The European Union does not regulate food ingredients which, in the US, would be considered “filth.” This seems at first to be an impossible conclusion, as it claims proof of a negative. Yet, that is the conclusion, and it’s not because these regulations have not yet been found. Rather, it’s because the European Union has specifically exempted such ingredients from regulation.
Even after reading the European legislation which exempts “extraneous matter, such as, for example, insect fragments, animal hair, etc.” from regulation, it remains difficult to believe. It becomes more understandable, though hardly more palatable, when placed in the context of the trade issues involved. In short, Europe has lowered its food standards in order to lower trade barriers between member nations. Scarcely anything could make this more explicit than the Commission’s declaration that trade disturbances based on the Precautionary Principle are problems which Europe must enact laws to prevent. Even so, there is something more explicit: the food regulation designed to address the ‘problem of precaution’ declares these contaminants are “not food,” and therefore, not subject to restrictions on food.
Much of the rhetoric which surrounds the use of engineered crops for food production makes use of the notion of ‘contamination,’ a theme avidly promoted by activists. It is interesting to consider what would happen if the European Union passed legislation which declared ingredients from engineered crops to be ‘contaminants’ on a par with insect fragments and animal hair. The result: they would either not be contaminants, and present a mere “quality” issue, or they would be ‘not food,’ and not subject to food law.
An obvious paradox arises when trade in safe food would flourish in Europe if it were legally defined as ‘contaminated.’ Likewise, another paradox when trade in food actually ‘contaminated’ is expressly exempted by food safety legislation. There is yet a third paradox–when the first two paradoxes coexist within the same legal system.
All this can easily be explained in a European system which gives priority to free trade among its member states over food safety and the precautionary principle, and inverts these interests to defend trade interests against outsiders…
Read ‘The Tolerance of Food Contamination in Europe’ by Andrew Apel here: http://www.cropgen.org/european_food.pdf
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
This guy makes a lot of good, valid points, but in the end he still doesn’t get the point.
We’re supposed to be amazed that Europeans would exempt insect fragments and animal filth, while refusing foods that have passed more safety tests than anything else we eat.
But it’s not amazing. It’s simply true, and that’s the way Europeans actually want it.
In spite of the Enlightenment, Europe remains in the grip of magical thinking. In the average European, that kind of thinking occupies the head-space the average American reserves for scientific thinking.
For Europeans, healthiness comes from naturalness, via principles such as vitalism, which to them seem obvious. Educated Americans, other than those on the organic fringe, know vitalism to be discredited mystic nonsense.
But Europeans, equating “natural” with “healthy,” will easily view insect fragments and animal filth in their food as *quality indicators*. In other words, these ingredients signal that the quality of the food derives from the interventions of Nature, rather than of Man.
So for them, filth actually *improves* food quality. Accordingly, the government just sets some limits on germs and GMOs.
A European would say, “what’s more natural than that?” And for him, that would be *rational*.
Anyone who doesn’t believe Europeans and others eat disgusting crap while suffering from irrational beliefs should visit
http://mobile.foodmall.org/archives/200512/
and the seven pages that follow.
Yes, they actually want to eat filth in food, yes, they like it that way, and yes, their laws are “naturally” written that way.
But I’m going to wonder about the food the next time I go to Europe. If it’s marked “healthy and natural,” I’m buying the other stuff.
Thanks for the link to fat, tripe, offal, vegemite and witchety grubs Schiller. Ummm… what was the point about Europeans eating filth and crap? Please back it up or explain more clearly. You just a prime cuts kinda guy with a queasy stomach about eating the whole animal, that all?
Pinks,
No, like the man said in the paper, it’s about filth. Insect parts, rat hair, and other stuff that falls into food as a result of poor sanitation and sloppy preparation.
Go back to the paper and you’ll see a partial list of stuff that’s allowed in European food. Latrine flies, rodent guano, etc…
That link was merely to help underscore how it’s credible that Europeans actually *like* this stuff to fall into their food in an all-natural kind of way.
Thurkettle clearly hasn’t read ‘Fast Food Nation’ and has also conveniently forgotten how much pus is officially allowed in his milk from good ol’ US dairy cattle after they have been pumped full of growth hormone….Filth Thurkettle? You should due some research on your home markets before getting your soap box out….
Most countries’ food produce has a regulated level of permissable extraneous material since it is impossible to keep it out of the food chain in massive industrial production complexes…
Howard Hughesian complexes about ‘Europeans’ would also appear to ignore a number of contributors’ heritage…… :O)
Tom Devine, is the legal director of the, ‘Government Accountability Project’, a US non profit legal advocacy firm, which deals exclusively with whistleblowing issues. GAP works with unions and interested consumer groups to defend whistleblowers in public and private employment to expose abuses of public trust. GAP’s work includes exposing chemical companies for unlawful dumping of hazardous waste, violations of safety codes at nuclear plants, and unhealthy practices in meat and poultry processing plants.
On his return to Washington, consumer organisations, victims of food poisoning groups, interested journalists, and US congress members, will be alerted to evidence gathered on his Australian trip which revealed, according to Tom, “symptoms of an unnecessary disaster that’s about to happen.”
During his visit to Australia, which was partly funded by the Community and Public Sector Union, Tom Devine, gathered evidence in the company regulated domestic sector from Australian whistleblowers, many of whom are ex-government meat inspectors and retired members of the CPSU.
Their reports, according to Tom, include instances where up to 75 percent of carcases on some production lines being contaminated with faeces and bile, workers walking through ‘puddles of bloody faecal soup’ tracking over production lines where meat was being dressed for consumption. Blocked drains resulting from pools of faeces, blood and other filth that was too caked to hose away. Workplaces where the equipment was no longer wiped down daily resulting in build ups of fat and spoiled and rotting meat, blood, grease and other contaminants. Greenish black moss growing on the walls when companies stopped cleaning regularly.
“The bottom line for me is that the threat to public health is much more severe than I’d anticipated after coming over from the States,” Tom claims. “When I came I was irritated that a government spokesperson wasn’t playing it straight with American consumers. I have spoken to over a dozen whistleblowers here during the trip from a variety of backgrounds, but the most significant were former government inspectors who went to work for companies under the domestic self inspection programs and their experiences were far worse than anything expected before arriving.”
“It’s not surprising after hearing these whistleblowers stories to see that the salmonella rate is going up domestically in Australia.”
– By Margaret Gillespie, Workers Online.
Lamna,
You didn’t read the paper yet, I can tell.
