist communities; now big business is also worried. And our six-legged friends have outsmarted Monsanto too; an insect called the corn rootworm has become resistant to the company's Bt corn (which is supposed to be engineered to produce its own pesticides).
GMO business got especially fishy this year, as well: GMO salmon may also be inching toward commercial approval. The "frankenfish" appeared to be fast-tracked for Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval during the first half of 2010, which would have made it the first genetically engineered animal food on the market. But in June, the House of Representatives blocked the FDA from spending money to approve the salmon. This seemed like a good sign, but in October, the USDA gave Aquabounty, the company looking to produce the salmon, a research grant -- meaning this fish is far from out of the picture.
4. Pesticides: Also here to stay for now
Methyl iodide, a known carcinogen, has been approved for use in California strawberry fields.Eaters may have plenty of evidence to suggest that agriculture should involve fewer pesticides (example: this recent piece about the weed killer atrazine in the rural water supply), but big agribusiness vehemently disagrees.
Last December's approval of methyl iodide (a known carcinogen) for use in strawberry fields in California has many advocates concerned about farmworkers, nearby communities, and water tables. Small bright spot: It has yet to be adopted widely, so many in the state are still working to make the short- and long-term consequences known. Some advocates are even calling for an end to all fumigants.
In May, we covered the fight in Congress to restrict the EPA's ability to regulate pesticides -- specifically when it comes to spraying near streams and waterways -- and the issue has yet to be put to sleep.
Meanwhile, there is now clear evidence linking a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids to recent honeybee die-offs, but top USDA scientists still refuse to recommend a ban. To make matters worse, honeybees aren't the only type of bee that's disappearing: Bumblebees are going missing, too.
5. Extreme weather is messing with our food
Between the drought in the Southwest, which wreaked havoc on farms and ranches in both the U.S. and Mexico, and Hurricane Irene, which hit the East Coast at the worst possible moment (peak harvest for farmers in New York state and elsewhere), 2011 was a terrible weather year. The result? Fewer pumpkins for Halloween, and a costlier Thanksgiving, to start with. But this year was also a reminder of the ways a shifting climate could make food production especially unpredictable in the future.
More at the link1. Food prices have gone up, and more people need help feeding their families
The... more
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With political will to dramatically cut the world's greenhouse gas emissions failing to materialise, a multi-pronged approach is needed to protect the millions of people who are being displaced as a result of environmental factors driven largely by climate change, experts say.
"Climate change is looming as a potentially very serious and underappreciated complicating factor when it comes to international displacement," said Erika Feller, the assistant high commissioner for protection in the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
More is needed from the international community to address this challenge "in a coordinated and pragmatic manner", she told IPS.
Of paramount importance is that national authorities play a central role in developing appropriate responses to both the internal and external dimensions of climate-related displacement, while affected persons and communities must be made fully aware of their rights and given opportunities to participate in decision-making, Feller said.
"Decisions about where, when and how to relocate communities, for example, must be made in consultation with the affected populations and be sensitive to cultural and ethnic identities and boundaries to avoid possible tensions and conflicts," she added.
Last to Pollute, First to Suffer the Consequences
That the poor are always hardest-hit by natural disasters is a fact recently underlined by the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) Report 2010, which says that these nations "will be disproportionally affected by changing climatic conditions".
This despite the fact that LDCs account for less than one percent of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for heating up the atmosphere and altering rainfall and weather patterns.
The frequency and intensity of extreme weather events in these regions are five times higher now (519 events in 2000-2010) than during the 1970s (116). In the last decade, about 40 percent of all casualties related to natural disasters were found in the poorest countries of the world, the report says.
Climate change affects LDCs in different ways. While Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are facing droughts and floods, some Asian LDCs, together with Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Pacific, are at risk particularly from rising sea levels and storms.
The 2009 "Human Impact Report - Climate Change" by the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum estimated that 2.8 billion people are living in areas prone to one or more of the physical manifestations of climate change.
"The global nature of climate change calls for the widest possible cooperation by all countries and their participation in an effective and appropriate international response, in accordance with their common but different responsibilities and respective capabilities and their social and economic conditions," declared the Istanbul Programme of Action agreed to at the Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC-IV) in Turkey in May and which was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly.
