Archive for the “famine” Category
Source: loggingStocks
The problems may be especially acute in the US where some farmers have been making a fortune off corn due to feed demand and ethanol. Many of those farmers decided to expand, take on more debt, and buy new equipment. The price of corn has dropped like a rock over the last five months. How are those farmers going to keep up with the debt service? In many cases, they won’t.
Get ready to pay more for an ear of corns and a loaf of bread. Farm failures are sending food prices back up.
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Posted by: Joshuah in famine, tags: poaching
Source: The Independent
Once, the poacher was a man with big pockets in his raincoat sneaking on to an aristocrat’s land to steal game for his family pot. Now he is likely to be part of a gang from town, in it for hard cash, rampaging through the countryside with guns, crossbows or snares.
Police in rural areas across Britain are reporting a dramatic increase in poaching, as the rise in food prices and the reality of recession increases the temptation to deal in stolen venison, salmon, or rarer meat and fish.
Organised and sometimes armed gangs of poachers are accused of behaving dangerously, intimidating residents, causing damage to crops or to gates and fences. Squads have also been out in the countryside “lamping”, poachers using lights to transfix animals.
There have even been reports of drive-by poachers, aiming guns through the open windows of moving vehicles to pick off deer or other game. Others go about their work more discreetly, knowing that in some parts of the countryside, if they are careful, their activities can pass unnoticed for weeks.
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Interesting tidbits are quoted here, so make sure to read the entire article. The quality of food on the table is obviously decreasing, so maybe people are also planning to stock up on Flintstone vitamins…
Source: NYTimes.com
The economy is in tatters and, for millions of people, the future is uncertain. But for some employees at the Hormel Foods Corporation plant here, times have never been better. They are working at a furious pace and piling up all the overtime they want.
The workers make Spam, perhaps the emblematic hard-times food in the American pantry.
Through war and recession, Americans have turned to the glistening canned product from Hormel as a way to save money while still putting something that resembles meat on the table. Now, in a sign of the times, it is happening again, and Hormel is cranking out as much Spam as its workers can produce.
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Hormel declined to cooperate with this article, but several of its workers were interviewed here recently with the help of their union, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 9. Slumped in chairs at the union hall after making 149,950 cans of Spam on the day shift, several workers said they been through boom times before — but nothing like this.
Spam “seems to do well when hard times hit,” said Dan Bartel, business agent for the union local. “We’ll probably see Spam lines instead of soup lines.”
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Pancake mixes and instant potatoes are booming. So are vitamins, fruit and vegetable preservatives and beer, according to data from October compiled by Information Resources, a market research firm.
“We’ve seen a double-digit increase in the sale of rice and beans,” said Teena Massingill, spokeswoman for the Safeway grocery chain, in an e-mail message. “They’re real belly fillers.”
Kraft Foods said recently that some of its value-oriented products like macaroni and cheese, Jell-O and Kool-Aid were experiencing robust growth. And sales are still growing, if not booming, for Velveeta, a Kraft product that bears the same passing resemblance to cheese as Spam bears to ham.
Spam holds a special place in America’s culinary history, both as a source of humor and of cheap protein during hard times.
Invented during the Great Depression by Jay Hormel, the son of the company’s founder, Spam is a combination of ham, pork, sugar, salt, water, potato starch and a “hint” of sodium nitrate “to help Spam keep its gorgeous pink color,” according to Hormel’s Web site for the product.
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The company would not discuss more recent sales of the product or permit a tour of the Spam factory, citing rules that Hormel said prevented it from speaking ahead of a forthcoming earnings report.
However, Hormel executives appear to be banking on the theory that Spam fits nicely into recession budgets. Workers on the Spam line in Austin — more than 40 of them work two shifts —see no signs that their work schedule will let up.
“We are scheduled to work every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas,” said Darwin Sellers, 56, a Spam “formulator” who adds salt, sugar and nitrates to batches of Spam. “Mr. Ettinger is negotiating with the man upstairs to get us to work eight days a week.”
Mr. Sellers said he had not seen much of his family in recent months, but the grueling schedule had been good for his checkbook. He bought a new television and planned to replace a 20-year-old refrigerator.
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Posted by: Joshuah in famine, tags: famine
The next big thing to happen is related to food. Be prepared. Again, we urge people to provide as much for themselves as possible…
Source: Barrons.com
AN INTERVIEW WITH DONALD COXE: He’s convinced that we are in the midst of the greatest commodities bull market of all time. His hunger: food.