You obviously aren’t aware that there’s more pus in the milk of “organic” cows because they aren’t allowed to have medical treatment for mastitis.
And you obviously have no concept of animal slaughter operations. There are indeed internal parts and fluids involved.
But these are all clever excuses for the obvious fact that you *did not read the paper* and therefore don’t want to talk about filth like rat poop in food.
But being a factual denialist you still got your street creds, dude! Speak the party line or you’re out!
P.S. Please share with us your recipe for red-tailed flesh flies with bat fragments.
‘they aren’t allowed to have medical treatment for mastitis.’ – Schiller
The reason Thurkettle never backs his wild claims up with references is generally because even cursory research illustrates they are piffle….
‘Are antibiotics permitted for the control of mastitis? Where the animal displays clinical symptoms?
Yes, if no other remedy will be effective.’
– Organic Farming FAQ, Scottish Agricultural College.
‘there are indeed internal parts and fluids involved.’ – Schiller
I am familiar with how an abattoir works, however as readers will have observed Thurkettle is deliberately ignoring the description of ‘puddles of bloody faecal soup’ tracking over production lines where meat was being DRESSED FOR CONSUMPTION’…..
‘even if society were willing to rely upon the market to encourage food safety, it is unlikely to be an effective producer of safety because of the commodity nature of most food transactions, as well as the difficulty of connecting foodborne illness with particular eating occasions or individual foods.
For the same reasons, personal injury litigation provides only a weak incentive for food companies to improve their food safety efforts, because there is a low probability that they will be sued for foodborne illness, the damages they would pay are likely to be small, and there is a low probability that such litigation would have negative public relations consequences…..
Today Campylobacter is the leading cause of poultry-associated foodborne ill- ness. Campylobacter species are part of the colonizing intestinal flora of normal, healthy chickens; exclusion of dead, diseased, disabled, and dying birds does not control this problem.
Organoleptic inspection focuses on the identification of birds contaminated with feces; these birds are subsequently removed from the processing line for reprocessing. However, although visible fecal contamination is a relatively rare event, in some studies Campylobacter has been isolated from over 80 percent of chicken parts available at retail sale…
– National Academy of Sciences, 2003
Please share with us your recipe for chicken poop, cajun style…ahem.. dude….. :o)
There is simply no logic in comparing the laws on GM food with the levels of contaminants allowed in food. The arguments for and against GM food are purely political/environmental while the level of rat poo in my muesli is an issue of public safety.
The public safety issue can become clouded when excessively high standards are enforced. The large multinational food companies generally have the bureaucracy to handle excessive regulation but the small producer can find this regulation stifling. An overly regulated market discourages new participants and gives an advantage to the large established producers.
Lamna,
You could discuss the paper if you wanted to. If you would read it, that is.
There are none so ignorant as those who can read, and won’t.
fatwombat,
That’s astute. Regulators make sure that business stays in business, and when people get sick from eating “extraneous matter,” they say,
“Look! Over there! I think that was a GMO!”
And then Friends of the Earth will say, “We saw it on the horizon, blotting out the sky, with blinking lights, it was going to take over Europe!”
Meanwhile, nobody notices that the European Union makes no discernible effort to collect data on food-borne outbreaks.
Europe doesn’t collect data on rejected imports, either.
You got crappy food? Sell it to Europeans! Friends of the Earth will distract everyone about GMOs while the butcher, the baker and everyone else makes a good business of selling filthy food.
‘There are none so ignorant as those who can read, and won’t.’ – Schiller
Pot, Kettle, Black, Thurkettle……. :o)
Lamna,
Why do I have to drop a citation to back up what everyone knows already? Mastitis is treated with antibiotics, and organic cows aren’t allowed to have any.
And if you’re so familiar with abbatoirs, why are you shocked at the notion that internal organs and fluids are released when animals are being dressed for consumption? If that didn’t happen, the animals would still be alive. Or maybe that’s your point. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is fond of pointing out that cattle, chickens, etc. are “killed while still alive.” Hmph.
You still haven’t read the paper, because if you had, you’d actually discuss it. It’s not about abbatoirs, for instance.
so whats worse:
an occasional fragment of insect or monsanto triggered pus in cows milk?
i know which one is easier to remove from the food chain!
Regardless of your views on GM, we are going to need this technology to raise output of food. Pull your heads out of the trough for just a short period of time and you might notice food secuirty is now the biggest threat to global security with global staple reserves at their lowest level in 35 years.
As a farmer whether we adopt GM technology or not is now less my problem than those who DO NOT farm. You see farmland prices are moving seriously north, commdity prices are fantastic (hence so too are margins in production) and a worsening in global food security is only good for me. Stop and really think what you wish for when you oppose GM technology.
————————————
Rising costs spark global food fight
Monday February 19, 2007
Heather Stewart
Tortilla riots in Mexico, onion protests in India, and Venezuelan supermarkets threatened with nationalisation unless they slash prices. The soaring cost of basic foods is provoking fury among consumers around the world.
“It’s a global trend,” says Kona Haque, senior commodities editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit. The price of corn, the key ingredient of the tortilla, has risen by more than 80 per cent in the past year and wheat is up by more than 40 per cent. Poor growing conditions, including a drought in Australia, are one reason, but Haque says another key factor has been Washington’s drive to reduce US dependence on oil by increasing the use of corn-based ethanol as a fuel.
Analysts have warned for some time that corn prices would start to move in tandem with global oil markets, as demand for ethanol increased and farmers turned fields over to filling US fuel tanks instead of Mexican tables. There are also likely to be painful knock-on effects for livestock farmers, who use grains to feed their animals. Tens of thousands of people have protested in Mexico City at the high cost of tortillas, forcing President Calderon to promise a price freeze.
In India, where the economy is growing firmly and inflation is strong, the Agriculture Ministry has suggested it could step in to cap the cost of food, after widespread protests over the cost of onions. And in Venezuela, left-wing President Hugo Chavez has accused shopowners of hoarding food, and warned that unless they reduce prices, the Government will take them over.
Aaron – You think putting control of the food chain into the hands of multi-national biochemical companies like beyer and monsanto is somehow going to alleviate world food prices or help food security for the poor? feed the starving millions, anyone??
c’mon, not even those who make this GM propaganda up believe it! if any of the previous 10 years experience of farmers dealing with monsanto etc is anything to go by, the exact opposite can be expected. lets not pretend that these agri-industrial giants are motivated by anything resembling altruism or ethics. its the dollar and nothing else thats important here, and this kind of rationale is not going to bring food prices down – you dont need an economics degree to work this out.
