Can Anyone Explain How this Food "Crisis" Came on w/ so Little Warning?

[snot]

Makes me wonder if it's artificially induced per someone's "shock" therapy program (see Naomi Klein).

[Uben]

1. Two things

Ethanol production and gas prices

[acmavm]

13. You're forgetting future's trading.

[crikkett]

2. it was scheduled for release only two weeks ago?

I share your 'shock therapy' suspicions

[JCMach1]

3. It's as much speculative bubble as REAL shortage

Market manipulation and speculation have raised prices from some rather moderate supply issues largely coming out of last year's drought in Australia.

Kids are digging through the Salvation Army's trash in Marseilles, France for food (I saw this on Al Jazeera yesterday). Things are going to get worse before the speculative bubble bursts.

[snot]

4. ethanol -- yeah

that's the only explanation I've heard; but how many people are really using ethanol already? And if that's the big problem, given that ethanol's not eneragy-efficient to produce from grain anyway, why aren't we talking about reversing our support for it?

I'm really concerned that this whole thing is a pretext, at the cost of lives etc. We need to figure this out; pls rec. if you agree.

[aquart]

7. BEES.

Too many places where there haven't been enough bees to fertilize plants.

The other day we read here that wheat was growing beautifully, except that the stuff we make grain and pasta with WASN'T IN THE PLANT.

Did you also notice where bird populations are down by the thousands?

Or that the USA no longer has any stockpiled food to sell or donate to starving people?

Global warming doesn't just mean climate change. It means wholesale disruption of the food chain until the situation stabilizes enough for a new one to be established. First the birds and fish die, then the creatures that eat them. We eat them.

[Agony]

9. Pretext? heck we are into the post-text... unregulated capitalism/greed/Reagan

nothing new here.

[notesdev]

21. can't buy gas in the US without it

as I discovered to my chagrin, recently. So everyone with a car is using ethanol, whether they like it or not.

I would HOPE that we're talking about reversing support for it... I have already been hearing some things along those lines.

[panAmerican]

5. I have relatives overseas; we all knew about it

This just wasn't being covered by American media, but these prices started skyrocketing a good year, year-and-a-half ago.

[bluerum]

6. Fuel and transportation prices are the bulk of it. Ethanol? Not so much I think.

[SoCalDem]

8. ethanol v food and high gas prices to transport

the more expensive food.. AND the fact that CORN is in EVERYTHING we eat..

Watch "King Corn" if you get a chance..

[Possumpoint]

10. Several Factors

Increased world demand for grains especially wheat started it. There has been a persistent drought in Australia and switching some acreage from wheat to corn for ethanol here in USA. The shortages caught commodity speculators attention and grains began to be bid up. Rice is in very short supply in a number of countries to the point where some countries stopped exports.

By the way, wheat rose so high that the US has shipped 2/3 of its storage and if we have a bad year we could be hurting. There is only 1.1 months supply on hand at present.

[HereSince1628]

15. Yes, Vietnam's response to it's rice crop failing triggered

a chain reaction of other nations halting rice exports.

[noamnety]

11. Some people did see it coming

Some of them lived overseas and saw this happening in other areas of the world already. They were able to put the pieces together and see that even without global warming, corporations were using highly destructive agricultural methods which destroy the soil, ruining the ability of local residents to farm their own land. Look at what the big pineapple or banana companies (just as an example) did to the local farmers in various areas of the world. Some folks were able to match that up with the capitalist notion that we can use an infinite amount of finite resources without ever having a problem.

The press in America didn't report that, and Americans are in denial (still are) about the ramifications of that, because to criticize capitalism is still one of the greatest taboos here. Exactly how it became such a taboo to criticize an economic system that values corporate power about individual survival ... well, that's the product of some genius propaganda efforts.

[spinbaby]

12. It's the Fed's fault

Or at least that explanation made sense in a bar the other night. Guy was telling me that the Fed was dumping money into the economy to try to loosen up credit and get the banks lending to each other again. The banks don't trust each other and don't want to lend, but the money is going somplace--to the commodities market. How the money gets from the banks to the commodities market, I don't quite understand but, like I said, it made sense in a bar the other night.

[soothsayer]

14. Collapsing dollar means investors are looking for other moneymakers---

oil, food. Bizarre derivative gambling. Very destructive.

