Abstract: Our current industrialized food system is not sustainable due to it's over dependence on non-renewable fossil fuel energy and it's degradation of the natural systems on which it depends for its existence.
If action to change these aspects of the food system are not taken, convening resource depletion and degradation will cause the food system to collapse.
Our food system is the result of the “green revolution” which created greatly increased crop yields by using large amounts of fossil fuel energy in the form of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, petroleum based agrochemicals, diesel powered machinery, refrigeration, irrigation and an oil dependent distribution system.
This system destroys biodiversity, contributes to global climate change and degrades soil and water quality.
The availability of decades of cheap fossil fuel energy has allowed the food system to become dependent on finite resources that are rapidly being depleted.
Due to the constraints of the first and second laws of thermodynamics this system can not be maintained in its current form.
Essential components of the current system such as synthetic nitrogen fertilizers which require natural gas as a feedstock and oil dependent distribution exemplify the fragile nature of the food system.
A wide scale conversion to low energy, ecologically sustainable agriculture must be implemented to avoid food system collapse and future food supply shortages.
Energy Bulletin 11 December 2005
The Holstein 'super cow'
In a little over a generation, dairy farming has been transformed from a natural process into an industrial operation.
In that time the health benefits of milk have been systematically eroded, and the role of the dairy cow has changed from one of generous companion to abused and over-exploited slave.
In the 1960s, the average yield of a British dairy cow was a little over 3,500 litres a year.
Today the average is almost double this, with some high-production herds notching up 10,000 litres or more.
The cow is able to transfer only a fixed amount of vitamins to her milk.
The greater her milk volume, the more dilute its vitamin content, particularly for vitamin E and beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A.
The 'unimproved' cows may have put less milk in the tank at the end of every day, but while they were grazing fresh pasture it was milk packed with nutrients.
The modern Holstein super-cow is little more than a walking milk generator.
To achieve these levels of output, the cattle breeders have selected from animals with over-active pituitary glands.
The pituitary not only secretes hormones that stimulate the production of milk, it also produces growth hormones.
These inevitably turn up in the milk. High levels of pituitary hormones have been linked to the formation of tumours ...
We Want Real Food Constable 2006, p.126'Super-dairy' ... triggers 14,000 planning objections
Helen Browning ... the war against titan farms
Dairy products and breast cancer?
Meat, dairy products, sugar may up breast cancer risk
Do dairy products cause cancer?
GM corn being developed for fuel instead of food
US farmers are growing the first corn plants genetically modified for the specific purpose of putting more ethanol in gas tanks rather than producing more food ...
The food industry also opposes the new GM product because, although not inedible, it is unsuitable for use in the manufacture of food products that commonly use corn.
Farmers growing corn for human consumption are also concerned about cross-contamination.
The corn, developed by a branch of the Swiss pesticide firm Syngenta, contains an added gene for an enzyme (amylase) that speeds the breakdown of starches into ethanol ...
In its promotional material Syngenta says it will allow farmers to produce more ethanol from the corn while using less energy and water ...
Gdn 15 Aug 2011 Biofuels Eating the Future Log GM
Biofuels land grab in Kenya's Tana Delta fuels talk of war
Gamba Manyatta village is empty now, weeds already roping around the few skeletal hut frames still standing ...
The eviction of the villagers to make way for a sugar cane plantation is part of a wider land grab going on in Kenya's Tana Delta that is not only pushing people off plots they have farmed for generations, stealing their water resources and raising tribal tensions that many fear will escalate into war, but also destroying a unique wetland habitat that is home to hundreds of rare and spectacular birds.
The irony is that most of the land is being taken for allegedly environmental reasons – to allow private companies to grow water-thirsty sugar cane and jatropha for the biofuels so much in demand in the west, where green legislation, designed to ease carbon dioxide emissions, is requiring they are mixed with petrol and diesel ...
Gdn 02 July 2011 Biofuels Eating the Future LogBiofuels
Global Land Grabs: The New Colonialism?
International land deals
Food price explosion 'will devastate the world's poor'
Angel Gurría, secretary-general of the OECD, said that any further increase in global food prices, which have risen by 40% over the past year, will have a "devastating" impact on the world's poor and is likely to lead to political unrest, famine and starvation ...
The report predicted global agricultural production would grow at an annual rate of 1.7% a year over the next decade, compared with 2.6% the past 10 years.
"Slower growth is expected for most crops, especially oilseeds and coarse grains," it said. "The global slowdown in projected yield improvements of important crops will continue to exert pressure on international prices."
The slowdown in production comes as new forecasts predict the global population will climb to 9.2 billion by 2050, compared with the current level of 6.9 billion.
The FAO said agricultural production would have to increase by 70% to match the expected increase ...
Gdn 17 June 2011 Eating the Future Log
Globalization Home PageFood security
Cheap meat, MRSA and deadly greed
It might seem strange that governments all over the world are taking such a gamble with public health, in the face of the best scientific advice.