Yeah Julian but what ninkumpoops such as yourself fail to understand is that a farmer has choice and once the floodgates are opened to GM there are no laws compelling farmers to incorporate varieties with transgenic traits into their rotation. GM crops can cost more but then again they can offer efficiencies and hence savings. I don’t buy the conspiracy theories on the big chemical companies. I deal with them now, IF I CHOOSE TOO!
10 years previous experience tells us that farmers are happy and profitable using the technology or else they would not CHOOSE to use the technology year upon year upon year. There has been no laws passed I am aware of that compell farmers to adopt any given technology.
Its a simple as this is farming, if it costs you, you give it the flick. Sure Monsanto and other agri multinationals are motivated by profit, but would you expect any business to exist for any other reason? Does that mean I trust them? Hell no, I trust no-one with shareholders to produce dividends for but these relationships are purely commercially driven.
The only thing that can bring food prices down apart from pricing grain beyond the economic reach of biofuel and meat producers is increased production – did they teach you that at University? The yield benefits from GM crops firstly and foremost come from above normal weed control levels which is a sure way to increase crop as opposed to weed production. A finer detail you’d have no clue about since you are not and never will be a farmer. Timely crop protection from insects or disease is yet another means to raise output. Then of course you have the ability to increase nitrogen fixation rates in rhizobial bacteria. That means I need to buy less urea – an agricultural input that has hyperinflated 50% in the last 4 months.
Do me a favour Julian, before you open your uneducated mouth, check on your facts – not on the internet but from those whose livelihoods depend on the decisions they make in their business! I am sick of the ignorance that prevails amongst the general public on this issue. But like I said before, with food prices rising, I’ve got less interest in seeing stockpiles rebuilt than those of my city cousins who eat. For inflation in food prices is great for farmers, not so good for Joe Public or Julian for that matter. Oh and Julian, maybe you should try reading entire posts before you get all emotional on such an important topic.
Julian,
The article is not about pus in cow milk. It’s not about corporate control of food, either.
It’s about government control of food. And when you have government in control of food, you get weird results.
For instance, Europe has decided to protect the profits of its multinationals (those who trade in the 15-nation bloc) by making it illegal to restrict trade in food on the basis of insect parts and animal filth.
Aaron raises the Mexico situation. The Mexican government, heeding complaints from farmers over low corn prices, has put limits on corn imports. The result? Farmers get better prices and there are riots over the price of tortillas.
If you think Monsanto is all that bad, can you tell me these governments are being “altruistic” about food regulation?
Readers might like to have a little more background on the shill Mr Apel –
‘Andrew Apel is the editor of the biotech industry newsletter, AgBiotech Reporter.
Apel has also been at the forefront of attempts by GM lobbyists to use the resistance of countries in southern Africa to accepting GM-contaminated food aid, as a way of attacking biotech industry critics.
Apel called on the U.S. to bomb Zambia with GM grain if it continued to reject it. On a discussion list Apel wrote of the crisis, “I can almost picture the darkies laying down their lives for the vacuous ideals… their death throes, how picturesque, among the baobab trees and the lions!”
In October 2002, Monsanto’s electronic newsletter, “The Biotech Advantage,” carried the headline “Academics Say Africans Going Hungry Because of Activist Scare Tactics”.
The “activists” in question turned out to be the staff of a Catholic theological centre and a Zambian agricultural college who had expressed concerns about GM crops. Their “academic” attackers, by contrast, included Andrew Apel together with AgBioWorld’s co-founders, CS Prakash and Greg Conko of the Competitive Enterprise Institute…..
Lamna,
That is very interesting. I’m surprised there aren’t allegations of corporate funding.
But it would be less work for you–less typing, at least–if you would just say you haven’t read the paper.
“10 years previous experience tells us that farmers are happy and profitable using the technology or else they would not CHOOSE to use the technology year upon year upon year. There has been no laws passed I am aware of that compell farmers to adopt any given technology. ”
would this also include farmers who have chosen organic certification who subsequently lose this with GM cross pollination from their neighbour? Or the farmers who are sued by Monsanto because they are unintendedly(unwillingly) selling produce contaminated with patented GM crops?
Aaron, i guess i will choose to take the information presented by monsanto with more than just a small pinch of salt. when i too come from farming stock, i have every right not to swallow hook line and sinker an agri-biotechs advertsing campaign that masquerades as ‘the complete story’, let alone the ‘science’ that shows gains, but hides the numerous adverse affects including eventual reduced productivity.
if GM is such a superior product, why do monsanto et.al stage fake debates with their own paid representatives at so-called information events co-organised with the farmers federation?
i guess it all comes down to judging where every parties vested interests lie. you can try and call me ‘uneducated’ but thats about as accurate as me calling you gullible.
It comes down to looking at the adoption of the technology in the field and looking at whether farmers continue to use the technology after initial adoption. That simple pal! I get my information from farmers in North America I have visited who like me couldn’t give a flying f### about Monsanto! My vested interest lies in producing as much food I can. It should be your vested interest too!
‘Just say you haven’t read the paper.’ – Thurkettle
Why would you assume that Thurkettle? Just because I am not gullible enough to fall for a nine page propaganda piece produced by a tawdry hack who is employed to promote GM and attack organisations and persons who oppose it?….
The fact that Apel’s propaganda appeals to your jingoistic xenophobia does not mean it has merit….
Big words Lamna don’t need to be used for such a no-brainer technology. Trust me … if farmers have been using the technology for the last ten years when the economics of growing grain have been borderline costs of production, then the technology has obviously been providing a commercially and agronomically important role in the business.
Oh and I here you say but consumers don’t want it … today perhaps but tomorrow is always a new day and I am afraid the consumer is losing his/her ability to dictate quality in the marketplace. It is fastly becoming a sellers market as global stocks are drawn down, prices continue to hyperinflate and farmers prefer to deal with car engines than fussy consumers. Look at the crud your digesting in Australia today. 2006’s drought affected, shrivelled grain. Cattle feed!
Lamna,
If all you can talk about is the author, then obviously you haven’t read the paper. If I wanted to get nasty, I’d suggest that you *have* read the paper, but it’s a little over your head, making it necessary to change the topic.
Julian,
Worldwide, I am aware of two cases in which organic farmers lost certification due to GM content. These were both in Europe, and both due to *private* certification standards, not government standards.