The list of necessary actions outlined in the programme, especially by so-called development partners, hinge on an urgent demand for promised financial and technical support – which critics say the world's richest countries, and those most culpable for climate change, have been dragging their feet on.
Staying close to home
The overwhelming majority of people who are displaced by environmental factors become internally displaced persons (IDPs) within their own countries. Just a fraction will likely cross international borders, said Michele Klein-Solomon, director of the Migration Policy, Research and Communications Department at the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
"[The latter group tends to move] from countries in the South, in the developing world, to other countries in the 'less emitting world', and it is also not likely to be the most vulnerable who move," she explained.
More frequent and severe floods, storms, landslides or land degradation, droughts and water shortages – so called slow-onset natural and human-made disasters – can all be triggers for migration.
Those most in need of protection tend to lack sufficient resources to adapt to the new living conditions, and that can include an inability to move away or migrate to other countries.
Speaking at a conference at Columbia Law School in May on migration and climate change, Klein-Solomon stressed that it was important to grasp these facts to counter "the overwhelming fears of the developed world being awash with people who are coming into their countries, taking jobs and burdening social security mechanisms".
Even under worst case scenarios, in which some 250 million people could be displaced due to climate change over the next 25 to 30 years, it still would be "a tiny portion of the world's population", she said.
"We are really not talking about enormous numbers relative to global populations and we are not talking about hordes of people flooding into the Western, industrialised, developed countries. We do not need further repressive legislation and xenophobic debates as a result of this discussion," she added.
Few legal protections
Rapid-onset disasters attract far more attention from the media, policymakers and researchers than gradual environmental changes – such as the human consequences of rising sea levels, soil salination, deforestation and desertification.
Precise estimates on climate-induced migration are hard to come by. However, recent events such as last year's nationwide flooding in Pakistan, severe mudslides following heavy rainfall in Brazil and Colombia this spring, and the ongoing humanitarian disaster in drought-hit Somalia show that millions of people are already being driven from their homes and property due to extreme weather patterns.
International protection strategies are often marked by a humanitarian focus on "the immediate need of the person without necessarily looking at the causes of the phenomenon nor to a response in a longer term," said Paola Pace, acting head of the International Migration Law Unit at IOM's International Cooperation and Partnerships Department.
When emergencies occur, immediate funding is provided which lasts about three to six months, but for the subsequent "recuperation phase" it is very difficult to find donor support. This wastes the knowledge acquired in the initial months and squanders an opportunity to "really tackle the causes that brought about that emergency", Pace stressed in an interview with IPS.
The lack of a long-term strategy is a major problem for those seeking to protect and support affected populations. A better approach would go beyond basic needs – food, water, shelter – to address trauma and stress-induced illnesses, and provide opportunities for sustainable development in a new environment, she said.
The climate-displaced also face an uncertain legal situation. Neither international humanitarian law nor international refugee law has a legal definition for this group, making it difficult to hold governments responsible for their wellbeing.
Often, there are multiple, complex, interconnected factors at work, from extreme weather events to land degradation or sea-level rise, and identifying the exact culprit is impossible.
"[I]t is a bit like the straw that broke the camel's back," said Jane McAdam, an expert on refugees and international migration law at the University of New South Wales.
"Climate change is never the only reason why people move, there are always other factors like underlying socioeconomic conditions, for example," she told IPS.
Finding appropriate legal and policy responses requires a combination of strategies, "rather than an either/or approach", she said.
More at the linkWith political will to dramatically cut the world's greenhouse gas emissions... more
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The worst drought in 60 years in the Horn of Africa has sparked a severe food crisis and high malnutrition rates, with parts of Kenya and Somalia experiencing pre-famine conditions, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
More than 10 million people are now affected in drought-stricken areas of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda and the situation is deteriorating, it said.
"Two consecutive poor rainy seasons have resulted in one of the driest years since 1950/51 in many pastoral zones," Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told a media briefing.
"There is no likelihood of improvement (in the situation)until 2012," she said.
Food prices have risen substantially in the region, pushing many moderately poor households over the edge, she said.