But Big Agriculture has armies of lobbyists and open chequebooks, while the people trying to protect the public have only the facts and reason and truth on their side.
The squandering of life-saving antibiotics is one example of a bigger trend hijacking global politics.
Small groups of rich people, determined to maximise profits, are buying or bamboozling politicians into serving their interests and into ignoring the interests of the vast majority of the population.
This is the trend that is making it so hard to (say) reregulate the banks to prevent another global crash, or prevent the unravelling of the climate ...
Ind 17 June 2011 Eating the Future LogRoutine use of vital antibiotics on farms threatens human health
Intensive farming and market forces blamed for reckless practices
The world cannot afford to ignore this biological menace
Hedge funds 'grabbing land' in Africa
... the Oakland Institute said hedge funds and other foreign firms had acquired large swathes of African land, often without proper contracts.
It said the acquisitions had displaced millions of small farmers.
Foreign firms farm the land to consolidate their hold over global food markets, the report said.
They also use land to "make room" for export commodities such as biofuels and cut flowers.
"This is creating insecurity in the global food system that could be a much bigger threat than terrorism," the report said.
The Oakland Institute said it released its findings after studying land deals in Ethiopia, Tanzania, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Mali and Mozambique.
It said hedge funds and other speculators had, in 2009 alone, bought or leased nearly 60m hectares of land in Africa - an area the size of France.
"The same financial firms that drove us into a global recession by inflating the real estate bubble through risky financial manoeuvres are now doing the same with the world's food supply," the report said ...
BBC NEWS 08 June 2011 Hedge Funds SpeculationUS universities in Africa 'land grab'
Oakland Institute
Food prices set to stay high
Global food prices will remain high and volatile throughout this year and into next despite record food production.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) twice yearly Food Outlook analysis says rising demand will absorb most of the higher output.
It says its index of food prices in May was at 232, only six points below February's record high of 237.
The FAO says higher food prices could mean poor countries will see food import costs rise by up to 30%.
That would mean them spending 18% of their total import bills on food this year, compared with the world average of 7% ...
BBC NEWS 07 June 2011 Eating the Future Home Page Gordon Gecko Pawns or Players?Rising food prices increase squeeze on poor
Why food prices and fuel costs are going up
Guatemala pays high price for failures of global food system
Guatemala is a prime example, according to a new report by Oxfam, of how the global food system is failing ...
Gdn 31 May 2011 Globalization Log
A utopian experiment Corporate Sociopathy Global Risks 2011 Social Darwinism The Third MeltdownThe System's bust
Agriculture is crying out for attention from the G8
... one small benefit of the otherwise alarming increase in global food prices over the past three years has been that attention is now being paid to how to increase food yields and agricultural productivity in those parts of the world still awaiting their equivalent of Asia's green revolution.
The G8 and G20 agreed in 2009 to commit $22bn to increasing food security, but so far only half of that sum has been spent or is on course to be disbursed ...
Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of the [Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation] foundation, said in an interview with the Guardian this week that Bill Gates's speech was meant to signal the start of a major push on agriculture during this year.
"There is a clear understanding that, after decades of neglect, agriculture is on the global agenda," she said.
"America and the rest of the developed world have an important role to play, because investments in agriculture have high returns." ...
Gdn 26 May 2011 FYB Log Globalization LogBill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Climate shifts 'hit global wheat yields'
Shifts in the climate over the past three decades have been linked to a 5.5% decline in global wheat production, a study has suggested.
A team of US scientists assessed the impact of changes to rainfall and temperature on four major food crops: wheat, rice, corn and soybeans.
Climate trends in some countries were big enough to wipe out gains from other factors, such as technology ...
BBC NEWS 06 May 2011 Eating the Future Log Fire & Floods Food CrunchClimate Trends and Global Crop Production Since 1980
... is food speculation really bad? We did not, for example, thank the traders for cutting the cost of food and other commodities in 2009.Starvation isn't the fault of food traders
Goldman Sachs: doing God's work 'smoothing price movements'.
The best objective evidence – backed by the World Bank and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation – is that they merely exaggerate existing trends, adding to volatility.
Remember that speculators are just as adept at making money from falling prices as from ramping them up.
Yet think again about the dynamics. If, say, a commodities firm bought wheat a couple of years ago when prices were (relatively) depressed, and they now start to sell the stuff because they sense the end of the commodities boom – as Goldman Sachs declared last week – then they are actually smoothing price movements ...
Ind 20 Apr 2011
There are mounting fears around the world that the growing use of "neonicotinoid" pesticides, which work by poisoning the nervous system of insects, could explain why bees and other pollinating insects are in such dramatic decline in Britain, Europe and the US, where the insecticide is widely used.Defra orders inquiry into pesticide fears over bees
The official British Government position has been that the insecticide is safe when used correctly - but Professor Robert Watson, the chief scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), has now initiated his own inquiry, I can reveal, because of concerns about the alleged effects on bees.