Nowhere in the world has Monsanto sued a farmer for accidentally growing GM crops. Doubtless you’re talking about Percy Schmeiser, but in his case the court found that dear Percy (who now calls himself a former Canadian MP) used a cultivation method designed to produce a nearly 100% pure bootleg GM seed for his own use.
“My vested interest lies in producing as much food I can. It should be your vested interest too!”
depends whether you are talking about short term or the long haul mate, because there we might just differ on approach.
Schiller:
‘bootleg’ eh?
once upon a time, that was called breeding and (perhaps a hard concept for christian fundo farmer types to grasp) involved natural selection and survival of the fittest,
but in these days of patented living organisms…
oh and i wasnt suggesting you are a christian fundo farmer, btw!
Julian,
If you understand breeding, you know it’s not “natural selection.” It’s (ahem) breeding. These plants can’t survive in the wild.
And guess what? Seed breeders who are really good at what they do don’t want their stuff ripped off. They do it for money, and have done that for generations. Or are you advocating theft? Geesh!
And we’re still not talking about the paper.
‘I am afraid the consumer is losing his/her ability to dictate quality in the marketplace. It is fastly becoming a sellers market as global stocks are drawn down, prices continue to hyperinflate and farmers prefer to deal with car engines than fussy consumers.’ – Aaron
Really Edmunds? Nice to see you posting exactly what the Agbio industry really thinks of the average citizen……
Hi Thurkettle
The authorship of that shill article is very much on topic… however since you have no answer to my rebuttals, its no surprise that you find it necessary to change the subject…
Lamna,
I scrolled up and read all your comments. Something must be wrong with Jennifer’s website. I couldn’t find any rebuttals. Perhaps you could re-post them.
As far as the authorship of the article being on topic–I went back and read the paper again, and all I could find is stuff on food regulation.
Yep Sorry Lamna! No sympathy from farmers for your high food prices. Just as you cared little for the plight of farmers when for decades they were trying to produce at borderline costs of production, losing great people to suicides because they couldn’t make enough money and stealing most of our smartest youth. Good men unable to find wives. This is a legacy created by the urban centricity of todays Australian culture. You forgot about the farmer and now you have to live with the consequences of that.
So the urgency to bring GM traits into commercially important crops is more for YOU and less for me, because my income and asset base is set to explode, regardless of whether I have the technology or not. And when the resource boom ends, you’ll be looking at the farm sector to ironically generate enough national GDP to save your overvalued houses from collapsing in price.
You guys really need to start courting the trust and respect of farmers back. Allow them to best judge what their industry needs to remain vibrant and productive. Acceptance of GM is one big step. Otherwise I can see more land moving across to focussing on car engines and non food markets.
Sorry for my frankness but this really is the reality that exists …
Really Edmonds? Instead of whining about consumers paying higher prices to your organic competitors for the products they want to buy; you should be concentrating on your real problem which is the stranglehold large globalised corporations have achieved over food production and supply but since you want to hand over the last of your independance to the patent monkeys in Agbiotech instead… You are getting exactly the level of respect you deserve.
Sorry for my frankness but this really is the reality that exists …
Ah but Lamna this is where the picture changes and your overeducated brain will have to take its educatory medicine from the unfolding grain and general staple food boom, which by its very nature will hand control back to farmers permanently or when the government intervenes on the obscene profits they’ll be making. You see it is what they call a sellers market and farmers are in a particularly strong position because the risk of producing, ie my side of the farm gate, has been unpalatable to all the major multinationals and their greedy shareholders. As a result it is farmers that are sitting in the box seat. So I am not whining, probably more smiling all the way to the bank.
Organics is going to die a slow death you’ll find as disposable incomes fall. In any case all the movement has done is make consumers even more dependent on oil as produce needs to be grown where labour is cheap and then transported thousands of miles to market. And then there is no viable organic production model for the real foods – staples.
Your respect will come Lamna. Your respect will come. Because in time you will realise it is YOU who has lost control of your independence when it comes to cheap and reliable supplies of STAPLE food commodities. Sometimes you don’t know what you had til it is gone …
Who Sucks Energy: Conventional or Organic Farming?
The London Telegraph dutifully reported the results of a study by the Manchester Business School, comparing energy use in organic and conventional farming systems. In a life cycle assessment – farm to fork – it found that many organic crops use more energy.
The energy needed to grow organic tomatoes is 1.9 times that of conventional methods, the study found. Organic milk requires 80 per cent more land to produce than conventional milk and creates 20 per cent more carbon dioxide, it says.
One note of caution: this was a government commissioned study, not one published in a peer reviewed journal. One of the longest-running studies comparing conventional and organic ag methods was published in Science in 2002. This Swiss study compared organic and conventional farming systems over 22 years and it found that organic farming used dramatically less energy. Why? Because one-third of the energy in agriculture goes into the production of pesticides and fertilzers.
The Research Institute for Organic Agriculture (FiBL) found that while organic systems tend to use slightly more energy in tractors and fuel, they use dramatically less energy overall.
Since crop yields were considerably higher in the conventional systems, the difference in energy needed to produce a crop unit was only 19 percent lower in the organic systems. Per area unit this difference accounted for 30–50 percent. Most of the difference was due to external production factors.
Organic farming needs only slightly more energy for infrastructure and machinery as well as for fuel, whilst markedly lower energy input for the production of fertilizers and pesticides.
Here’s a graph of energy use, with K2 referring to conventional systems and O2 to organic.
That said, once shipping and distance is taken into account, the picture gets muddy quickly. Do heated hothouses and local transport use more energy than unheated greenhouses in the south where the food is shipped longer distances? There’s no easy answer to these questions.
What the Manchester study appears to do is to look at the entire lifecyle, but even the executive summary is filled with qualifiers about the actual lack of studies on life cycle assessment. Secondly, it admits that the analysis does not take into account benefits of organic farming such as biodiversity.
The full study is here:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/science/project_data/Document
‘your overeducated brain will have to take its educatory medicine from the unfolding grain and general staple food boom, which by its very nature will hand control back to farmers’ – Aaron
Really Edwards, I’m intrigued to see you singlehandedly rewriting the fundamental laws of supply and demand…..
Massive surpluses in food supply by farmers means prices plummet, small farmers go bust as they are trying to produce at borderline costs of production, losing great people to suicides because they can’t make enough money while farming becomes unattractive to most of the smartest youth. Good men unable to find wives. Surplus product dumped into foreign markets undermining their farming communities and trapping third world countries in food aid dependancy cycles. This is the legacy created by globalised food supply companies and Agbiotech….
