The Great Debate UK
from FaithWorld:
Pope slams selfish food speculators, urges curbs on world commodity markets
(Traders in the Corn options pit at the CME Group signal orders shortly before the closing bell in Chicago, February 11, 2011/Frank Polich )
Pope Benedict said on Friday financial trading based on "selfish attitudes" is spreading poverty and hunger and called for more regulation of food commodity markets to guarantee everyone's right to life. "Poverty, underdevelopment and hunger are often the result of selfish attitudes which, coming from the heart of man, show themselves in social behaviour and economic exchange," the pope told a U.N. food agency conference.
"How can we ignore the fact that food has become an object of speculation or is connected to movements in a financial market that, lacking in clear rules and moral principles, seems anchored on the sole objective of profit?" he asked.
The Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) food price index hit a record high earlier this year, reviving memories of soaring prices in 2007-08 that sparked riots in developing countries. That gave fresh urgency to the debate about how to improve a global food system that leaves some 925 million people hungry.
There is controversy over how much a new wave of investments by funds into commodities has contributed to pushing up prices. The issue has pitted French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who blames speculators for surging food prices and unrest in some countries, against other countries who see little interest in more market regulation.
In June, G20 farm ministers struck a deal that paved the way to more global cooperation on agricultural issues but steered clear of concrete regulatory measures.
How to feed a hungry world?
-Pamela C. Ronald is a Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of California. Raoul Adamchak is an organic farmer and Market Garden Coordinator at the University of California. The opinions expressed are their own.-
This week, the G20 Agriculture Ministers gathered for their first-ever meeting to discuss potential measures to address price volatility and record high food prices. The key to any long-term solution is acknowledging that we need to empower the very people whose lives are most affected by food shortages. Three-quarters of the world’s poorest people get their food and income by farming small plots of land. The potential of small farmers for getting us out of this and future food crises cannot be understated.
Today, we find that millions of lives depend upon the extent to which agricultural science can keep pace with the growing global population, changing climate, and shrinking environmental resources — and the extent to which this science is available to millions of the world’s poorest farmers.
Few people will argue with the idea that we need to grow more food. World economic and agricultural leaders have projected that the human population will surpass 9 billion by 2050, and 10 billion by the turn of the century. And they have forecast that we must double or even triple food production to meet demand.
Yet, already 40 percent of the earth is farmed (an area the size of South America). The amount of arable land is limited and what is left is being lost to urbanization, water shortages, erosion, and environmental degradation. Farmers are so pressed for space in many parts of the world that much of the land now being farmed is marginal, such as the steep hills of Ecuador. Overuse of pesticides sickens farmers and continuous cultivation of the same land drains it of nutrients.
So how will we keep up? How will we feed the world without destroying it?
My husband Raoul Adamchak and I often discuss this question. Raoul has been an organic farmer for thirty years, and I’m a plant geneticist. You may think that a geneticist and an organic farmer represent polar opposites. But we both have the same goal: an ecologically based system of agriculture that is able to grow more food, largely on existing farmland.
Farming battles and the future of food
Everybody wants to end hunger, but just how to do so is a divisive question that pits environmentalists against anti-poverty campaigners, big business against consumers and rich countries against poor.
The Food Chain Campaign is not about becoming vegetarian, say the Friends of the Earth, it is about putting pressure on the government to mitigate the damaging impact of meat and dairy production on the environment.
“The meat and dairy industry produces more climate-changing emissions than all the planes, cars and lorries on the planet,” argues the group. “A hidden chain links animals in British factory farms to rainforest destruction in South America.”
London-based Kirtana Chandrasekaran shared the goals of the campaign with Reuters.
Kirtana, you are right! Industrial farming in the U.S. requires tremendous amounts of oil to manufacture fertilizer. When the world passes peak production of crude this practice of farming will be unsustainable. The concentrated livestock practices here in the States creates a huge animal waste problem affecting air and water quality as well as meat safety.