Neonicotinoids, which provide a £500m-a-year business for Bayer, the German chemical giant, contain compounds that do not simply sit on the surface of a plant, but are taken up into every part of it, including the pollen and nectar, where they can be absorbed by foraging bees and other pollinating insects.
Two independent studies have recently found that neonicotinoids can significantly weaken honeybees and make them more prone to infections.
Professor Watson said that he is so concerned about reports on neonicotinoids, he has asked officials to investigate the research and report back on the strength of evidence linking the pesticides with the demise of bees.
Julian Little, a spokesman for Bayer CropScience UK, said that both studies were carried out in the laboratory and may have little relevance to what happens with bees in the wild.
In January, i revealed the leading US government bee researcher, Dr Jeffery Pettis, had found imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid made by Bayer, made honeybees more susceptible to disease.
i 29 Mar 2011
Biofuel policy is causing starvation, says Nestlé boss
"Today, 35 per cent of US corn goes into biofuel," the Nestlé chairman told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York yesterday.
"From an environmental point of view this is a nonsense, but more so when we are running out of food in the rest of the world.
"It is absolutely immoral to push hundreds of millions of people into hunger and into extreme poverty because of such a policy, so I think – I insist – no food for fuel."
Corn prices almost doubled in the year to February, though they have fallen from their peak in the pastfew weeks.
Anger at rising food prices contributed to protests across the Middle East, and rising commodities costs were among the factors pushing UK inflation to 4.4 per cent in February, according to figures out yesterday.
US exports account for about 60 per cent of the world's corn supply. Demand has surged as more people join the middle classes in emerging economies such as China and India, not just because these new consumers demand more food made from corn, but also because demand for meat has increased and livestock farmers need to buy more feed ...
... lobbying has fallen on deaf ears in the US, however. Ethanol production from corn is heavily subsidised, with output running at more than 13.5 billion gallons annually ...
Mr Brabeck-Letmathe was chief executive as well as chairman of Nestlé until splitting the roles in 2008. He is also on the board of luxury goods maker L'Oréal, the investment bank Credit Suisse and oil company ExxonMobil ...
Independent 23 Mar 2011
Is the World Producing Enough Food?
So Much for Market Efficiency
Food inflation has returned for many of the same old reasons: the demand for meat has returned with the recovery of middle-income economies; the price of oil is up, which both raises the cost of food production and transport, and stokes the diversion of food crops into biofuel production.
Speculators are taking pounds of flesh in the commodity exchanges. And, of course, freak weather has disrupted production in key export zones.
But what makes the weather matter? This is hardly the first La Niña weather cycle, after all. Every human civilization has understood the need to plan for climate’s vicissitudes.
Over the centuries, societies developed the tools of grain stores, crop diversification and "moral economies" to guarantee the poor access to food in times of crisis.
Global economic liberalization discarded these buffers in favor of lean lines of trade.
Safety nets and storage became inefficient and redundant – if crops failed in one part of the world, the market would always provide from another.
Climate change turns this thinking on its head.
A shock in one corner of the world now ripples to every other. The economic architecture that promised efficiency has instead made us all more vulnerable.
Little has changed in this crucial respect since the last food crisis. But this isn’t simply a rerun of 2008.
While the global recession has turned a corner for some people in some countries, unemployment remains stubbornly high for many, and hunger has trailed it.
There are 75 million people more undernourished now than in 2008.
At the same time, governments are cutting back on entitlement programs for the poor as part of austerity drives to fight inflation.
Urban families are unable to afford food and fuel, and governments are unresponsive to their plight.
Under such circumstances, as Egyptians know too well, food prices and climate change are revolution’s kindling.
Raj Patel, a fellow at the Institute for Food and Development Policy, is the author of "The Value of Nothing" and "Stuffed and Starved."
NYT 15 Feb 2011
'Super-dairy' with 3,770 cows triggers 14,000 planning objections
Leading the protests is Compassion in World Farming.
Chief executive Philip Lymbery says the argument over happy cows is disingenuous:
"Holsteins are bred to produce high yields and on this uber-scale you are pushing them to their physical limits while denying them access to grazing.
"The issue is a very large number of cows will be on concrete and sand and denied access to pasture for much of their lives. Cows belong in fields.
"The price of milk is screwed to the floor, but driving the industry to factory farming and down the lowest price cul-de-sac will not help.
"You can buy a litre of milk for half the price of a litre of fizzy water and that's clearly not right; the retailers have a part to play here." ...
Observer 13 Feb 2011The Holstein 'super cow'
Honey bee collapse threatens global food security
The bee crisis has been treated as a niche concern until now, but as the UN's index of food prices hits an all time-high in real terms (not just nominal) and grain shortages trigger revolutions in the Middle East, it is becoming urgent to know whether the plight of the honey bee risks further exhausting our already thin margin of food global security.
The agri-business lender Rabobank said the numbers of US bee colonies failing to survive each winter has risen to 30pc to 35pc from an historical norm of 10pc.