Aaron, if you are championing Agbiotech, do you actually read your stuff before you post it?… And I quote –
‘One of the longest-running studies comparing conventional and organic ag methods was published in Science in 2002. This Swiss study compared organic and conventional farming systems over 22 years and it found that organic farming used dramatically less energy. Why? Because one-third of the energy in agriculture goes into the production of pesticides and fertilzers.
The Research Institute for Organic Agriculture (FiBL) found that while organic systems tend to use slightly more energy in tractors and fuel, they use dramatically less energy overall……
What the Manchester study appears to do is to look at the entire lifecyle, but even the executive summary is filled with qualifiers about the actual lack of studies on life cycle assessment. Secondly, it admits that the analysis does not take into account benefits of organic farming such as biodiversity.’
Lamna thats the point you fail to understand. Even with a big year in production in 2007, there will still be a net reduction in global stocks. Ethanol consumption will ensure this. In other words for the 8th year in 9, world production will fall SHORT of consumption. Multinationals never had control of the food supply and certainly can’t hope to now.
Yes I read the article. Organic emergy (energy consumption) modelling is usually on vegetable and fruit crops, but never on the only food commodities that truly matter in the broad context of food security and that is STAPLES. Notice the crops aren’t mentioned. Organic emergy account for grain crops are still highly energy intensive since organic inputs are large and bulky, eg manures at 2% nitrogen as opposed to 46% urea, which can be manufactured using renewable energy sources. You only need a source of hydrogen. If the world converted to organic production there would only be enough food available to optimistically feed 2 billion mouths. Whose going to volunteer to go without?
There is no ‘surplus’ grain swimming around the world’s coffers being ‘dumped into foreign markets undermining their farming communities and trapping third world countries in food aid dependancy cycles’. If inflation is the problem where are the cheap foods you refer to? A historical fact yes but not reality now. Nor will excess surplus occur again in the future. Supply and demand laws have had to learn about capacity constraints related to inputs and weather during this commodity boom. Population relative to land resource capabilities is the problem in these regions now because they can’t produce enough themselves. Haven’t you been reading the news:
———————————————
Rising costs spark global food fight
Monday February 19, 2007
Heather Stewart
Tortilla riots in Mexico, onion protests in India, and Venezuelan supermarkets threatened with nationalisation unless they slash prices. The soaring cost of basic foods is provoking fury among consumers around the world.
“It’s a global trend,” says Kona Haque, senior commodities editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit. The price of corn, the key ingredient of the tortilla, has risen by more than 80 per cent in the past year and wheat is up by more than 40 per cent. Poor growing conditions, including a drought in Australia, are one reason, but Haque says another key factor has been Washington’s drive to reduce US dependence on oil by increasing the use of corn-based ethanol as a fuel.
Analysts have warned for some time that corn prices would start to move in tandem with global oil markets, as demand for ethanol increased and farmers turned fields over to filling US fuel tanks instead of Mexican tables. There are also likely to be painful knock-on effects for livestock farmers, who use grains to feed their animals. Tens of thousands of people have protested in Mexico City at the high cost of tortillas, forcing President Calderon to promise a price freeze.
In India, where the economy is growing firmly and inflation is strong, the Agriculture Ministry has suggested it could step in to cap the cost of food, after widespread protests over the cost of onions. And in Venezuela, left-wing President Hugo Chavez has accused shopowners of hoarding food, and warned that unless they reduce prices, the Government will take them over.
Edwards your latest post is riddled with disinformation…
The rise in ethanol production / consumption is a direct result of the concern over finite global reserves of oil and the use of grain for some of that ethanol production is a result of a North American desire to utilise surpluses (the EEC for example has been using surplus wine production for ethanol production). Ethanol can be produced from a wide number of vegetable matter sources as third world countries are already fully aware…
‘Multinationals never had control of the food supply ‘ – Aaron
Tell that to the likes of Monsanto, Wal-Mart and Tesco…
“What you’re seeing,” he explained, “is not just a consolidation of seed companies, it’s really a consolidation of the entire food chain.”
– Monsanto representative, Robert Fraley, describing his company’s corporate strategy in the magazine ‘Farm Journal’ in 1996.
‘where are the cheap foods you refer to?’ – Aaron
On every non-organic shelf of every supermarket in every country in the developed world; non-organic food has NEVER been cheaper in the UK than it is today… yet in many EEC countries including the UK, much of the non-organic farming community is currently in financial free fall, so don’t try to lecture me on purported ‘historical’ facts…
‘Farmers in the American Midwest, who have long been struggling in an era of low prices for grain and livestock, now say they are struggling against unfair competition from big business.
The US states of North and South Dakota have laws that restrict the spread of what are called corporate farms, but small farmers are still going bust.
All across the Grain Belt stand abandoned homesteads, symbols of untold stories of failure, flight from the land, and even suicide’ – BBC
‘less and less is percolating down to the primary producer, middlemen are getting more…Unless it cascades down, it doesn’t get back into the countryside’
– Mark Hill, head of Deloitte & Touche food and agriculture group.
The farming crisis is in reality a series of inter-linked crises arising out of the restructuring of the food and agriculture system. At its heart is a farm income crisis: the price of agricultural produce on the global market has fallen dramatically (prices for primary commodities have fallen by 50% in the last 20 years) and farmers around the world are often not being paid a fair price for what they produce, driving many of them out of business…… the underlying pattern is of a long-term decline in farm incomes. The total income generated by agriculture has declined in real terms by around 40% over the past 30 years.
Annual surveys by Deloitte & Touche show that the average net farm income fell dramatically from £80,000 in 1995/6 to £8,000 in 2000 and to £2,500 during 2001, the year of foot and mouth. The average net farm income has since recovered somewhat, to £10,100 in 2001/2002, and to £12,500 in 2002/3.
But incomes for some, predominantly small farmers, remain well below the minimum wage; 69% of farmers are still reliant on farming as their primary source of income. But an increasing number of farmers now work part-time off the farm, relying on this non-farm income to support their businesses.
It is a widely held belief that farmers are creaming in a fortune through European subsidies. UK farmers received almost £2.6 billion in subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in 2002.
But because subsidies are production-based (i.e. the more acres of cereals you grow or the more animals you have, the greater the subsidy), the bulk of the subsidy goes to the larger, richer farms. It is commonly stated that within the EU 80% of farm subsidies go to 20% of farmers.