A U.N. map of food security in the eastern Horn of Africa shows large swathes of central Kenya and Somalia in the "emergency" category, one phase before what the U.N. classifies as catastrophe/famine -- the fifth and worst category.
Child malnutrition rates in the worst affected areas are more than double the emergency threshold of 15 percent and are expected to rise further, Byrs said.
High mortality rates among children are reported, but she had no figures for the toll.
Drought and fighting are driving ever greater numbers of Somalis from their homeland, with more than 20,000 arriving in Kenya in just the past two weeks, the U.N. refuge agency UNHCR said on Friday. It voiced alarm at the dramatic rise, noting the average monthly outflow had been about 10,000 so far this year.
Almost half the Somali children arriving in refugee camps in Ethiopia are malnourished, and those arriving in Kenya are little better, Byrs said.
U.N. humanitarian appeals for Somalia and Kenya, each about $525 million, are barely 50 percent funded, while a $30 million appeal for Djibouti is just 30 percent funded, she said.The worst drought in 60 years in the Horn of Africa has sparked a severe food crisis... more
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Regional vegetable prices rise by 40% as rains flood more that 1m acres of farmland and affect lives of 5.7 million people
Food prices are expected to rise steeply in China after flooding inundated more than 1 million acres of farmland in eastern provinces, killing at least 100 people and displacing hundreds of thousands more.
Weeks of torrential rain in Zhejiang province in the Yangtze delta have caused nearly 6bn yuan (£575m) of damage, reducing vegetable production by 20% and pushing prices in the provincial capital of Hangzhou up by as much as 40%, Xinhua news agency said.
Video here:
http://www.politicalfailblog.com/2011/06/china-floods-bring-steep-food-price.htmlRegional vegetable prices rise by 40% as rains flood more that 1m acres of farmland... more
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Drought will be more serious and long lasting. I wonder if it is in part responsible for the e-coli outbreak. We need to be very concerned about this. This is a perfect storm leading to higher food prices and conflict.Drought will be more serious and long lasting. I wonder if it is in part responsible... more
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The Argentine government has hitherto been an enthusiastic supporter of the the soy economy (most of which is GM soy), because it has levied export taxes on soybeans that reached a massive 35 per cent in 2010.
But now the Argentine government says it isn't seeing those taxes. It has accused the big four soy traders in Argentina of tax evasion. So perhaps its love affair with GM soy is coming to an end.
Note that all four of the grain traders accused of tax evasion by the Argentine government are members of the corporate greenwash program, the Round Table on Responsible Soy, which certifies GM soy as "responsible".
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Argentina accuses world's largest grain traders of huge tax evasion
Grain traders ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Dreyfus deny charges by Argentine government of substantial tax evasion
Felicity Lawrence
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 1 June 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jun/01/argentina-accuses-grain-traders-tax-evasion
The world's four largest grain traders, responsible for the vast majority of global corn, soya and wheat trading and processing, have been accused of large-scale tax evasion in a landmark series of cases being brought against them by the Argentinian government.
In an interview with the Guardian, Ricardo Echegaray, the head of Afip, the country's revenue and customs service, has given a detailed account of the charges his department is bringing against ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Dreyfus.
"These companies have gone into criminality," Echegaray said. "2008 was when agricultural commodities prices spiked and was the best year for them in prices, yet we could see that the companies with the biggest sales showed very little profit in this country."
The Guardian has learned from separate sources that Afip is seeking to claim $476m (£290m) for what it says are unpaid tax and duties from Bunge, $252m from Cargill and $140m from Dreyfus. The companies have all denied all the allegations and have said they will defend themselves vigorously.
With the global food system and who controls it under intense scrutiny in recent weeks, thanks to record prices, the legal battle between Afip and the "ABCD four", as they are known, has taken on heightened significance.
Oxfam, in a report earlier this week, warned of spiralling prices and a huge increase in global hunger over the next two decades, and said that corporate concentration in the global food trade was a structural flaw in the system.
Echegaray said he had begun investigating Argentina's large business taxpayers towards the end of 2008, cross-checking information given to his authorities with that from other countries where their exports were destined, by making use of tax information exchange treaties – some of which have been newly signed. He also cross-checked declarations made to Argentinian customs with corporate income tax returns.