The rate is 20pc or higher in much of Europe, and the same pattern is emerging in Latin America and Asia ... animal pollination is essential for nuts, melons and berries, and plays varying roles in citrus fruits, apples, onions, broccoli, cabbage, sprouts, courgettes, peppers, aubergines, avocados, cucumbers, coconuts, tomatoes and broad beans, as well as coffee and cocoa ...
Between 80pc and 90pc of pollination comes from domesticated honey bees ...
The reservoir of bees is dwindling to the point where ratios are dangerously out of kilter, with the US reaching the "most extreme" imbalance.
Pollinated crop output has quadrupled since 1961, yet bee colonies have halved. The bee-per-hectare count has fallen nearly 90pc ...
Telegraph 06 Feb 2011Where Have All the Bees Gone?
Global food prices hit record high, says UN
The FAO Food Price Index rose to a record high in December, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation said.
Up for the sixth month in a row and fuelled by surging sugar prices and rises in cereals and oils, the index was the highest since records began in 1990, in nominal terms, and topped the high of 213.5 in June 2008, during the food crisis of 2007/08.
The index, which measures monthly price changes for a food basket composed of cereals, oil seeds, dairy, meat and sugar, averaged 214.7 points last month, up from 206.0 points in November.
The FAO's Sugar Price Index soared to a record high of 398.4 points from 373.4 points in November.
Its Cereals Price Index, which includes prices of main food staples such as wheat, rice and corn, rose to an average of 237.6 points in December, the highest level since August 2008 and up from 223.3 points in November.
The Oils Price Index also jumped to 263.0 points in December from 243.3 points in November.
Telegraph 05 Jan 2011 Peak EverythingWorld food prices enter 'danger territory'
World food prices at fresh high
British dairy industry becoming unsustainable, warns farmers' union
• UK could become reliant on expensive dairy imports, says NFU
• Disquiet over direct deals between retailers and a few farmers ...
About 3,000 out of the UK's 13,500 dairy farmers have special deals with the likes of Sainsbury's and Tesco.
The relationships are judged to have been good news for farmers, but the cost of production, at 27.5p per litre, remains 3p higher than the average retail price of 24.5p.
"This means the majority of dairy farmers are losing money on every litre of milk they produce," said Kendall.
In England and Wales, 470 farmers quit the agricultural industry in the last year and the NFU calculates that if current production trends are married with expectations of rising demand, the UK could be importing 53% of its dairy products by 2030.
"Greater reliance on imports could mean higher food prices," said Kendall, adding that such a situation would make guarantees on food traceability much more difficult to offer.
The UK already imports about 33% of the butter, 50% of the cheese and 40% of the yoghurt it consumes ...
Observer 21 No 2010 Branch Office Britain Rebalancing the EconomyMission Milk
Farming
'Pollination crisis' hitting India's vegetable farmers
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that of the slightly more than 100 crop species that provide 90% of food supplies for 146 countries, 71 are bee-pollinated, primarily by wild bees, and a number of others are pollinated by other insects.
In order to gain a clear insight into the scale of the global problem, the FAO has established the International Pollinators Initiative, which includes a project involving seven nations (India is among them) with the aim of identifying practices and building capacity in the management of pollination services.
In a 2007 assessment of the scientific data on the issue, the UN Environment Programme observed: "Any loss in biodiversity is a matter of public concern, but losses of pollinating insects may be particularly troublesome because of the potential effects on plant reproduction and hence on food supply security." ...
BBC NEWS 28 Sept 2010Insect pollinators initiative
Pollination & Human Livelihoods
Global Pollinator Decline
Environmental disasters and speculative investors are to blame for volatile food commodities markets, says UN's special adviser ..UN warned of major new food crisis at emergency meeting in Rome
At the meeting in London today, De Schutter said the only long term way to resolve the crisis would be to shift to "agro-ecological" ways of growing food.
This farming, which does not depend on fossil fuels, pesticides or heavy machinery has been shown to protect soils and use less water.
"A growing number of experts are calling for a major shift in food security policies, and support the development of agroecology approaches, which have shown very promising results where implemented," he said ...porsupuestoGuardian 24 Sept 2010
24 September 2010 1:34PM
To reiterate what I've posted before.
1. The UN WFP predicts a 50% increase in population between now and 2050
2. Based on dietary changes and global average per capita increase in food consumption, that means at least a 70% rise in food production is required by 2050 to keep global starvation within the WFP predictions
3. 90% of that food production will come from land already in agricultural production, so intensive farming will increase not decrease which means fertiliser demand will increase.
4. Phosphorus is essential for food production and is depleting: Peak P is predicted for 2034 and present global reserves are expected to run out by 2070. Unlike energy, we cannot survive without food&P
5. Those WFP projections do not allow for the P issue on fetrilsier price or the current level of competition for agricultural land between biofuels and food (US- recently 26% of grain production went to biofuel production).
This is all combined with an expectation of increasing GDP per capita for all governments from now to 2050. The global average electricity production is 80% fossil fuelled today. Decarbonising that requires a level of strategic activity and investment far beyond political BAU.
