Category: Food Crisis
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Sunday, August 15, 2010
Global Food Prices Hysteria, Hunger and Riots Forecast / Commodities / Food Crisis
The situation with food prices in the world has been hysterical recently. In Russia, prices on food have already increased considerably as a result of the drought. The Russian government banned the export of crops, which boosted the prices on wheat and resulted in panic comments from Western experts who started predicting global hunger riots.
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Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The Global Food Crisis, Drought, Fire and Grain in Russia / Commodities / Food Crisis
Three interlocking crises are striking Russia simultaneously: the highest recorded temperatures Russia has seen in 130 years of recordkeeping; the most widespread drought in more than three decades; and massive wildfires that have stretched across seven regions, including Moscow.Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, July 17, 2010
The Food Bubble, How Wall Street Starved Millions and Got Away With It / Politics / Food Crisis
While Goldman Sachs agreed to pay $550 million to resolve a civil fraud lawsuit filed by the SEC, Goldman has not been held accountable for many of its other questionable investment practices. A new article in Harper’s Magazine examines the role Goldman played in the food crisis of 2008 when the ranks of the world’s hungry increased by 250 million. We speak to Harper’s contributing editor Frederick Kaufman.
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Friday, February 19, 2010
Cultivating Food Security in Africa / Politics / Food Crisis
By Danielle Nierenberg and Abdou Tenkouano
As hunger and drought spread across Africa, a huge effort is underway to increase yields of staple crops, such as maize, wheat, cassava, and rice.
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Friday, January 15, 2010
Food Crisis while Futures Funds Fall the Most since 1987 / Commodities / Food Crisis
Who do you believe?… Jim Rogers came out today and predicts food shortages. Jim Rogers thinks there will be food shortages because of the financial crisis. He believes the agricultural sector is low on funds and inventories are at the lowest levels in decades. An example is a recent trade that most trend followers are in is Sugar. Sugar is still 70% below it’s highs. Can you imagine the potential profits only if sugar rebounds 50%? The same can be said about gold or even coffee.
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Wednesday, January 06, 2010
On The Road To Copenhagen and A Global Food Crisis / Politics / Food Crisis
Does the following analysis sound familiar?
“A weakening U.S. dollar is putting upward pressure on oil prices. The shock produced chaos in the West. In the United States, the retail price of a gallon of gasoline rose 50%, consumption dropped by 6.1% from September to February. Underscoring the interdependence of the world societies and economies, oil-importing nations in the noncommunist industrial world saw sudden inflation and economic recession. The energy crisis led to greater interest in renewable energy and spurred research in solar power and wind power as well as increased interest in mass transit.”
Friday, December 25, 2009
Global Food Crisis 2010 Means Financial Armageddon / Commodities / Food Crisis
If you read any economic, financial, or political analysis for 2010 that doesn’t mention the food shortage looming next year, throw it in the trash, as it is worthless. There is overwhelming, undeniable evidence that the world will run out of food next year. When this happens, the resulting triple digit food inflation will lead panicking central banks around the world to dump their foreign reserves to appreciate their currencies and lower the cost of food imports, causing the collapse of the dollar, the treasury market, derivative markets, and the global financial system. The US will experience economic disintegration.
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Sunday, November 22, 2009
Asia's Rice Culture Threatened / Commodities / Food Crisis
“Every really successful system of agriculture…..must be based on the long view, otherwise the day of reckoning is certain.” [Sir Albert Howard & Yashwant Wad; The Waste Products of Agriculture; 1931; page 3]
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Saturday, September 12, 2009
The Global Food Crisis Revisted / Commodities / Food Crisis
Sixteen months ago Costco and Sam’s Club stores in the U.S. limited how much rice customers could buy at one time, while ‘food riots’ erupted in a number of countries as food prices spiraled upward. Concerns about food supply and distribution spread worldwide.
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Tuesday, June 30, 2009
The Real Crisis is Beginning to Unfold… and It’s Not Financial Part2 / Commodities / Food Crisis
In my earlier article, I outlined the economic backdrop that will push agriculture and food prices higher in the not so distant future. If you missed that essay, you can review it here.
To rehash, we’ve added roughly three billion people to the earth’s population since the ‘60s. We accommodated this growth by using fertilizers, irrigation, and other systems that have deleterious effects on land overtime. As a consequence, worldwide arable land per person has essentially halved from 0.42 hectares per person in 1961 to 0.23 hectares per person in 2002.