He said he had evidence from his detailed inquiry that all four traders had submitted false declarations of sales and routed profits through tax havens or their headquarters, in contravention of Argentinian tax law.
He also alleged they had on occasion used phantom firms to buy grain. He further alleged that they had inflated costs in Argentina to reduce taxable profits or claim tax credits there.
The Afip inquiry has focused on the traders' sales to Uruguay, among other low-tax jurisdictions.
Echegaray said Bunge had set up an office in the tax-free zone of Montevideo through which it began routing its exports after 2007, from which point it declared no gains in Argentina. He alleged his checks had revealed that Bunge employed only a handful of people in Uruguay's capital, and that it had no real imports or exports from that office other than small items for those staff. Bunge was expelled from the Argentine exporters' register last week.
Bunge denied the allegations absolutely and was adamant it had broken no laws or tax rules. "We believe that we have done nothing wrong and that our past tax payments are complete. This is an issue that is not unique to Bunge, or even our industry. We will continue to take the appropriate legal steps to defend ourselves," it said in a statement.
Echegaray alleged that Cargill had also used Uruguay and Swiss subsidiaries to evade taxes in Argentina. Cargill, ADM and Dreyfus were suspended from the exporters' register by the government earlier this year as a result of the investigation.
cont.The Argentine government has hitherto been an enthusiastic supporter of the the soy... more
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Rising food prices are tightening the squeeze on populations already struggling to buy adequate food, demanding radical reform of the global food system, Oxfam has warned.
Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13597657Rising food prices are tightening the squeeze on populations already struggling to buy... more
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US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is warning that the food shortages and rising prices could trigger widespread destabilization. Speaking at a meeting of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization on Friday, she urged immediate action to prevent the repeat of the 2007 and 2008 crisis that led to riots in dozens of countries around the developing world.
http://www.politicalfailblog.com/2011/05/clinton-warns-of-world-food-crisis.htmlUS Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is warning that the food shortages and rising... more
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These subsidies are nothing more than payola for supporting industrial fossil fuel intensive GMO agriculture. No wonder some of these farmers don't want to stop planting these crops for their GMO masters. Making over 200,000 a year in planting their crap and trashing the planet seems like a good trade off for them. Are you really a farmer then, or simply no better than a greedy selfish Goldman Sachs vampire?
And I am not as nice about this as the EWG when it comes to Congress. If you aren't a farmer who actually works the land you should not get one. Period.
Excerpt:
"This would be a good place to point out that just five crops – corn, cotton, rice wheat and soybeans – account for 90 percent of all farm subsidies. Sixty-two percent of American farmers do not receive any direct payments from the federal farm subsidy system, and that group includes most livestock producers and fruit and vegetable growers.
Among the members of the 112th Congress who collect payments from USDA are six Democrats and 17 Republicans. The disparity between the parties is even greater in terms of dollar amounts: $489,856 went to Democrats, but more than 10 times as much, $5,334,565, to Republicans.
One reason for the disproportionate number of Republican lawmakers benefiting from farm subsidy programs is the current scarcity of rural Democrats in Congress – casualties of the Tea Party wave that swept into office in November of 2010. (This was despite the Democrats’ decision to bow to the wishes of the subsidy lobby by passing a status quo 2008 farm bill in a misguided bid to hang on to those seats.)
Several new members of Congress who won with tea party support have been less than eager to talk about farm subsidies ever since the news broke last year that they, or their families, personally benefit from those very taxpayer dollars.
EWG doesn’t believe that the payments to lawmakers are improper or illegal. But the fact that so many more Republicans in Congress receive so much more in farm subsidies than their Democratic colleagues does highlight the GOP’s controversial decision to spare those programs from the budget ax – even as it slashes funding for so many others. Consider:
•In January, David Rogers of Politico, and Phillip Brasher at the Des Moines Register, reported that the Republican Study Committee proposed to eliminate the meager federal funding for an organic food growers’ program without even mentioning the the possibility of cutting spending for entitlements that send checks out to largest producers of corn, cotton and other commodity crops – regardless of need.
•Then last week (March 21), National Journal reported that the Republican-led House Agriculture Committee is backing cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – previously known as food stamps – in the face of record enrollment levels triggered by high unemployment. But not even minimal reductions were proposed to the excessive payments to wealthy farms.