Energy efficiency can only reduce demand, not eliminate it. Therefore, to decouple rising GDP per capita from the significant continued global rise for energy associated with increasing per capita GDP, year on year, we have to decarbonise energy production.
The political class has globally and in the UK, and is now, doing nothing effective to meet the food and energy/carbon/climate challenge. The level of investment and infrastructure development required in the UK alone would be more than for a manned space programme.....and 2050 is only 40 year away.
Unlike newpapers and politicians, numbers and facts dont lie. The world is in a difficult place and politicians are simply failing to manage these critical crises.Food Security
The FAO estimates there are 925 million undernourished people in 2010, compared with 1.02 billion in 2009.Global hunger 'unacceptably high'
But it warned that the fight to reduce hunger would face additional obstacles if food prices continue to rise ...
The FAO says that analysing hunger during crisis and recovery "brings to the fore the insufficient resilience to economic shocks" of many poor countries.
"Lack of appropriate mechanisms to deal with the shocks or to protect the most vulnerable populations from their effects result in large swings in hunger following crises," the report says.
"Moreover, it should not be assumed that all the effects of crises on hunger disappear when the crisis is over."Undernourishment in 2010, by region (millions)BBC NEWS 14 Sept 2010
Asia and the Pacific: 578
Sub-Saharan Africa: 239
Latin America and the Caribbean: 53
Near East and North Africa: 37
Developed countries: 19
The neo-colonial rush for global farmland has gone exponential since the food scare of 2007-2008 ...The backlash begins against the world landgrab
"Land is not a commodity"
Last week's long-delayed report by the World Bank suggests that purchases in developing countries rose to 45m hectares in 2009, a ten-fold jump from levels of the last decade. Two thirds have been in Africa, where institutions offer weak defence ...
Much of the globe is stealing food from the future.
The World Bank said we must lift production 70pc by 2050 to meet a triad of converging demands: extra mouths; rising use of animal feed from grains as Asia moves up the affluence ladder to meat-based diets; and the biofuel drive.
This will not be easy. The great leap forward in crop yields is fading.
The Bank said rises in wheat and soya yields have declined from 2pc a year to zero since the 1970s in the West.
Yield growth for rice and soya in emerging economies has fallen from 3pc to 1pc.
"With few break-through technologies on the horizon, the scope for yield gains seems lower than in the past. Irrigation has contributed to past growth in crop yields, but water scarcity in many regions is now a major constraint," it said.
The Green Revolution is "exhausted" ...
Telegraph 12 Sept 2010 Eating the Future
Now meat price surge raises fear of food inflation
Hike in demand from emerging nations pushes cost of lamb to 37-year high ...
The immediate cause is the rapid inflation in the cost of livestock feed, caused by the spike in the cost of wheat because of the Russian drought.
Fertiliser prices have also risen dramatically.
Although this will push inflation in the UK and other advanced economies a little higher next year, the most dramatic effects will be felt in poorer nations where food takes a much larger share of household budgets ...
The trend towards biofuels as oil has become more expensive has also pushed grain prices higher.
Speculation has sometimes amplified trends up and down.
A major commodities price explosion is the last thing a fragile world recovery needs.
More poignantly, it threatens the very survival of the one billion of the world's poorest who live on less than $2 a day ...
Independent 03 Sept 2010UN calls meeting on food price concerns
Choc Finger's Big Bet
Soaring commodity prices and natural disasters in Russia and Pakistan have combined to put African nations and conflict-ridden countries such as Afghanistan most at risk from food shortages, according to a report released today ...Afghanistan and African nations at greatest risk from world food shortages
Sharp price rises for wheat and other grains will hit the world's neediest countries hardest, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, as they grapple with their own poor harvests and failing transport networks, according to a food security index by risk management consultancy Maplecroft.
It also says conflict is a key factor behind food insecurity and Afghanistan tops the index of threatened countries.
The other nine nations categorised as "extreme risk" are all in Africa, led by Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Eritrea, Sudan and Ethiopia.
African nations make up 36 of the 50 countries most at risk in the index ...
Guardian 19 Aug 2010 Autonomous Individualism Climate ChaosCommodity prices soar as spectre of food inflation is back
Russian wheat export ban threatens higher inflation and food riots
The world faces an inflationary time bomb as shortages of food threaten to push prices to fresh all-time highs.
A variety of freakish weather conditions across the world has sent the price of staples including wheat, pork, rice, orange juice, coffee, cocoa and tea to fresh highs in recent weeks.
Yesterday's decision by the Russian government to ban the export of wheat to protect home consumers saw grain prices jump 8 per cent on the day, on what was already a two-year high ...
Taken together it suggests that Western nations will be hit by a sharp inflationary spike next year, as the price of bread, beer, petrol and many other everyday items climbs higher again.
Given the sluggish prospects for growth in Western economies it threatens a return to "stagflation" ...
In developing and emerging economies, however, the challenge is in some cases a matter of life and death ...
