Thursday, August 23, 2012

US drought shows us we are not exempt from a growing world food crisis





Food crisis caused by drought may hit US very Soon,IFPRIs Fan says: Biofuel production from corn must be stopped to secure food supplies, Shenggen Fan, director general at the institute, said in a Bloomberg Television interview today. Higher corn prices will drive up meat costs in Asia and accelerate global food inflation, Fan said. Countries including India and China must release their food stockpiles to help the poor cope with rising costs, he said. Governments must also refrain from imposing export bans, he said.

The US is not exempt, we are as susceptible as the rest of the world. Much of the rest of the world has been dealing with food shortages and food wars for years and for many reasons. Mother nature seems to even be turning on the US who until now seems to have been able to beat everything but you do not mess with mother nature and we have. As usual the poor go down first and the better off eventually get hit. We are beginning to get ours.

In the growing fight to secure their own food supplies after world wide droughts and other natural phenomena you know exports will be slowed down if not halted and the Food Wars long in the making will get much worse.

Could we really run out of food? It is right now hitting the United States!

Let's just go back 4 years, you would swear this is todays conversation but every situation the world is facing right now we were fighting 4 years ago. The problems are not new, they have not gone away they only continue to multiply and get much worse.

Growing world water wars, growing food wars, and a growing world war! World Bank President Robert Zoellick says the escalating price of food is stunting opportunities and creating hardship for people in poor countries. The international lending organization says it aims to double agricultural business investment this year and called on rich countries to help offset the rising cost of food. Speaking to reporters ahead of the World Bank/IMF meetings this weekend, Zoellick said World Bank members must step up efforts to stave off what he called a "growing emergency" in developing countries. VOA's Mil Arcega reports. The world Bank says Sub-Saharan countries will be among the hardest hit by the skyrocketing cost of food.

Speaking to reporters, World Bank President Robert Zoellick says the situation in the world's poorest countries makes the financial problems in developed nations seem trivial in comparison. "While many are worrying about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs - and it's getting more and more difficult everyday,” he said. World Bank studies show the price of wheat has more than doubled in the past year, while the price of rice has risen at least 75 percent. Zoellick says the upcoming spring meetings by members of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank must do more than recognize the crisis. He called on rich countries to act quickly to expand safety net programs for poor nations and provide at least $500 million to meet their emergency food needs.

"This is not just about meals foregone today or about increasing social unrest. This is about lost learning potential for children and adults in the future - stunted intellectual and physical growth. Even more, we estimate that the effects of this food crisis on poverty reduction worldwide is on the order of seven lost years," he added. Food riots have already erupted in developing nations where people spend as much as 60 percent of their income on food. The U.N. and World Bank blame the rising cost of food on a combination of factors including climate change, higher energy prices and the growing demand for biofuels.

Demand for ethanol and other biofuels is a "significant contributor" to soaring food prices around the world, World Bank President Robert Zoellick says. Droughts, financial market speculators and increased demand for food have also helped create "a perfect storm" that has boosted those prices, he says. The soaring costs of food and fuel led to riots in Haiti and Egypt and a general strike in Burkina Faso this week. Skyrocketing food prices are topping the agenda this weekend of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual spring meetings in Washington. Zoellick held up a bag of rice during a news conference Thursday to illustrate the severity of the food crisis.

"In Bangladesh a two-kilogram bag of rice ... now consumes about half of the daily income of a poor family," he said. "The price of a loaf of bread ... has more than doubled. Poor people in Yemen are now spending more than a quarter of their incomes just on bread." And Zoellick says prices for basic staples will remain high for an extended period of time.

* "I think you have a perfect storm of things coming together," he tells NPR's Steve Inskeep in an interview. "You have high energy prices. You have the increase in demand from some of the developing countries. ... As the Indian commerce minister said to me, going from one meal a day to two meals a day for 300 million people increases demand a lot. Bio fuels boosting food prices

6 years ago: Perfect storm no kidding? 40 countries face food shortages worldwide Darfur crisis most pressing humanitarian problem 9 October 2006, Rome -- Forty countries are facing food emergencies and require external assistance, with the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan still the most pressing humanitarian problem, according to an FAO report released today. In Darfur, “the already precarious food supply situation may worsen if deteriorating security disrupts the main harvest due to start in the coming few weeks,” FAO’s Crop Prospects and Food Situation report warns. Close monitoring of global food situation needed. Prospects for the 2006 world cereal harvest have deteriorated further since July, according to the report. Exceptionally hot and dry weather is adversely affecting the wheat crops in Australia, Argentina and Brazil, while drier-than-normal weather in parts of South Asia is also raising some concern for the second 2006 paddy crop.


FAO’s forecast for world cereal production in 2006 now stands at about 2 013 million tonnes, almost 8 million tonnes down since the previous report in July and 1.6 percent less than the 2005 level. “The main concern is the declining stocks and whether supplies will be adequate to meet demand without world prices surging to even higher levels,” the report says.