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Monday, June 22, 2009
The Real Crisis is Beginning to Unfold… and It’s Not Financial Pt. 1 / Commodities / Food Crisis
The real crisis is coming… and it’s coming fast.
Indeed, it started last year, 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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Thursday, February 12, 2009
Global Food Crisis as Technological Advances / Politics / Food Crisis
By 2050, according to the World Bank (WB), global population is expected to increase by 3 billion people. The global population is always growing (I'm almost done being Captain Obvious), and a direct result of that growth comes the WB's expectation that food demand will double by 2030 from current levels. While more people are eating more food, farmland remains finite.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, February 09, 2009
Catastrophic Fall in 2009 Global Food Production / Commodities / Food Crisis
After reading about the droughts in two major agricultural countries, China and Argentina, I decided to research the extent other food producing nations were also experiencing droughts. This project ended up taking a lot longer than I thought. 2009 looks to be a humanitarian disaster around much of the worldTo understand the depth of the food Catastrophe that faces the world this year, consider the graphic below depicting countries by USD value of their agricultural output, as of 2006.
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Friday, May 30, 2008
The McDonalds Falling US Dollar Menu / Companies / Food Crisis
McDonalds Corp (MCD) held its annual meeting last Thursday, May 22 nd , and stated it has no plans to tamper with its highly successful dollar menu, which accounts for 14% of the company's sales. However, The Golden Arches must wish that its dollar menu was on the McGold standard instead of being based on a currency that has fallen 40% in the last 6 years. That dollar decline is putting the squeeze on the Oak Brook, Illinois-based firm, as agricultural input prices are surging while consumer food prices are only up about 4% since last year.Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Global Food Shock / Commodities / Food Crisis
As an American, I've taken for granted that I can get just about any food I want at the supermarket. In fact, the number of choices are dizzying. I never really thought about the tenuous chain between myself and my food. Less than 1% of the U.S. population is employed in agriculture, and 40% of these farmers are 55 or older. 1 The chain of transportation that brings goods to the stores is tenuous and depends on a few key railways and truck drivers. Supermarkets could experience spot shortages if the proposed trucker strike gains momentum or more drivers quit the business.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Global Food Riots Protend Trouble for the US Dollar / Commodities / Food Crisis
On a trip to Canada recently I couldn't help but notice the extensive media coverage paid to the worldwide food price inflation, as well as the riots breaking out in many countries over food shortages.
And of course the list of reasons given by the so-called ‘economists' interviewed are completely devoid of the one all important reason fueling what may arguably become an epic food price inflation: the declining value of the US dollar.
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Friday, May 02, 2008
Rice Prices Fall Sharply After Food Crisis Rally on Government Export Controls / Commodities / Food Crisis
The price of rice finally started to moderate this week, with rice futures sinking for a fifth straight day. Rice has retreated 11.6% on the Chicago Board of Trade since hitting an all-time high last Thursday.
But this decline is likely just the start for rice prices, which have been artificially inflated by government controls and may continue to plummet by as much as 20%.
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Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Rationing- Food for Thought / Politics / Food Crisis
‘Food, glorious food' conjures up the image of Oliver Twist and his brother orphans wailing over a shortage of porridge in Dickensian England.
Last week, a food shortage became an American reality. Costco Warehouse, Wal-Mart and other food stores limited the purchase of certain food staples in bulk form. Purchases of rice in California and of oil and flour in Queens were restricted. Customers were angry, voicing strong concern and questioning whether the situation would worsen.
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Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Food Price Inflation, Monetary Policy & Financial Markets / Stock-Markets / Food Crisis
The second is by good friend and Maine fishing buddy David Kotok, the chief investment officer of Cumberland Asset Managers ( www.cumber.com ). He was recently in Africa where he met with the head of the central bank of a small country with headline inflation of 10%. The problem is that "core inflation" is 5% and food inflation is 15%, yet accounts for 50% of the GDP. He asked a group of financial thinkers (including your humble analyst) to ponder what that central banker should do. Do you set high rates and target overall inflation or set lower rates and not worry about food inflation.Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Global Food Price Crisis Threatens Worldwide Starvation / Politics / Food Crisis
Rising worldwide food prices are resulting in shortages, riots and protests, promises by governments to expand food aid, expressions of concern by international bodies like the World Bank, and stress on household budgets even in developed countries like the U.S. Did this just “happen” or is there a plan?Read full article... Read full article...