Politics and speculators have also played a part; the unrest in Kenya in 2009 sparked a rise in tea prices, while the activities of some hedge funds have been blamed for wild fluctuations in coffee and cocoa.
Earlier this month it emerged that hedge fund manager Anthony Ward had cornered a large slice of the cocoa market by buying 240,000 tonnes of beans ...
High and volatile food prices seem certain to lead to more calls for "financial food speculation" to be curbed ...
Independent 06 Aug 2010 Complexity & CollapseCommodity prices soar as spectre of food inflation is back
Wheat price fears hit shares ...
Russia ... Bans Grain Exports
• Commodity speculators push cocoa to 33-year highHedge funds accused of gambling with lives of the poorest as food prices soar
• Bets 'risk the most vulnerable in the world starving'
The WDM's Great Hunger Lottery report says "risky and secretive" financial bets on food prices have exacerbated the effect of poor harvests in recent years. It argues that volatility in food prices has made it harder for producers to plan what to grow, pushed up prices for British consumers and in poorer countries risks sparking civil unrest, like the food riots seen in Mexico and Haiti in 2008.
Deborah Doane, WDM director, said: "Investment banks, like Goldman Sachs, are making huge profits by gambling on the price of everyday foods. But this is leaving people in the UK out of pocket, and risks the poorest people in the world starving.
"Nobody benefits from this kind of reckless gambling except a few City wheeler-dealers. British consumers suffer because it pushes up inflation, because of unpredictable oil and raw material prices, and the world's poorest people suffer because basic foods become unaffordable."
Guardian 19 July 2010Take the highest stakes, riskiest economic behaviour ever devised, and marry it to the most fundamental basic need of humankind, and you have the subject of this report.Food Speculation
Executive Summary
Over the past decade, the world’s most powerful financial institutions have developed ever more elaborate ways to package, re-package and trade a range of financial contracts known as derivatives.
A derivative is not based on an exchange of tangible assets such as goods or money, but rather is a financial contract with a value linked to the expected future price movements of the underlying asset.
Derivative contracts are traded on a growing number of underlying assets, from share prices, to mortgages, bonds, commodity prices, foreign exchange rates, and even index of prices.
Derivatives trading has been one of the most lucrative parts of the financial industry, but it is the increasingly complex, opaque and disconnected nature of these and similar products that ultimately triggered the collapse of the banks and the worst financial crisis in human history.
Of course, the financial crisis has been an economic disaster of seismic proportions for millions around the world, plunging many countries into recession causing millions to be thrown out of work, soaring public debts and cuts in vital public services.
But while betting on the value of sub-prime mortgages or foreign currency values undoubtedly leads to disastrous consequences, there is another area where the speculative behaviour of the world’s largest banks and hedge funds represents a threat to the very survival of people: food commodities.
In The great hunger lottery, World Development Movement has compiled extensive evidence establishing the role of food commodity derivatives in destabilising and driving up food prices around the world.
This in turn, has led to food prices becoming unaffordable for low-income families around the world, particularly in developing countries highly reliant on food imports.
Nowhere was this more clearly seen than during the astonishing surge in staple food prices over the course of 2007-2008, when millions went hungry and food riots swept major cities around the world.
The great hunger lottery shows how this alarming episode was fueled by the behaviour of financial speculators, and describes the terrible immediate impacts on vulnerable families around the world, as well as the long term damage to the fight against global poverty.
In the report we describe how the current situation came to pass, the risks of another speculation induced food crisis, and what specifically can be done by policymakers here in the UK as well as in the US and EU to tackle the problem.
But at its heart, The great hunger lottery carries a very straightforward message: allowing gambling on hunger in financial markets is dangerous, immoral and indefensible.
And it needs to be stopped before any more people suffer to satisfy the greed of the banks.
WDM: Full Report .pdf July 2010
Corporate Sociopathy Economic Democracy Fractional Reserve Banking 'Golden Sacks'WDM
Choc Finger's Big Bet
Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs: Annual Report .pdf
Rising costs fuel food inflation fears
The rising cost of meat, dairy products and vegetable oils will increase the world’s food import bill by 11.5 per cent in 2010, according to the United Nations, further stoking fears of rising food inflation in emerging countries ...
The price of dairy products increased 45 per cent in the first five months of the year, while beef and pork prices have also hit their highest levels in years.
Another factor contributing to the higher food bill is the rising cost of shipping, which on average is up about 75 per cent year-on-year ...
FT 03 June 2010 Haber BoschFood
UN urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet
As the global population surges towards a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, western tastes for diets rich in meat and dairy products are unsustainable, says the report from United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management.
It says: "Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to population growth increasing consumption of animal products. Unlike fossil fuels, it is difficult to look for alternatives: people have to eat. A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products." ...
Ernst von Weizsaecker, an environmental scientist who co-chaired the panel, said: "Rising affluence is triggering a shift in diets towards meat and dairy products - livestock now consumes much of the world's crops and by inference a great deal of freshwater, fertilisers and pesticides."