However, the majority of UK farmers (63%) receive less than £5,000 a year in farm subsidies, and some sectors – pigs, poultry and horticulture – receive no subsidies at all’
– Corporate Watch
‘organic inputs are large and bulky’ – Aaron
They are also the logical and cost effective product of choice for the small scale third world farmer who does not have the financial resources to purchase expensive agbiotech products from multinational corporations but do have organic products available from livestock and household as part of a renewable cycle…
‘There is no ‘surplus’ grain swimming around the world’s coffers’ – Aaron
That must explain all that North American grain that was recently supplied at very attractive prices to Australia to counter the Australian grain shortfall caused by your draught, eh?
‘There is no ‘surplus’ grain swimming around the world’s coffers being ‘dumped into foreign markets’ – Aaron
Complete piffle –
‘Since NAFTA came into effect on January 1, 1994, U.S. cornexports to Mexico have almost doubled to some 6 million metric tons in 2002. NAFTA eliminated quotas limiting corn imports (Mexico used to only import corn when its farmers’ production fell short of domestic needs) but allowed U.S. subsidy programs to remain in place – promoting dumping of corn into Mexico by U.S. agribusiness at below the cost of production.
While U.S. corn exports to Mexico were almost all yellow corn in the mid-1990s, some 20% are now white corn.
Even before the US white corn exports began to increase, the price paid to farmers in Mexico for corn fell by over 70% as huge amounts of U.S. yellow corn were dumped in the Mexican market. In 2001, Mexican farmers produced 18million tons of corn – 3 million of which were left unused.
U.S. corn is typically dumped in the Mexican market at up to 30% below the cost of production.
In addition, corn buyers in Mexico are attracted
to imported U.S. corn by the very favorable loan rates available to them through U.S. export agencies. In the years immediately following NAFTA’s introduction for example, buyers that contracted with U.S. exporters had access to loans through the U.S. Commodity Credit Corporation at 7% for 3 years. Interest rates from Mexican lenders ran between 25 and 30% at that time. The availability of large amounts of U.S. yellow corn,
combined with the favorable credit terms, has given a small number of large corn purchasers in Mexico tremendous leverage over prices in their
dealings with Mexican producers; if the Mexican farmers will not sell them corn at their demanded price, the large producers – including Mexican corn mills and other food processors now part-owned by US agribusinesses – buy U.S. corn.’
– Organic Consumers Association
‘There is no ‘surplus’ grain swimming around the world’s coffers…’trapping third world countries in food aid dependancy cycles’.’ – Aaron
Edwards, you are simply making things up to suite your opinions.. if food aid is supplied for any longer than is absolutely necessary it destroys the local farming economy, nobody is going to pay for food if thay can get it free from an aid centre…
‘There is a joke told in Ethiopia that encapsulates the country’s struggle with food aid dependency. In it, two subsistence farmers are talking about the year’s poor rains and the impact on their harvests.
The older, his face and hands worn from a lifetime of hard work, turns to his younger friend and offers some advice: “It is not the rains in Ethiopia you need to worry about, but whether it rains in America or Canada.” For the last three decades, millions of Ethiopians have depended on food aid from the donors. Each year, regardless of harvests or rains, at least five million Ethiopians need food aid for six months to survive.
Millions of tonnes of wheat are shipped and trucked into the country. In the eyes of the world, Ethiopia seems to be in constant crisis, and food aid has become the norm. ‘
– Mercy Corps
‘Population relative to land resource capabilities is the problem in these regions’ – Aaron
Very true, so lets address the root cause rather than Agbiotech pretending it can feed 5000 billion people to anyone gullible enough to believe the patent monkeys propaganda, merely because homo sapiens mistakenly prefers to believe it is ‘special’ and can therefore disregard nature and finite resources…. the only way Agbiotech is going to feed a global population that permanently refuses to deal with the issue of ever increasing over population and ever diminishing resources, is with Soylent Green…….
‘Tortilla riots in Mexico’ – Aaron
Mexico is discovering that relying on cheap foreign imports rather than nurturing its own farming community leaves it vulnerable to the economic imperatives and climatic vagaries of those foreign suppliers; not to mention the massive contamination of its globally important native seed stocks by imported GM varieties from the USA… so much for the benefits of globalisation and free markets as illustrated in the quote detailing US agri-dumping earlier…..
‘The cost of onions’ – Aaron
Rice is the STAPLE of India, not onions..
‘in Venezuela, left-wing President Hugo Chavez has accused shopowners of hoarding food, and warned that unless they reduce prices, the Government will take them over.’ – Aaron
Chavez is slowly but surely positioning himself to seize total control of power in Venezuela as a Marxist dictator in a one party state (styled on the Cuba of Fidel Castro) in order to do that he will nationalise all the major sources of hard currency such as the oil industry to fund his dictatorship and to ensure the population remains acquiescent, the food supply must be under his contol as well… cheap food subsidised by the state keeps dictator ousting mobs off the streets, as Castro has amply demonstrated…..it has absolutely nothing to do with supply and demand economics….
Lamna, to resimplify the point and reiterate my original point, multinational food companies never had control of STAPLE FOOD COMMODITIES and now they’ll never realistically expect to unless they decide to buy out the world’s farmers. Tesco might control lettuces and cabbages but with all due respect you don’t need them to survive. You’ll see more and more evidence of farmers signing tonnage to biofuel manufacturers. We’ve never been able to do this in history with foo companies. Read below (and yes you should be worried particularly being in England):
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Guaranteed prices, cash advances offered for grain
Bruce Johnstone
The Leader-Post
Terra Grain Fuels (TGF) is offering producers a guaranteed price for their grain for up to two years, cash advances of up to $75 per acre and the ability to deliver their grain year-round.
The Regina-based company, which is building a 150-million-litre, $140-million ethanol plant at Belle Plaine, is also offering producers an alternative to the highly subsidized export market for grains.
About 50 producers attended meetings in Regina Tuesday to learn more about TGF’s producer direct program, which provides fixed-price contracts for grain for one or two years. They also learned about TGF’s cash advance program, which is being delivered by Conexus Credit Union.
Gordon Nolan, TGF’s manager of supply and logistics, said producer response at the 30 or so meetings the company held around the southern part of the province has been “very positive.”
“They like the idea of the contract being profitable per acre,’ Nolan said. “They’re not speculating and taking a chance of having a loss because the price is locked in.”
Because the ethanol plant will require 15 million bushels (400,000 tonnes) of wheat per year when it begins operation late this year, TGF has been signing up producers to supply grain to the plant.