Africa: While the situation in Darfur remains the most critical, elsewhere in Eastern Africa, despite improved prospects for the 2006/07 crops in some areas, floods, erratic rains and conflict-related displacement have negatively affected the food situation. Most of the region’s pastoral areas have yet to recover from the successive poor rains that severely affected livestock and resulted in acute food shortages and migration of thousands of people in search of water and food.


In Somalia, a severe food crisis is expected to persist throughout the country for the rest of 2006, affecting at least 1.8 million people. In spite of a satisfactory food supply situation, serious localized food insecurity due mostly to access problems is reported in several West African countries, including Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. Emergency food assistance continues to be needed in Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone due to large numbers of internally displaced people (IDPs) and refugees.

Asia: Reduced food aid and crop damage due to floods in July has increased the severity of food insecurity in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. In Timor-Leste, hundreds of thousands of people affected by civil unrest still need food assistance. Over 45 000 people affected by drought and floods in Nepal have received relief assistance. Unprecedented floods caused by several weeks of torrential rain have left millions of people in India and Pakistan homeless and in need of food assistance.


In China, the worst drought in 50 years has affected more than 3 million hectares of crops in Sichuan and Chongqing.In Iraq, conflict and insecurity continues to displace hundreds of thousands people. Drought and unusually high temperatures have compromised food production in Afghanistan and Armenia. In addition, increased military operations and conflict over the past year in Afghanistan have further exacerbated food insecurity in the country.


Central America: Food aid is still being provided to some vulnerable rural families affected by hurricanes during the second half of 2005 in El Salvador and Guatemala. It is also being distributed to populations without access to food in Haiti, Nicaragua and Honduras. 40 countries and growing face food shortages worldwide I could not find todays numbers but know everything is getting worse around the world you can just imagine.

* The Future! Growing Food wars, growing water wars, Growing environmental crisis, growing future wars, You see what is happening not just in the United States but around with an environment running amok, seemingly rebelling against us. You know our current war situations around the world and the growing threat of another world war starting in the middle east. I'm not a pessimist, I am a prepared realist! Things are not getting better but in every regard they continue to get worse and we will deal with it accordingly.

James Joiner
Gardner Ma
http://anaverageamericanpatriot.blogspot.com



6 comments:

Ranch Chimp said...

Absolutely Jim, as far as these problemo's being "nothing new" ... even I remember writing back 4 year's ago when I first started this blog of many of these crisis's (as well as stating in 2008, that we will be dealing with the same problem's we have then in 2012, which of course, we are, so what really changed, beside's the weather? ... not much of a damn thing, even the poltician's are still feeding the same shit they been feeding for the last decade or more, just faster with more abundance : ) which so many of us were talking about for year's, as well as this global warming, which been sugar coated by the Bush Administration into being now called climatic change ... their goddamn bloody right though as far as there being climate change, they can bloody well bank on that! , even whale's in the artic circle are threatened today with total extinction Jim (according to the news this week). This such as so much other stuff was in clear view year's back, but so many just flip the "off" switch, and instead talk about more "cupcake" stuff, ignoring the reality that's clear as day. Food, really is a big issue, and oddly according to a report I read in a local paper the other day (yep, I still read the newspaper ... I'm an old fart at heart : ) American's waste roughly over half of the food that we have ... imagine that! And these drought's will come and go over various region's of the globe annually, meaning economic spat's of crisis here and there, lost revenue's, etc, etc ... and still letting the commodities/ stock exchange's dictate it all ... and frankly Jim, not much of a damn thing is being done, instead, we are wasting our time, trying to see what Mitt Romney's tax return's were, or if our President has a birth certificate, or what some jackasses view/ definition of rape is.

Enough from me Jim ... good posting!

Demeur said...

I was looking to do a post about this myself. In trying to get a world perspective on this I came across this graphic chart from University College in London. Interesting eye opener. Hope the link works.

http://tinyurl.com/yrdkl6

jmsjoin said...

Yeah RC these Political children are still playing the fiddle while Rome burns. We have major shit hitting the fan and getting ready to hit the fan and these idiots continue to play with each other.

We and the world are in real trouble and these idiots only have time to screw with each other. Russia and Chine know it and are positioning themselves to take full advantage of it.

And what do they do? Man we are failing and I thank the Repugs for it and they love that they made Obama and us fail because they think they are getting and they are not.

jmsjoin said...

I saw that damn it and it is something else I let go so thanks Demeur.

RC you might find a look interesting.Global Drought Monitor

jmsjoin said...

Can you believe this shit? Texas Republican Judge who said if Obama is reelected he could trigger a civil war I hate to say it but because of pissed off Repugs I agree!

Demeur said...

You think they need a rubber room for that judge? I say let Texas secede from the union and watch as the good ole boys come after him.