Both energy and agriculture need to be "decoupled" from economic growth because environmental impacts rise roughly 80% with a doubling of income, the report found.
Achim Steiner, the UN under-secretary general and executive director of the UNEP, said: "Decoupling growth from environmental degradation is the number one challenge facing governments in a world of rising numbers of people, rising incomes, rising consumption demands and the persistent challenge of poverty alleviation."
The panel, which drew on numerous studies including the Millennium ecosystem assessment, cites the following pressures on the environment as priorities for governments around the world: climate change, habitat change, wasteful use of nitrogen and phosphorus in fertilisers, over-exploitation of fisheries, forests and other resources, invasive species, unsafe drinking water and sanitation, lead exposure, urban air pollution and occupational exposure to particulate matter.
Agriculture, particularly meat and dairy products, accounts for 70% of global freshwater consumption, 38% of the total land use and 19% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions ...
Guardian 02 June 2010Vegetarian diet is better for the planet, says Lord Stern
Food production will have to increase by 70 percent
How will the world feed itself in 40 years' time?
By 2050, the predicted world population will require the resources of two Earths to sustain it ...
The world is going to get hungrier this century, and on a scale that will make the famines of the 1980s look paltry.
The maths are simple and devastating: in 40 years' time the global population will be 9.2 billion people – a third larger than it is now. But to feed us all, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says, we will need to produce twice as much food.
That's because, despite the threats of this century, most developing countries will get richer. At present 350m households in the world live on £8,000 a year or more. That figure is projected to increase to 2.1bn by 2030.
And the richer they are, the more wastefully people eat. Generally the poor eat vegetables, while the rich eat food that eats vegetables. Lots of it. To produce 1kg of beef takes 10kg of grass or soya-based feed.
A farmed fish will have eaten three times its weight in wild fish. And the rate at which the richest consume these things is amazing: Americans consume 120kg of meat each per year; in the developing world they eat 28kg.
If the world develops as economists predict, it is hard to see how we can possibly meet these demands: environmentalists like to say that the 2050 population would require the resources of two earths to sustain it.
No wonder the British government's chief scientific adviser John Beddington says: "Food security represents a greater threat to mankind than climate change itself." ...
Guardian 11 Oct 2009
Soaring fertiliser prices threaten world's poorest farmers
Soaring fertiliser prices threaten world's poorest farmers India and China hoard fertilisers to guarantee food stocks, while riots break out in Vietnam, Africa and Pakistan. ...
Fertiliser prices have mostly doubled and in some cases risen by 500% in 15 months as US farmers have rushed to plant more biofuel crops and countries such as India and China have bought fertiliser stocks in large quantities to guarantee their food stocks. But while the unprecedented price explosion has barely affected large commercial farmers, it is leading directly to civil unrest among small farmers in developing countries. There have been fertiliser riots or demonstrations in Vietnam, India, Kenya, Nepal, Nigeria, Egypt, Pakistan and Taiwan in the last few months. Last week one man was killed in a stampede at a government handout of fertiliser in Hyderabad, India. ...
World fertiliser prices have risen more than oil or any other commodities in the last 18 months. Of the three main types, diammonium phosphate (Dap) sold for US $250 per tonne in January 2007 but has risen to $1,230 per tonne. Potash-based fertilisers have risen from $172 to over $500 a tonne, and nitrogen based fertilisers have risen from $277 to over $450 per tonne. Much of the price rise is attributed to first world farmers who have applied high levels of fertilisers to maximise harvests of grain to take advantage of record grain prices ...
At least 50 new plants to make nitrogen fertiliser are believed to be under construction ...
Agriculture and development experts say the world has few alternatives to its growing dependence on fertiliser. As population increases and a rising global middle class demands more food, fertiliser has become the preferred route to higher yields.
Guardian 13 August 2008 Haber Bosch
How much nitrogen do we really need for food production? And how can we weigh up the environmental costs and benefits?Snared in a homemade ‘NitroNet’
For example, Nobel Prizewinner Paul Crutzen has recently argued that emissions of nitrous oxide from fertilised biofuel crops can outweigh the carbon benefits of avoided fossil fuel use.
Others have highlighted a possible benefit of nitrogen in making forests grow faster, absorbing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
But the decisions get even harder when dealing with multiple nitrogen threats.
For example, policies to reduce nitrates in water have banned wintertime spreading of farm manures across much of Europe's farmland. The resulting focus on springtime manure spreading has intensified peak ammonia emissions, giving a new threat to biodiversity and air quality.
Climate Action 15 July 2008
Global Farm Animal Production and Global Warming
Animal agriculture is a significant catalyst for the conversion of wooded areas to grazing land or cropland for feed production, which may emit 2.4 billion metric tons of CO2 annually as a result of deforestation (Steinfeld et al. 2006).
This sector has particularly devastated Latin America, the region experiencing the largest net loss of forests and greatest releases of stored carbon into the atmosphere, resulting from disappearing vegetation (Steinfeld et al. 2006). One of the chief causes of Latin America's deforestation is cattle ranching (FAO 2005a).