ONCE A WEEK, LOADS OF INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS DROP whatever they’re doing to tune in to Donald Coxe’s strategy conference calls. Small wonder. With a keen sense of history and wry sense of humor, Coxe has helped his followers anticipate some of the biggest shifts in markets, be they in stocks or commodities. As global portfolio strategist for BMO Financial Group, a Toronto-based bank that is among Canada’s largest, he now sees real hope for two sectors that have been taking poundings: banks and commodities. Though he launched the Coxe Commodity Strategy Fund this past summer, right before commodities took a nose dive, Coxe remains convinced that we are in the midst of the greatest commodities bull market of all time. For his reasons, please read on.
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When I came back from a trip two years ago, I said the biggest commodity story is going to be food, bigger than the other ones. It is high-protein food. The way to play that is through the fertilizer stocks, the genetically modified seed stocks and the farm-equipment stocks….
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 Following on from genetic engineering, nanotechnology represents the latest high technology attempt to infiltrate our food supply. Senior scientists have warned that nanotechnology, the manipulation of matter at the scale of atoms and molecules, introduces serious new risks to human and environmental health. Yet in the absence of public debate, or oversight from regulators, unlabelled foods manufactured using nanotechnology have begun to appear on our supermarket shelves.
Around the world there is an increase in interest in our food, health and environment. Where are products produced, how, why, by whom, how far have they travelled, how long have they been stored etc. The organic and local food movements have emerged as an intuitive and practical response to the increasing use of chemicals in food production, and to the growing alienation of industrial agribusiness from holistic agricultural systems. People have chosen to eat organic foods because they care about the health of their families and the health of the environment. Organic agriculture also enables people to support integrated, environmentally friendly agriculture, and appropriate technology, rather than chemical-intensive factory farming.
Support for organics has also grown as a direct response to biotechnology giants’ efforts to genetically engineer our food crops. Farmers and food buyers around the world were, and continue to be, enraged by the introduction of genetically engineered food crops. For many, the inevitable conclusion was that whereas the biotechnology companies stood to benefit from the entry of genetically engineered foods into the food chain, consumers, farmers and the environment shouldered all the risks.
Now, nanotechnology introduces a new wave of assaults on our foods. Nanotechnology is the high technology, atomically processed antithesis to organic agriculture, which values the natural health-giving properties of fresh, unprocessed wholefoods. It further transforms the farm into an automated extension of the high technology factory production line, using patented products that will inevitably concentrate corporate control. It also introduces serious new risks for human health and the environment.
Full article at: informationliberation
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Source: Bloomberg.com
The credit crunch is compounding a profit squeeze for farmers that may curb global harvests and worsen a food crisis for developing countries.
Global production of wheat, the most-consumed food crop, may drop 4.4 percent next year, said Dan Basse, president of AgResource Co. in Chicago, who has advised farmers, food companies and investors for 29 years. Harvests of corn and soybeans also are likely to fall, Basse said.
Smaller crops risk reviving prices of farm commodities that sank from records in 2008 after a six-year rally that spurred inflation and sparked riots from Asia to the Caribbean. Futures contracts on the Chicago Board of Trade show wheat will jump 16 percent by the end of 2009, corn will rise 15 percent and soybeans will gain 3 percent.
“The credit situation is worrying even the biggest and best farmers,” said Brian Willot, 36, a former University of Missouri commodity analyst who now grows soybeans on 2,000 acres in Brazil. “For the financially weak, credit has dried up completely. For the strong, credit has been delayed and interest rates are higher.”
The number of hungry around the world is at risk of increasing as the financial crisis cuts investment in agriculture and crops, said Abdolreza Abbassian, secretary of the Intergovernmental Group on Grains at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. The total increased by 75 million last year to 923 million, the UN estimates.
Brazil Squeeze
“The net effect of the financial crisis may end up being lower planting, lower production,” Abbassian said. “More people will go hungry.”
In Brazil, the world’s third-biggest exporter of corn after the U.S. and Argentina, production may fall more than 20 percent because farmers can’t get loans to buy fertilizer, said Enori Barbieri, a National Corn Producers Association vice president. The nation’s coffee harvest, the world’s largest, may drop 25 percent for the same reason, said Lucio Araujo, commercial director at farmer cooperative Cooxupe, located in Guaxupe.
Borrowing costs increased and farmers struggled to get loans after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression made banks and grain processors, including Cargill Inc. and Archer Daniels Midland Co., less tolerant of risk.
Minnetonka, Minnesota-based Cargill and Decatur, Illinois- based Archer Daniels, the world’s largest grain processors, are among the crop buyers to halt financing for growers in Brazil, said Eduardo Dahe, who represents the companies as president of the National Association of Fertilizer Distributors.