But TGF doesn’t need the high-protein Canada Western Red Spring wheat that Saskatchewan is famous for. “We’re promoting the farmer to grow the highest-yielding variety on his farm,’ Nolan said.
Low-protein, high-starch varieties, like AC Andrew, can produce 35-per-cent higher yields than conventional varieties. So even though the farmer gets paid less per bushel, he earns more per acre.
And there are even higher-yielding varieties specifically bred for ethanol production that could generate even better returns for producers.
“They’re on the shelf right now. They exist,’ he said. “But they’ve never been registered because they don’t meet the quality standards required for food production, said Nolan, who spent 33 years in the seed and grain handling business before joining TGF.
While many of the higher-yielding varieties won’t be registered this crop year, Nolan said farmers will be able to seed some super-high-yielding varieties in the 2008 crop year.
In fact, TGF is contracting 80 per cent of its wheat supply to allow for producers under contract to sell any surplus to the Belle Plaine plant.
“We have an agreement with Saskatchewan Wheat Pool for commercial purchases’ in the event of a shortfall, Nolan added.
TGF is also contracting wheat supplies from up to 150 kilometres from the Belle Plaine plant to ensure that a “weather event,’ like a hailstorm, doesn’t wipe out a large proportion of its feedstock. “We don’t want all our eggs in one basket. We want geographic diversity.’
Nolan said TGF also has “Act of God’ clauses in the contracts so that producers can opt out of the contract in the event of hail damage, grasshopper infestation or other disasters.
Cash advances of up to $75 per acre are interest-free loans that are paid back through deliveries and are mainly for producers who are short of cash for seeding, Nolan said.
“We’re going to be very friendly to our growers. We expect to see in 20 years a lot of the same growers we signed up in the first year.’
‘Tesco might control lettuces and cabbages but with all due respect you don’t need them to survive.’ – Aaron
Nasty case of scurvy you have there Edwards, not eating your fresh veggies and fruit again?….
‘STAPLE FOOD COMMODITIES’ – Aaron
Very true Edwards but since those ‘COMMODITIES’ are then turned into the value added staple food products that Wal-Mart and Tesco’s do sell, you are being very economical with the truth……..
“We’re promoting the farmer to grow the highest-yielding variety on his farm,’ Nolan said.
Low-protein, high-starch varieties, like AC Andrew, can produce 35-per-cent higher yields than conventional varieties. So even though the farmer gets paid less per bushel, he earns more per acre.’ – Aaron
Its very kind of Edwards to re-inforce my point that Agbiotech is not the slightest bit interested in feeding the third world poor….
After all starting to take market share from the likes of Exxon Mobile will be a great deal more profitable for Agbiotech shareholders….. however I doubt pro-GM’ers will thank him for pointing it out quite so blatantly…..
Oh thats right! There is no such thing as a backyard in the hussle and bustle of UK cities. Remember Lamna old chap, some of us actually can grow our own scurvy preventing fodder because we wisely planned for backyards and hence most certainly are not slaves to the isles of Tesco and Walmart. Come to think of it, some of us also aren’t slaves to the whims of the Russian elite for our natural gas needs either. Hmmm! You have an interesting life ahead of you Lamna. Somehow I think Tesco domination of lettuce and strawberry supplies may certainly seem secondary to other concerns you will have in the next decade. Dare I say even scarier than Monsanto. Good luck old chap! I don’t envy your plight.
Oh and just for the record, the AC Andrew variety is NOT GM, merely a ethanol specifically bred wheat … skim reading these days?
‘skim reading these days?’ – Edwards
Touche! Aaron scores a point on Lamna!
Of course if everyone grew their own food, you would be out of a job…
I make that one all and time for (organic / freetrade) tea and biscuits.
Of course you can grow most things you don’t need everyday to survive in your backyard if you indeed have one (ie strawberries and lettuces), but when it comes to wheat, corn, rice and other grain staples, not a hope in hell. SO I guess I’ll never be out of a job 😉 Some would say my career path is in fact recession and depression proof … And in actual fact if I never grow a GM crop variety my plight will still be assured. If society wants a less secure supply of STAPLE food (including GM crops) supplies then that is their choice and right now they are exercising that choice. But there will be ramifications in this path too …
Another timely newspiece for you to skim read Sharky …
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How global warming goes against the grain
9:18 PM EST ON 23/02/07
MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT
From Saturday’s Globe and Mail
The place where most of the world’s people could first begin to feel the consequences of global warming may come as a surprise: in the stomach, via the supper plate.
That’s the view of a small but influential group of agricultural experts who are increasingly worried that global warming will trigger food shortages long before it causes better known but more distant threats, such as rising sea levels that flood coastal cities.
The scale of agriculture’s vulnerability to global warming was highlighted late last year when the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), an umbrella organization representing 15 of the world’s top crop research centres, issued an astounding estimate of the impact of climate change on a single crop, wheat, in one of the world’s major breadbaskets.
Researchers using computer models to simulate the weather patterns likely to exist around 2050 found that the best wheat-growing land in the wide arc of fertile farmland stretching from Pakistan through Northern India and Nepal to Bangladesh would be decimated. Much of the area would become too hot and dry for the crop, placing the food supply of 200 million people at risk.
“The impacts on agriculture in developing countries, and particularly on countries that depend on rain-fed agriculture, are likely to be devastating,” says Dr. Louis Verchot, principal ecologist at the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi, Kenya.
Wheat, the source of one-fifth of the world’s food, isn’t the only crop that could be clobbered by climate change. Cereals and corn production in Africa are at risk, as is the rice crop in much of India and Southeast Asia, according to Dr. Verchot.
In a cruel twist of fate, most of the hunger resulting from global warming is likely to be felt by those who haven’t caused the problem: the people in developing countries. At the same time, it may be a boon to agriculture in richer northern countries more responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate instability.
“With climate change, the agricultural areas in Canada, Russia and Europe will expand, while the areas suited for agriculture in the tropics will decline,” Dr. Verchot says. “Basically, the situation is that those who are well off now will be better off in the future, and those who are in problems will have greater problems.”
Agriculture is vulnerable to global warming because the world’s most widely eaten grains — corn, wheat, and rice — are exquisitely sensitive to higher temperatures. In the tropics and subtropics, many crops are already being grown just under the maximum temperatures they can tolerate.
Over the 10,000 years that humans have farmed, temperatures have been remarkably stable, at current levels or slightly cooler, and plants are finely attuned to this climate regimen.