The logical solution is to go back to small farms that raise livestock. Pastures can be rotated with crops greatly reducing the need for industrial fertilizer and mitigating all other environmental concerns as well.
from Africa News blog:
Selling Africa by the pound
The announcement by a U.S. investor that he has a deal to lease a swathe of South Sudan for farmland has again focused attention on foreigners trying to snap up African agricultural land.
A few months ago, South Korea’s Daweoo Logistics said it had secured rights to plant corn and palm oil in an even bigger patch of Madagascar - although local authorities said the deal was not done yet. Investors from Asia and the Gulf are looking elsewhere in Africa too.
Investor interest in farmland – not only in Africa – grew sharply after food prices shot to record highs last year. Although commodity prices have fallen since, there is still anticipation of long term demand growth once the world emerges from its current economic troubles.
Philippe Heilberg, chairman and CEO of New York-based investment firm Jarch Capital, told Reuters he saw ripe opportunity for decades in south Sudan’s Mayom county. The deal covers land nearly twice the size of the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.
Land is being leased from General Paulino Matip Nhial, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) - the armed wing of the ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) in semi-autonomous South Sudan. Jarch Management is also buying an interest in a local company from Matip’s son.
But should Africa be handing out its land to foreign investors and will the local people and countries involved be the ones to benefit?
This commentary in the Financial Times made comparisons with the colonial grab for Africa’s resources and points out the damaging legacy that remains.
To be able to engage in commercial farming, Africa does not need to “lease” its lands to foreigners.Commercial farming has been used successfully for the production of cash crops in many African countries, for example cocoa in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Nigeria. In addition to rubber plantations, palm plantations, cotton, etc. in Ghana Nigeria , Liberia and many other African countries.The problem here is that only the cash crops needed for export have been produced this way.Efforts need to be made to produce foodstuffs for home consumption on similar scale.More importantly the preservation of perishable foods and their wider distribution all year round will have to be included in the planning.Such efforts are already being made in Ghana, and no African nation need to give away any of its lands to foreigners for any reason whatsoever.
Nine meals from anarchy
Andrew Simms is policy director and head of the climate change programme at the London-based New Economics Foundation. The opinions expressed are his own.
Nothing reveals the thin veneer of civilisation like a threat to its fuel or food supply, or the cracks in society like a major climate-related disaster. But that, increasingly, is what we face: the global peak and decline of oil production; and a global food chain in crisis due to multiple stresses including imminent, potentially irreversible global warming.
The vulnerability of our system was revealed in the year 2000 when fuel protests in the UK disrupted food supplies and left the nation just, “nine meals from anarchy.” At the time, the government were able to force the restoration of fuel supplies. That was a short-term protest, but what if it’s the ground itself protesting that there is no longer enough oil to go around?
The International Energy Agency (IEA) said of world oil production that there will be, “a narrowing of spare capacity to minimal levels by 2013,”making, “significant downward revisions” from the previous year. Economic and social impacts from such a market shock could be even faster, deeper and more global than any banking crisis. They could also be potentially irreversible.
The IEA’s motto is, “energy security, growth and sustainability,” which is fine, except that there doesn’t appear to be any. Our food system depends on oil not just for transport, but also for chemical inputs without which intensive farming would fail. The UK lost its “energy independence” in 2004, and our reliance on external supplies, the subject of hotly competing interests, is steadily growing.
In Britain, until the early 1990s secret food stocks of easily stored basics like biscuits and flour were held officially. Now, the government depends on the retailers whose vulnerable distribution networks are built around “just-in-time” delivery. But the supermarkets have undermined the resilience of our food chain equally by presiding over the hollowing-out of its infrastructure, in terms of the number, diversity and independence of producers, suppliers, and services.
On top of that is our collective de-skilling with regard to the preparation and storage of food. These are all things essential to resilience in the face of external shocks. Against this backdrop, our national food self-sufficiency is in long-term decline. It has fallen by over one fifth since 1995. So, we are increasingly dependent on imports at precisely the time when, for several reasons to do with climate, energy, economics and changing consumption patterns, the guarantee of the rest of the world’s ability to provide for us is weakening.
hmgov could cure the problem by scrapping one nuclear missile a year for ten years.