Lending `Stopped’
Processors usually cover half the financing needs of farmers by accepting part of the future crop as payment. “No one is doing it,” Dahe said. “It’s stopped.”
In Russia, loan rates for farmers have jumped by half in some cases to more than 20 percent in the past few months, Arkady Zlochevsky, president of the Russian Grain Union, said in an interview earlier this month.
While the credit squeeze gripping emerging markets has yet to hurt the U.S., the risk remains, Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said Oct. 1.
“We certainly could see tight credit having an effect on agricultural production,” Schafer said in Washington. “The costs of farming operations today are huge, and that backs up to the banks that have balance sheets that are tight, it backs up to elevators that have credit stretched out.”
Farm Incomes
To be sure, farmers in the U.S., the world’s largest grain exporter, may have enough cash to avoid production cuts through next year because of this year’s record profits.
Net farm income will rise 10 percent this year to $95.7 billion, the U.S. Agriculture Department estimated Aug. 28. While farm debt jumped 7.7 percent last year to $211 billion, the total is 9.6 percent of assets, a ratio that the government forecast on Aug. 28 will drop to 8.9 percent this year, the lowest level since at least 1960, the earliest data available.
“I don’t see the crisis” for U.S. farmers, said Corny Gallagher, who helps oversee $20 billion in global agribusiness and food-product loans for Bank of America Corp. in Sacramento, California. “While commodity prices are down from their peak, they are still relatively high.”
Warning signs are appearing.
`Deteriorating’ Conditions
Global inventories of corn, wheat and soybeans before the harvest in the Northern Hemisphere next year will be the second- lowest since 1974, enough for 67 days of consumption, compared with 144 days of supplies in 1986, U.S. data show.
“Stockpiles are going to be extremely tight,” said AgResource’s Basse. “The world cannot afford any dislocation in production next year, or there will be a real shortage.”
The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City said Aug. 15 that credit conditions in the second quarter, the most recent data available, “showed signs of deterioration” in the seven-state region that includes Kansas, the biggest U.S. producer of winter wheat. Loan-repayment rates fell for the first time since 2006 as wheat slid 7.6 percent in the quarter. Wheat lost another 41 percent since then.
“This year is going to be the best year ever and now we are looking at the potential to give it all back in 2009 if prices don’t rise above the expected cost of production,” said Mark Kraft, 49, who grows corn and soybeans in Normal, Illinois. “You have to hope that fertilizer, seed and land rents come down and the price of corn improves.”
Lower Prices, Higher Costs
Wheat fell to $5.1625 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade on Oct. 24, touching a 16-month low of $4.965. On Feb. 27, it reached a record $13.495. Corn fell 7.5 percent last week and touched a one-year low of $3.64 a bushel today, compared with a peak of $7.9925 on June 27. Soybeans fell 4.4 percent last week to $8.67 a bushel and are down 47 percent from a record $16.3675 on July 3. Rough-rice futures are down 41 percent to $14.685 per 100 pounds from $25.07, the highest ever, on April 24.
One 80,000-kernel bag of Monsanto Co. corn seed, enough for about 2.5 acres, rose 45 percent this year to $320, the same amount Midwest tenant farmers paid to rent an acre of land, Kraft said. A gallon of diesel for tractors averaged $4.47 in the third quarter, up 51 percent from a year earlier, according to AAA, the largest U.S. motorist organization.
The value of the collateral farmers use to secure loans — crops and land — is diminishing. Lenders are demanding more equity for farm loans used to run operations or acquire land and equipment.
“We need two to three times the amount of money we used to need with the same collateral,” said Bo Stone, 37, a seventh- generation farmer in Rowland, North Carolina. “It means we have way more risk than we’ve ever had. This is a time where one bad crop year, with the amount of money and input tied up, could potentially cost you your equipment, land and livelihood.”
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WITH hundreds of millions of dollars, yen, yuan, euro and even tens of millions of ringgit wiped off the stock market over the last fortnight, it is easy to be distracted by the panic and forget the real concerns facing the world.
Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi yesterday sent out a timely reminder — that it is the scale of the global food crisis that world leaders must attend to, urgently.
At the Asia-Europe Meeting session on “Food security, disaster preparedness and management”, Abdullah said 850 million people worldwide faced hunger on a daily basis — far exceeding the estimate made in 1974 that 650 million people would be in such dire straits by the year 2010.
“We might have lost sight of this basic and yet critical sector of the economy, especially when alluring opportunities present themselves in the services, manufacturing and technology sectors,” he said.
“The present turmoil in the global financial sector, energy crisis and climate change has contributed to making the situation more critical.”
