Category: Food Crisis
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Tuesday, January 24, 2012
World Food Supply Coming Global Angst / Commodities / Food Crisis
Our agriculture system is concentrated on producing a very few staple crops - there is a very serious lack of crop diversity. Corn, wheat, rice and soy are the main staples and production is oftentimes half a world away from where the majority of the crop would be consumed. The world's extreme poor exist almost exclusively on what is a 'buy today, eat today' plant based diet - wheat, corn, soy or rice provide the bulk of their calories.
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Saturday, January 14, 2012
Food Provisions Shortage Sparked Arab Spring / Politics / Food Crisis
In 1798 32 year-old British economist Malthus anonymously published "An Essay on the Principle of Population" and in it he argued that human population's increase geometrically (1, 2, 4, 16 etc.) while their food supply can only increase arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4 etc.).
"The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man". Thomas Robert Malthus
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Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Green Revolution Food Crisis, A Deeper Shade Of Brown / Politics / Food Crisis
There was nothing green about the first Green Revolution of the late 1950s and the 1960s. It was brown oil-coloured from start to finish. World population skyrocketed during the last 35 years of the 20th century, adding as many as 110 million more mouths to feed every 12 months in the early 1980s, before tapering down to the present approximate 70 - 75 million per year. Food crisis remains a real threat.
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Thursday, August 04, 2011
The Food Crisis War Endgame / Stock-Markets / Food Crisis
Nothing gives better proof of a sure and certain, rapidly growing global food shortage than the simplest look at how commodity markets have been responding to the US debt crisis, the coming devaluation of the US dollar, and the merited exposure of Barack Obama as a loser. Stripping away the short covering, the dollar crisis, inflation fear and all the rest, we find that food prices are resisting a lot better than oil prices, to the rising likelihood of recession in the western world, and maybe also global economic recession.
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Tuesday, July 05, 2011
Why Food Prices are Rising so Fast? / Politics / Food Crisis
If you do much grocery shopping, you have probably noticed that the cost of food has been rising at a very brisk pace over the past year. So why are food prices rising so fast? According to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, inflation is still very low and the economy is improving. So what is going on here? When I go to the grocery store these days, there are very few things that I will buy unless they are on sale. In fact, I have noticed that many of the new "sale prices" are the old regular prices. Other items have had their packages reduced in size in order to hide the price increases. But with millions of American families just barely scraping by as it is, what is going to happen if food prices keep rising this rapidly?
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Sunday, July 03, 2011
Getting Used to Life without Food, Wall Street, BP, Bio-ethanol and Death of Millions / Commodities / Food Crisis
My late grandfather, a man of sturdy Norwegian-American farm stock, who later became a newspaper editor and political activist during the First World War, used to say, 'A man can get used to pretty much anything with time, except dying...and even that with some practice.' Well, as fate has it, it seems we, the vast majority of the human race, are about to test that adage in regard to the availability of our daily bread itself.
Food is one of those funny things it's hard to live without. We all tend to take it for granted that our local supermarket will continue to offer whatever we wish, in abundance, at affordable prices or nearly so. Yet living without adequate food is the growing prospect facing hundreds of millions, if not billions, of us over the coming years.
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Sunday, May 01, 2011
Horrific Global Food Crisis is Looming / Politics / Food Crisis
Michael Snyder writes: In case you haven't noticed, the world is on the verge of a horrific global food crisis. At some point, this crisis will affect you and your family. It may not be today, and it may not be tomorrow, but it is going to happen. Crazy weather and horrifying natural disasters have played havoc with agricultural production in many areas of the globe over the past couple of years. Meanwhile, the price of oil has begun to skyrocket.
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Saturday, April 23, 2011
Impact of Chinese and Indians Climbing the Protein Ladder / Commodities / Food Crisis
Over the next fifty years, as we add another 4.5 billion people to the world's population, global demand for food will increase almost 70% if population growth predictions are correct.
Already approximately 1 billion people go to bed hungry each night. Somewhere in the world someone starves to death every 3.6 seconds - most are children under the age of five.
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Friday, April 15, 2011
Biofuel Pushes Millions of People Into Poverty / Politics / Food Crisis
The growing production of bioethanol increases the shortage of food. Corn, sugar, other types of farm crops are required for the production of the biofuel. In addition, the growth of sowing for the green fuel reduces the square of lands designated for food cultures, which leads to smaller harvest and higher prices on food.
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Friday, March 11, 2011
Libya Food Aid and the Global Food Crisis / Politics / Food Crisis
The Libyan food and refugee crisis is a dramatic reminder, and part of the world food crisis that is specially powerful and deep-rooted in the Arab world. Simply because of this, events are driven further and faster than many persons appreciate at first glance, and underline that world attention to the fundamental importance of food shortage must and will grow.