The GOP-led support for subsidies also comes at a time when big commodity farms clearly don’t need taxpayer funding.
The farm sector is white-hot, and has generally fared extremely well as recession gripped the rest of the economy. Farm income and prices for commodity crops are soaring. In 2008, $210,000 was the average household income of farms that received at least $30,000 in government payments that year. But according to the House Agriculture Committee and the Republic Study Committee, payments to those farms should stay in place while the record 43 million Americans enrolled in SNAP – millions of whom are unemployed for the first time – face slashes in the help they get to put food on the table.
It’s important to note that two of the Republican senators who collect subsidies – Charles Grassley of Iowa and Richard Lugar of Indiana – have been long-time leaders in the effort to reform federal farm programs. Both have fought to right the gross inequity of sending 74 percent of taxpayer-funded payments to the largest and wealthiest 10 percent of farm operations and landlords. The top-heavy support for the biggest operations puts smaller family farms at a serious disadvantage and works against a more diverse and resilient food production system that could stand up against wild swings in weather or global markets – and provide Americans with a healthier food supply.
Of course, Democratic members of Congress have historically been subsidy recipients too, notably former House Agriculture Committee Chairman Charles Stenholm of Texas and former Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas.
Nor is the phenomenon of lawmakers receiving farm subsidies limited to the federal level. Recent media reports have shown that direct payments are even more common in state legislatures in Wyoming, Wisconsin, Montana, Idaho and South Dakota.
At EWG, we believe that farmers deserve a reasonable safety net to protect against damage from drought, storms and fickle markets. But the American public’s investment portfolio in agriculture needs to change. It’s indefensible to provide subsidies to well-off farmers and landowners, especially in the face of a booming farm economy and a federal budget squeeze. Meanwhile, farmers seeking modest federal support to protect water, land and wildlife are being turned away for lack of funds.
We’re also committed advocates for government transparency, and it’s deeply disturbing that the public’s ability to see who gets what from the federal farm subsidy system has been curtailed by the Obama administration. Under the Bush administration, the rules allowed the public to see through shell corporations and paper entities to identify the part owners of subsidized farms and show where the money ended up. The transparency pertained to lawmakers as well. For this analysis EWG was forced to resort to harvesting data from members’ disclosure forms. That was an arduous but ultimately worthwhile task when advocating for greater accountability and transparency, and it didn’t use to be necessary.
Some Congress members (or their families) collecting federal farm subsidies are major players in the annual farm subsidy drama, others have only bit parts in terms of the amount of subsidies they receive. Overall, the distribution of subsidies among members of Congress reflects the highly distorted distribution of farm subsidies among farmers and landlords in the United States – between 1995 and 2009, 10 percent of subsidy recipients collected 74 percent of all subsidies.
The current salary for rank-and-file members of the House and Senate is $174,000 per year, and members enjoy robust health benefits. But whether major or bit players, members of Congress who receive farm subsidies are part of a system that cries out for reform and poses stark choices between helping wealthy landowners or doing right by struggling farm and urban families and the environment."
continuedThese subsidies are nothing more than payola for supporting industrial fossil fuel... more
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India’s great moral leader Mohandas Gandhi famously said that there is enough on Earth for everybody’s need, but not enough for everybody’s greed. Today, Gandhi’s insight is being put to the test as never before.
The world is hitting global limits in its use of resources. We are feeling the shocks each day in catastrophic floods, droughts, and storms – and in the resulting surge in prices in the marketplace. Our fate now depends on whether we cooperate or fall victim to self-defeating greed.
The limits to the global economy are new, resulting from the unprecedented size of the world’s population and the unprecedented spread of economic growth to nearly the entire world. There are now seven billion people on the planet, compared to just three billion a half-century ago. Today, average per capita income is $10,000, with the rich world averaging around $40,000 and the developing world around $4,000. That means that the world economy is now producing around $70 trillion in total annual output, compared to around $10 trillion in 1960.
China’s economy is growing at around 10% annually. India’s is growing at nearly the same rate. Africa, long the world’s slowest-growing region, is now averaging roughly 5% annual GDP growth. Overall, the developing countries are growing at around 7% per year, and the developed economies at around 2%, yielding a global average of around 4.5%.