Although it doesn’t work exactly the same for each crop, a rough rule of thumb developed by crop scientists is that, for every 1-degree Celsius increase in temperatures above the mid-30s during key stages in the growing season, such as pollination, yields fall about 10 per cent.
In the case of rice, researchers found the plants were most sensitive to higher nighttime temperatures. For crops in general, optimum growing conditions generally range from about 20 to 35 degrees, and then diminish sharply. At 40 degrees — temperatures that are now starting to occur in many areas — heat stress causes photosynthesis to shut down. Such high temperatures are starting to become more common, such as during the devastating heat wave in much of Europe in the summer of 2003 that killed tens of thousands.
Average global temperatures will likely rise between 1.1 to 6.4 degrees over the next century, according to the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, suggesting that, over most of the range of future temperatures, crops will suffer problematic declines. The panel is also warning that global warming will alter rainfall patterns, causing increasing numbers of droughts and floods.
The threatened wheat-growing area around India is known as the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Summer temperatures already sometimes reach a sizzling 45 degrees there, even though global warming is in its early days.
Agricultural researchers with the CGIAR thought the decline in wheat-growing capacity of the plain, which includes the Punjab, was so worrisome they hurriedly made the finding public, although the full study in which it is described, called “Can Wheat Beat the Heat?” is not going to be released until later this year.
That such a fabled agricultural region — source of one-sixth of the global wheat crop — could be severely affected by rising temperatures holds symbolic importance, because the Indo-Gangetic Plain represents one of the world’s most significant victories against food shortages.
The area “really is the epicentre of the green revolution in the 1970s, where wheat and rice scientists saw the first big gains that were coming out of modern plant-breeding techniques,” says Nathan Russell, a spokesman at the CGIAR, which is based in Washington.
The worry is that climate change might “erase all of these gains,” he says.
Perhaps the best-known worrier about climate change and its impact on agriculture is Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, a U.S. environmental think tank, and proponent of the view that global warming and agriculture are on a collision course.
“It certainly looms large,” Mr. Brown says of the threat posed to farming by a warmer world.
Mr. Brown says the global food larder is already so bare that the impact of global warming could be felt at any time — even as early as this summer — if it causes rising temperatures or changing precipitation patterns that lead to a crop failure in any major agricultural region.
The food surpluses of yesteryear have been nibbled down to the point where practically nothing is left in the bin for coping with even one disappointing harvest, he says.
“The unfortunate reality is that the cushion for dealing with climate change now is less than it’s been for 34 years, because in six out of the last seven years world grain production has fallen short of consumption.”
Furthermore, one of the solutions to global warming — using crops to produce clean-burning bio-fuels such as ethanol — would accentuate any harvest shortfalls because so much corn, sugar, and soybeans is now being diverted from the dinner plate to the gas tank.
The Earth Policy Institute tracks the world’s stockpile of grain — the amount available in storage after accounting for annual use and production — and says it’s down to only 57 days of consumption. This is close to the modern nadir, a period in the early 1970s of poor harvests when levels fell so low there was only enough for 56 days. That earlier period of short supply prompted a doubling of world grain prices — an indication of the possible consequences if global warming takes a bite out of harvests.
Even North America’s prime piece of agricultural real estate, the continent’s equivalent of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, is in the gunsights of climate change.
The models that simulate the likely effects of climate change show that the regions warming the most are at mid to high latitudes, and in mid-continental areas far from the moderating effects of oceans.
“Those conditions sort of describe the U.S. corn belt and the Great Plains, the wheat-growing Great Plains of the U.S. and Canada,” Mr. Brown says. “Since we are the world’s bread basket, if we start losing wheat production and corn production, it’s going to affect the entire world.”
The study released by CGIAR did find that rising temperatures would cause a remarkable northward shift of the wheat belt. The crop could theoretically be cultivated in a band across the top of North America — from Cape Harrison, about midway up the coast of Labrador, to Ketchikan, on the Alaskan panhandle, in the west.
But agricultural experts say don’t bother hoping for northern regions to become replacement granaries for losses in the tropics. Trading the rich soils of the Punjab or the U.S. Midwest for the thin soils of Labrador and the north coast of Lake Superior, in other words, is a bit like a gambler discarding an ace for a two. It’s probably an unwise bet.
“The northward movement of a climate zone into an area where crops generally have not been grown does not necessarily mean crops like wheat will do well there,” says Dr. Hans Braun, director of the global wheat program at CIMMYT, the Mexico-based crop research institute that conducted the wheat study.
Scientists have made another worrisome discovery, this time about carbon dioxide itself, the main greenhouse gas, which is vital for plant development. It had been assumed in the 1980s, based on greenhouse experiments, that an atmosphere richer in carbon dioxide would stimulate plant growth, raising some crop yields by as much as 30 per cent.
That is part of the reason why, up until now, few people worried much about agriculture and global warming. It was thought that, while climate change might wreak havoc on ice-dependent polar bears and low-lying coastal cities, it held a verdant lining for farmers.
But new research published last year based on experiments in the U.S., Japan, Switzerland and New Zealand found the beneficial effects of carbon dioxide were vastly overrated when crops were grown in the more realistic setting of open farm fields, rather than in greenhouses. Corn yields didn’t rise at all, and the rise in wheat and rice yields was less than half previous estimates.
To be sure, not everyone is convinced that crop problems are inevitable.
Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist for BMO Financial Group, says plant breeders have made remarkable advances in producing crops more tolerant of extreme conditions. “It’s quite amazing what they can do,” he says.
Mr. Coxe, an investment adviser based in Chicago who follows the commodity markets, where prices would skyrocket if food shortages develop, says last year’s corn harvest was a case in point.
Illinois, at the heart of the U.S. corn belt, was sizzled by heat and drought, but many farmers still managed a decent crop thanks to seeds bred to give plants more resistance to drought.
“Illinois was a shocker, frankly, last year, even to ag people. They were amazed,” he says.
Researchers affiliated with CGIAR have called for a massive program to develop crops that will be able to cope with global warming, and these developments may well pan out.
But if efforts fail, Mr. Brown, for one, is warning the consequences could be dire, because food supplies are essential for global stability.
Smaller grain harvests will translate into sharply higher food prices. Soaring prices, says Mr. Brown, “could lead to urban food riots in scores of countries around the world, and those food riots could lead to political instability and that political instability could begin to undermine global economic progress.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070223.wclimatestarve0224/BNStory/ClimateChange…