The prime minister pointed to the fact that agriculture land was being gobbled up to produce crops for biofuel, instead of food.
“Seven years ago, only one million hectares of land were utilised for biofuel production. Today, 25 million hectares of land capable of producing about 100 million tonnes of food crops are being used annually for the production of biofuel,” he said.
Citing corn as an example, he said ordinary Mexicans were suffering as the price of this staple food had soared because it was being used by the US to create ethanol.
Malaysia is, however, using waste oil palm fibres to produce biofuel. “We must find a proper balance between the use of scarce resources for food and for biofuel purposes,” he said.
Abdullah cautioned that a balance must be found to use scarce land for food and biofuel production, as otherwise the world would face a double whammy — food shortage and high food prices.
“The international food price index increased by nine per cent in 2006, accelerated to 40 per cent in 2007 and to 57 per cent in March 2008.”
The huge price hike has led to unrest in more than 30 countries and Abdullah warned that food security goals could not be achieved without an increase in food production capacity and a renewed interest in agriculture and its development.
To avoid national food supply emergencies and crisis, Abdullah said every country should strive to balance between local production and imports.
Citing Malaysia, he said the country had initiated several measures to increase domestic supply, especially rice. The measures included greater investments in agriculture infrastructure, pest and disease control, and the use of quality seeds and biotechnology.
Abdullah called on the international community to focus on helping developing countries improve their capacity to feed their people.
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Source: washingtonpost.com
As shock waves from the credit crisis began to spread around the world last month, China scrambled to protect itself. Among the most extreme measures it took was to impose new export taxes to keep critical supplies such as grains and fertilizer from leaving the country.
It’s planting season now, but he can afford to sow amaranthus and haricot beans on only half of the 10 acres he owns because the cost of the fertilizer he needs has shot up nearly $50 a bag in a matter of weeks. Muchiri said nearly everyone he knows is cutting back on planting, which means even less food for a continent where the supply has already been weakened by drought, political unrest and rising prices.
While the world’s attention has been focused on rescuing investment banks and stock markets from collapse, the global food crisis has worsened, a casualty of the growing financial tumult.
Oxfam, the Britain-based aid group, estimates that economic chaos this year has pulled the incomes of an additional 119 million people below the poverty line. Richer countries from the United States to the Persian Gulf are busy helping themselves and have been slow to lend a hand.
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N Korea cuts food to farmers: aid group
The Age - Melbourne,Victoria,Australia
Its chief nuclear negotiator with the North, Kim Sook, said last week that
the food shortage is serious but unlikely to become a full-blown famine,
Big drops in prices for crops make it tough down on the farm
USA Today - USA
Lower sustained prices could help alleviate a food shortage in developing
nations, so long as wealthy governments don’t pare foreign assistance. …
Animal Shelters Desperately Need Food Donations
WCIV - Charleston,SC,USA
The organization is struggling to meet this need due to the food shortage.
“If you look around, you will see that ‘can’t afford’ is the reason why
the …
Shelter Faces Critical Food Shortage
Boston Channel.com - MA, USA
BOSTON — In Lawrence Wednesday morning, Lazarus House volunteers loaded
food into a van for distribution to the needy, already lined up at the
agency’s …
Ahmadiyya opens conference, addresses food crisis
Nigerian Tribune - Ibadan,Nigeria
… noted that contemporary issues facing the nation and the problem of
food shortage currently being experienced in the world would be on the
frontburner …
Prioritize food over energy programs: Brazilian
Sun.Star - Philippines
“The Philippines is one of the many countries in the world today that has
food shortage problem. The government must come up with solutions to
address the …
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Source: International Herald Tribune
Export restrictions by key producing nations, coupled with population growth, are expected to keep the global rice market tight for the second consecutive year, an international institute said Monday.
Rapid hikes earlier this year in the price of rice — the staple food of 2.5 billion people — set off riots and protests from Africa to Asia to the Caribbean amid fears of a global food shortage.
From a record US$1,000 per metric ton in May, the price of Thai 100 percent Grade B slipped to about US$800 in June and US$764 in September, according to a quarterly publication of the Philippine-based International Rice Research Institute and the Food and Agriculture Organization.
Global rice stocks, which were at a record low of 73 million tons in 2004-05, have been steadily rising and are projected to reach 82 million tons in 2008-09, up from 78.5 million tons in 2007-08, the IRRI said.
It said it expected a record production of 432 million metric tons of milled rice — up 1 percent over last year’s yield — based on the expected expansion of rice fields by almost 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares), with India accounting for half of the increase.
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