This is very good news in many ways. Rapid economic growth in developing countries is helping to alleviate poverty. In China, for example, extreme poverty has been cut from well over half of the population 30 years ago to around 10% or less today.
Yet there is another side to the global growth story that we must understand clearly. With the world economy growing at 4-5% per year, it will be on a path to double in size in less than 20 years. Today’s $70 trillion world economy will be at $140 trillion before 2030, and $280 trillion before 2050 if we extrapolate from today’s growth rate.
Our planet will not physically support this exponential economic growth if we let greed take the upper hand. Even today, the weight of the world economy is already crushing nature, rapidly depleting the supplies of fossil-fuel energy resources that nature created over millions of years, while the resulting climate change has led to massive instabilities in terms of rainfall, temperature, and extreme storms.
We see these pressures every day in the marketplace. Oil prices have surged to more than $100 per barrel, as China, India, and other oil-importing countries join the United States in a massive scramble to buy up supplies, especially from the Middle East. Food prices, too, are at historical highs, contributing to poverty and political unrest.
On the one hand, there are more mouths to feed, and with greater purchasing power on average. On the other hand, heat waves, droughts, floods, and other disasters induced by climate change are destroying crops and reducing the supplies of grains on world markets. In recent months, massive droughts have struck the grain-producing regions of Russia and Ukraine, and enormous floods have hit Brazil and Australia; now, another drought is menacing northern China’s grain belt.
There is something else hidden from view that is very dangerous. In many populous parts of the world, including the grain-growing regions of northern India, northern China, and the American Midwest, farmers are tapping into groundwater to irrigate their crops. The great aquifers that supply water for irrigation are being depleted. In some places in India, the water table has been falling by several meters annually in recent years. Some deep wells are approaching the point of exhaustion, with salinity set to rise as ocean water infiltrates the aquifer.
A calamity is inevitable unless we change. And here is where Gandhi comes in. If our societies are run according to the greed principle, with the rich doing everything to get richer, the growing resource crisis will lead to a widening divide between the rich and the poor – and quite possibly to an increasingly violent struggle for survival.
The rich will try to use their power to commandeer more land, more water, and more energy for themselves, and many will support violent means to do so, if necessary. The US has already followed a strategy of militarization in the Middle East in the naïve hope that such an approach can ensure secure energy supplies. Now competition for those supplies is intensifying, as China, India, and others bid for the same (depleting) resources.
An analogous power grab is being attempted in Africa. The rise in food prices is leading to a land grab, as powerful politicians sell foreign investors massive tracts of farmland, brushing aside the traditional land rights of poor smallholders. Foreign investors hope to use large mechanized farms to produce output for export, leaving little or nothing for the local populations.
Everywhere in the leading countries – the US, the United Kingdom, China, India, and elsewhere – the rich have enjoyed soaring incomes and growing political power. The US economy has been taken over by billionaires, the oil industry, and other key sectors. The same trends threaten the emerging economies, where wealth and corruption are on the rise.
If greed dominates, the engine of economic growth will deplete our resources, push the poor aside, and drive us into a deep social, political, and economic crisis. The alternative is a path of political and social cooperation, both within countries and internationally. There will be enough resources and prosperity to go around if we convert our economies to renewable energy sources, sustainable agricultural practices, and reasonable taxation of the rich. This is the path to shared prosperity through improved technologies, political fairness, and ethical awareness.India’s great moral leader Mohandas Gandhi famously said that there is enough on... more
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This is just the beginning. More rain in a month than they usually get in a year. We need to heed the signs.This is just the beginning. More rain in a month than they usually get in a year. We... more
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A severe winter drought is threatening crop production in China, the world's biggest wheat provider, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in an alert issued Tuesday. Substantially below-normal rainfall since October in Northern China has not only put the crop at risk but has also caused shortages in drinking water affecting over 2.57 million people and their livestock, FAO said.
"The ongoing drought is potentially a very serious problem," the Rome-based agency's alert said, adding that the main affected provinces -- around 5.16 million hectres -- represent two-thirds of national wheat production.
