Posted on 04/06/2008 8:38:56 PM PDT by blam
Soaring price of food 'leads to riots'
By James Kirkup, Political Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:45am BST 07/04/2008
Rising food prices threaten economic stability and could trigger riots, Gordon Brown has been warned.
The World Bank said this week that the price of staple foods has risen by 80 per cent in the past three years. For consumers in wealthy nations such as Britain soaring prices are squeezing household finances and keeping inflation up. But for developing nations they can lead to malnutrition and social disruption.
Food prices are being driven up by shortages of supply - often caused by bad weather - and by rising demand.
Mr Brown chaired the Progressive Governance Summit in Watford at the weekend and heard a string of warnings about the rising price of food.
António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, told the summit the cost of food is leading to riots. He said: "The biggest problem today is rising food prices in democratic countries everywhere. This can trigger social unrest."
The summit drew together some of the world's most important Left-of-centre politicians, including former US president Bill Clinton.
Many at the meeting blamed the price hikes on US and European Union moves to use biofuels such as ethanol to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Ethanol, an alternative to petrol, is made using corn and its increasing use has pushed up maize prices.
The EU wants biofuels to make up more than five per cent of transport fuel used by 2010, and the US may triple the amount of maize it uses for ethanol over the next decade.
But Mr Clinton said: "What's really hurting the food markets is America moving into ethanol. People there are moving into corn and you have pasta riots in Italy related to what some people are doing in farming in America."
Personally, I think ethanol, global baloney and such are an elitist plot to bring down the number of people in the world to a number acceptable to the "elites." Food shortages and riots, along with the revolutions in various countries could cause a lot of casualties.
A few years ago, Ted Turner made a callous remark about the deaths of a large number of people in a cult--then added that ideally, the world should only be populated by about 90,000,000 people. Global warming, UN pushed regulations and taxes, are a pretty good beginning for the proposed outcome.
Let them eat Carbon Credits
I think I could learn to eat bugs.
Simply collect a batch of your favorite species, grind ‘em up in your blender, dump, add flour and mix until they can be made into a patty, and fried.
Is this what we’re reduced to? I’m starting to worry.
Hate having to sound like a nanny-stater on this, but hopefully this can spur the food companies to stop dumping High Fructose Corn Syrup in everything.
I’d go with the cannibalism, since it’s technically recycling and is therefore “green”.
Now thats a modest proposal.
A serious question -
Why would ethanol promotion reduce the amount of corn?
Say I’m Farmer Joe. I grow corn. I get $10/bushel. Then, ethanol gets popular. I get $12, $14, whoa, it’s up to $20/bushel.
So, I have more money. So, I buy more land. So I plant more corn.
Others also see me making money and start buying land and planting corn.
So why does ethanol production increase cause a destabilization of the world’s food supply?
Any serious insights welcomed.
The production of ethanol should be viewed as a criminal activity on a par with producing PCP or crack cocaine.
why should farmers sell corn
for less that they could otherwise get,
just to have people
that hate the US, feed the corn to animals?
better to burn the corn in the US.
Farmers see, in their best interest, the price of a commodity rise and many turn to that crop. This means that wheat and other commodity productions falls.
Since farmers are not ignorant by any means, they refrain from purchasing land because history has proven that crop prices are cyclical and that they will eventually get stuck paying for high-priced land and have reduced incomes to pay their bills in the future. It is in their interest to want to keep their homes and farms so they just convert to planting the currently higher priced crop on the land they already own.
Also, the amount of corn required to create ethanol is huge and thus reduces the amount and type of corn grown as food for humans.
Another point: Government programs still pay farmers large sums of money to keep large tracts of arable land fallow. This to the point of giving them higher incomes than if they grew crops on that land.
Earthworms are easier to grow and catch, and have more protein.
Yeah. It’s weird agreeing with the rapist.
Gore and his minions should eat used food.
If you go to the pasta riots, you’ll probably have a better selection for dinner.
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