Other important ecosystems are also threatened by increasing farm animal populations.
Brazil's Cerrado region, the world's most biologically diverse savannah, produces half of the country's soy crops [Klink and Machado 2005; World Wildlife Fund (WWF) 2007a, 2007b]. As noted by the WWF (2007a), the region's animal species are competing with the rapid expansion of Brazil's agricultural frontier, which focuses primarily on soy and corn.
Ranching is another major threat to the region, as it produces almost 40 million cattle a year.
Farm animal production also results in releases of up to 28 million metric tons of CO2/year from cultivated soils (Steinfeld et al. 2006). Soils, like forests, act as carbon sinks and store more than twice the carbon found in vegetation or in the atmosphere (Steinfeld et al. 2006).
Human activities, however, have significantly depleted the amount of carbon sequestered in the soil, contributing to GHG emissions (Steinfeld et al. 2006).
Desertification, or the degradation of land in arid, semiarid, and dry subhumid areas, is also exacerbated and facilitated by the animal agriculture sector (FAO 2007).
By reducing the productivity and amount of vegetative cover, desertification allows CO2 to escape into the atmosphere.
Desertification of pastures due to animal agriculture is responsible for up to 100 million metric tons of CO2 emissions annually (Steinfeld et al. 2006).
Nitrogen from fertilizer and feed production. Feeding the global population of livestock requires at least 80% of the world's soybean crop and more than one-half of all corn (Ash M, Nierenberg D, personal communication; Halweil B, Smil V, personal communication), a plant whose growth is especially dependent on nitrogen-based artificial fertilizers.
Natural sources of fixed nitrogen, the form easily available as fertilizer for plants, are limited, necessitating artificial fertilizer production. Before the development of the Haber-Bosch process, the amount of sustainable life on Earth was restricted by the amount of nitrogen made available to plants by bacteria and lightning.
Modern fertilizer manufacturing, heavily reliant on fossil fuels, has taken a once-limited nutrient and made it available in massive quantities for crop farmers in the industrialized world and, increasingly, the developing world. ...
www.ehponline.org May 2008
The UN secretary general issued a gloomy warning yesterday that the deepening global food crisis, in which rapidly rising prices have triggered riots and threatened hunger in dozens of countries, could have grave implications for international security, economic growth and social progress. The World Bank estimates food prices have risen by an average of 83% in the past three years, and warns that at least 100 million people could be tipped into poverty as a result. A range of factors has been blamed, including poor harvests, partly due to climate change, rising oil prices, steep growth in demand from China and India, and the dash to produce biofuels for motoring at the expense of food crops. ...Food crisis threatens security
The Guardian 21 April 2008 More ...
Haber Bosch Process
Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch (Nobels 1918 and 1931) are responsible for the world population explosion. Through a very energy dependent process, Haber created the process for artificial industrial fertilizer and Bosch perfected its mass production. Their Haber-Bosch process is often called one of the most important inventions of the 20th century. In Europe, for example, it took one farmer to feed 2.5 people in 1900, currently the ratio s/he will feed well over 100. Yara Haber & Bosch are primarily responsible for the world's population going from from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 6 billion in 2000.
Industrial fertilizer is the cornerstone of the green revolution. It's production consumes between 1-1.5 percent energy used worldwide with massive amounts of carbon dioxide as a byproduct produced. It's created by fixing nitrogen and hydrogen that occurs naturally in the air through a process known as ammonia synthesis to create industrial fertilizer.
We're still working with 100 year old technology. Nothing has come close to what Haber originally created. Currently, production is at 500 million tons produced per year, and it sustains about 40% of the population. That's 2.4 billion people who exist because of that, and in turn, need energy to make the fertilizer to get food on the table...and our dependence will only increase as the global count moves well beyond 6 billion people.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture released figures for fertilizer, prices have risen 117 percent since April 2000 (and 65% since 2007), rising faster than any other raw material used by farmers. The price of ammonia has tripled.
This is especially bad for those farmers in developing markets where cost of production takes a much bigger proportion of their capital expenditures than it would a farmer's in a developed country.
Add to that the pollution problem brought on by industrial fertilizer and the monoculture mentality to which it's inextricably tied. The creation of industrial fertilizer created this massive world population that is unsustainable without it.
The big question is will there be a breakthrough that is less energy and environmentally intensive to be able to meet fast growing population's demand for food. Industrial fertilizer is not a sexy product. That could contribute to the reason no one has invested in newer processes. More importantly, up until recently, the cost of producing fertilizer (tied in to the cost of energy to produce it) wasn't an issue because it was cheap to produce and as an outcome, soft commodities e.g. produce and food products were cheap to buy at the markets. No one is going to be interested in a sexy-granola-hybrid car when there are larger fundamental issues that need to be addressed and solved - what to eat. Hopefully, it will happen before there is a large disruption.
Sagefield Post 12 June 2008Haber Process