On Monday, the FAO warned that floods and heavy rain across southern Africa have damaged thousands of hectares (acres) of farmland, raising fears for food supplies.
World food prices reached their highest level ever recorded in January and are set to keep rising for months, the agency said last week, warning that the hardest-hit countries could face turmoil.
Rising food prices have been cited among the driving forces behind recent popular revolts in north Africa, including the uprising in Egypt and the ouster of Tunisia's president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali after a 23-year rule.
And in its latest survey, FAO said its index which monitors monthly price changes for a variety of staples averaged 231 points in January -- the highest level since records began in 1990.A severe winter drought is threatening crop production in China, the world's... more
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EXTRACT: "Genetically modified organisms and pesticides on the table mean more exclusion, more misery, more needless deaths, more dependence on multinational corporations and more humiliation for Paraguay," notes the National Coordinator of Rural and Indigenous Women Workers (CONAMURI).
NOTES: In Latin America, GM soy production has caused the destruction of many millions of hectares of forest in Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. It's also caused violent land grabs, displaced indigenous peoples, dramatically increased the use of Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller and other agrotoxins, causing major health problems, and maintaining vast unsustainable GM monocultures. Despite this disaster, GM soy production is being greenwashed by the likes of Monsanto and the WWF via the Round Table on Responsible Soy. Meanwhile, illegal GM maize production has led to contamination of native strains. See our collection of videos on the topic, including several on what's happening in Paraguay: http://www.gmwatch.org/gm-videos/26-gm-in-latin-america
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Transgenic corn moves forward
http://lapress.org/articles.asp?art=6300
*Multinational corporation Monsanto begins experimental cultivation of genetically modified corn.
In Guarani, corn is called avati. One of the many legends about this versatile plant tells of the misfortune of a young man whose fiancée dies after she is hit by a stray arrow. The name of this maiden with luminous white-blonde hair was Avati (áva: hair, tî: white). Anguished over losing her, he decides to never leave the graveside of his beloved. On that very land, dampened by so many tears, a mysterious plant with long leaves began to grow. With time, it bore fruit, and from that moment on, ears with golden kernels began to multiply and were used to make various types of food.
This fantastical story may not accurately explain the origin and evolution of this grain; however, it does shed light on certain aspects of folk wisdom and a world view expressing its relationship with nature. It is with this impressive background that several generations of indigenous and campesino communities that live on Paraguayan territory have been producing and conserving dozens of varieties of native seeds for human and animal consumption. This ancient practice is nevertheless being threatened by multinational biotechnology corporations and elite agricultural exporters.
In Paraguay, genetically modified corn was prohibited in 1993 by Environmental Impact Assessment Law 294/93; however, in January the Paraguayan Institute of Agricultural Technology (IPTA) — recently created by President Fernando Lugo — authorized the multinational corporation Monsanto to experimentally grow transgenic corn, a move that foreshadows a point of no return for best practices in agro-ecology and organic agriculture because of potential genetic contamination. This jeopardizes the development of campesino family farming and traditional indigenous production, which will be the primary parties affected if genetically modified seeds got out, according to the National Campaign for Paraguay Free of Genetically Modified Corn, which includes environmentalist and human rights groups.
Farmers in the villages of Caazapa, Guaira, Caaguazu and Misiones, in eastern part of the country, are being pushed out by agribusiness with increasingly frequency to the detriment of traditional farming. It is during this transition that the use of transgenic corn seeds emerged, brought from soybean-producing areas located in the departments of Itapua, Alto Parana, Canindeyu; in these regions genetically modified corn seeds are smuggled in from Brazil and Argentina. According to estimates by the National Service for the Health and Quality of Plants and Seeds (SENAVE), there are about 100,000 hectares of genetically modified corn in the country.
Transgenic soy is legal in Paraguay, however, and Paraguay was the last country in the soy-producing region —which also includes Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay— to allow its use. In October 2004, the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock approved the commercialization of four varieties of Monsanto-developed genetically modified soybeans, but in reality almost all soybean crops were already transgenic.
The fear given this new reality comes from the fact that Paraguayans do not consume soy; corn, on the other hand, is a mainstay in the country´s diet.
cont.EXTRACT: "Genetically modified organisms and pesticides on the table mean more... more
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