[Pale Blue Dot]

16. There's been plenty of warning.

People have been warning about this for years now, but they've just been called "Chicken Littles". In another year or so, the questions will be: "Can anyone explain how this depression came on with so little warning?" and "Can anyone explain how this oil shortage came on with so little warning?"

[Frank Cannon]

18. That's right. The media has squelched almost all criticism of our economy.

And they will continue to do so until a Democrat is back in the Oval Office. At which point it will become--overnight--all his or her fault.

Just wait and see.

[flashl]

17. This article introduces the term "agflation"

The end of cheap food

FOR as long as most people can remember, food has been getting cheaper and farming has been in decline. In 1974-2005 food prices on world markets fell by three-quarters in real terms. Food today is so cheap that the West is battling gluttony even as it scrapes piles of half-eaten leftovers into the bin.

That is why this year's price rise has been so extraordinary. Since the spring, wheat prices have doubled and almost every crop under the sun—maize, milk, oilseeds, you name it—is at or near a peak in nominal terms. The Economist's food-price index is higher today than at any time since it was created in 1845 (see chart).

But the rise in prices is also the self-inflicted result of America's reckless ethanol subsidies. This year biofuels will take a third of America's (record) maize harvest. That affects food markets directly: fill up an SUV's fuel tank with ethanol and you have used enough maize to feed a person for a year. And it affects them indirectly, as farmers switch to maize from other crops. The 30m tonnes of extra maize going to ethanol this year amounts to half the fall in the world's overall grain stocks.

'We' didn't and are not protecting U.S. farmers, part of the housing boom included the building of housing developments on farm land.

[Asgaya Dihi]

20. Our policies aimed at "helping" didn't help

I remember when I lived in California hearing about farmers who grew nothing but sold their water rights instead because they could make more that way and Bill Moyers recently did a bit on "Cash Cows and Cowboy Starter Kits" which you can watch online at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04112008/profile.html

Lots of good ideas in the thread on reasons. I knew a couple of beekeepers warning of the danger there a decade or more ago, we've had the bee population hit hard by mites and other issues and that hurts a little at least. Maybe more. The corn we used to give away to feed the world now goes into our gas tanks and land that used to grow other crops is now being turned over to it too, that adds to it as well. So does transport price.

We aren't helping much with our farm policies though, at least not as far as I can tell. Programs intended to help "farmers" often end up helping big agribusiness or investors but hurt or abandon small farms. I also wonder what effect copyrighted seeds have had, Monsanto and others have been big on getting people to try things then they sue if some of their seed goes wild and contaminates natural crops. There was a case in Canada like that, patent infringement or some such. Rather than helping I wonder if we aren't just making it harder on them in ways, make it too expensive or restrictive to buy the seed but difficult or impossible to go back to before.

[flashl]

22. Agree, 'Farm bills' are aim to subsidize agribusiness and little support for small farmers. nt

[screembloodymurder]

19. The only logical answer is:

Bush is the anti-christ. I expect a huge quake and a super volcano in Reno and shadows of indignant desert birds will attack children and small animals.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=563931&in_page_id=1770

[noel711]

23. The American public stopped paying attention...

we've stopped holding the 'powers that be' accountable,
and instead the public lives for diversion...

Ever watch "Jay WAlking" on Jay LEno?
I know it's lame, but it reveals a lot about the typical public.

And then, look at the 'news' industry; they do not report what's actually
going on in the world, but simply reflect certain perspectives.

And most folks do not want to know the unvarnished truth.
They prefer "American Idol," "Dancing with the Stars"
and the "Rev. Wright Roadshow."

But the hunger issue? Not our problem... just give me a summer gas tax.

[Echo In Light]

24. The American public is fucking hopeless, period.

[Dogmudgeon]

25. Plenty of warning and easy prophesying

Many of us saw this coming a couple of years ago and wrote about it on the http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=115">DU Environment and Energy forum.

Far from polishing our halos, the food crisis was one of the easiest "future" events to predict in some time. We simply played "what if?" with data on the impending oil production peak, and took it from there.

It isn't a conspiratorial crisis. It is the natural consequence of a system of energy and resource distribution that is, itself, breaking down.

--p!

[sinkingfeeling]

26. Didn't you hear, overnight in February, a billion and a half new Asians came into being. They're

now demanding more food and using all of 'our' gasoline!