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Sunday, March 06, 2011
Global Food Prices Panic? / Politics / Food Crisis
Growing demand, falling production, a market based upon speculation. Global food prices have increased for the 8th consecutive month. Most commodity groups have risen. The ones who are going to pay the invoice are the world's poor, as per the humanitarian catastrophe looming in Somalia. The world can no longer feed itself under this model.
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Friday, March 04, 2011
Who’s Really Affected By Rising Food Prices / Commodities / Food Crisis
It is certainly old news around here that terrifying inflation in prices, thanks to the monstrous inflation in the money supply caused by the Federal Reserve creating So Freaking Much Money (SFMM) for the last few decades, has caused me to venture to that dangerous precipice between being merely weird and obnoxious, to being a raving lunatic screaming from the rooftop “We’re freaking doomed!”
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Saturday, February 26, 2011
Economic Booms, Busts, and Food Prices / Economics / Food Crisis
Maybe you have heard about rising food prices. It is happening all over the world. We hear of Third World rural populations that are trapped by rising food prices.
Why are food prices rising? Simple: because urban people in formerly Third World nations are getting richer. India and China are the obvious examples. As these economies are freed from the regulations that once burdened them, the growing urban middle class bids up the price of food. People with money in their pockets like to eat more and better food. In the bidding war between rural people with little capital and therefore low incomes vs. urban residents with more capital and higher incomes, rural people lose.
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Friday, February 25, 2011
Global Food Crisis, Not Only Speculation / Commodities / Food Crisis
THE BIG PICTURE - Recent massive food commodity price rises, with occasional day trade plunges on the back of market rumours, price chart gazing or analysts' theories – followed by a return to the growth trend - is taken by many as a key proof of the Ponzi scheme new economy. The food commodity sell-off through February 21-23, 2011 is a typical example, explained by market watchers as due to speculation by traders that riots in North Africa and the Middle East could cut government spending and curb food demand from the Arab world, which buys about 33 percent of global shipments.
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Monday, February 21, 2011
The Real Crisis That Will Soon Hit the U.S. / Politics / Food Crisis
Phoenix Capital Research writes: Forget stocks, the real crisis is coming… and it’s coming fast.
Indeed, it first hit in 2008 though it was almost entirely off the radar of the American public. While all eyes were glued to the carnage in the stock market and brokerage account balances, a far more serious crisis began to unfold rocking 30 countries around the globe.
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Monday, February 21, 2011
Plastic Bottles to Push Food Prices Even Higher / Commodities / Food Crisis
Polypropylene, one of the most popular materials used in the production of various packages, has increased in price by 133 percent during the recent two years. Prices on plastic packages continue to grow still, which will eventually affect consumers in a number of industries, including the food sector.
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Thursday, February 17, 2011
Is The World Really Running Out Of Food, Water And Oil? / Politics / Food Crisis
Everywhere you look today the mainstream news is talking about shortages. Authorities all over the globe are boldly proclaiming that the world is rapidly running out of food, water and oil. So are these doomsayers right? Well, it must be noted that some of the most famous "prophets of doom" of the past several decades have seen their predictions fail spectacularly. For example, in his infamous 1968 book entitled "The Population Bomb", Paul Ehrlich made the following statement: "I don't see how India could possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980."
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Thursday, February 10, 2011
China Drought Global Food Crisis to Trigger Many More Egypts / Commodities / Food Crisis
The Chinese government has reportedly decided to spend $1 billion to battle the drought plaguing huge areas in the north, as wheat prices continued their climb and the UN warned of serious consequences for the winter harvest.
The drought is the worst in six decades in many areas, and has left a swathe of grain-producing regions reeling from a lack of any significant rainfall in more than three months.
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Friday, February 04, 2011
How Banks and Investors Are Starving the Third World Into Political Crisis / Politics / Food Crisis
“What for a poor man is a crust, for a rich man is a securitized asset class.” --Futures trader Ann Berg, quoted in the UK Guardian
Underlying the sudden, volatile uprising in Egypt and Tunisia is a growing global crisis sparked by soaring food prices and unemployment. The Associated Press reports that roughly 40 percent of Egyptians struggle along at the World Bank-set poverty level of under $2 per day. Analysts estimate that food price inflation in Egypt is currently at an unsustainable 17 percent yearly. In poorer countries, as much as 60 to 80 percent of people's incomes go for food, compared to just 10 to 20 percent in industrial countries. An increase of a dollar or so in the cost of a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread for Americans can mean starvation for people in Egypt and other poor countries.
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Saturday, January 22, 2011
Quantitative Easing Is Causing Food Prices to Skyrocket / Commodities / Food Crisis
As I've previously noted, interest rates have risen both times after the Fed implemented quantitative easing.
Graham Summers points out that food prices have also skyrocketed both times:
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