Food production will have to increase by 70% over the next 40 years to feed the world’s growing population, the United Nations food agency predicts.

The Food and Agricultural Organisation says if more land is not used for food production now, 370 million people could be facing famine by 2050.

The world population is expected to increase from the current 6.7 billion to 9.1 billion by mid-century.

Climate change, involving floods and droughts, will affect food production.

The FAO said net investments of $83bn (£52.5bn) a year – an increase of 50% – had to be made in agriculture in developing countries if there was to be enough food by 2050.

Climate challenges

“The combined effect of population growth, strong income growth and urbanisation… is expected to result in almost the doubling of demand for food, feed and fibre,” FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf told delegates at a forum entitled How to Feed the World 2050.

Source/Full Story: BBC
Technorati Tags: famine

Source: tradingmarkets.com

Greater risk of a world food shortage lies ahead and food-exporting countries, including Thailand, should raise their stock-to-use ratio of agricultural commodities, according to Charoen Pokphand (CP) Intertrade Co.

President Sumeth Laomoraphorn said major agricultural producers’ stocks, now in the range of 18-25 percent of consumption, were declining.

Despite the recent plunge in crude oil prices, biofuel production and demand are increasing and eating up supplies of food cereals and grains, he said.

“The world is witnessing the dilemmas of increasing population and need for food, low safety-stock levels and supply uncertainties, while prices are not permitting sustainable food supply,” Mr Sumeth said at a conference on climate change in Bangkok last week.

“These generate the risk of food shortage in the near future and the possibility is very high.”

The forum, co-organised by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for the Asia Pacific (Escap), raised concerns that climate change may significantly affect food supply and food security, particularly in developing countries.

“Developing nations, with governments and private sectors that depend on imports, lack resources and capacity to develop and sustain production bases. So they face greater risk of food shortage in the future,” he said.

“Those countries whose farming sectors are not strong will face problems in withstanding the impacts of worldwide price fluctuations caused by speculation. The survival of farmers who are producing food for both subsistence and income cannot be ensured.”

To safeguard food supply in the near future, Mr Sumeth suggested that the safety stock network be expanded. Rice, for instance, should be stocked at higher levels, especially in countries like Vietnam and India.

Vietnam has a stock of only two million tonnes out of its yearly output of 35 million tonnes. India has 10 million tonnes — extremely low given its population of one billion.

In Thailand, the rice stock is relatively high at almost 30 percent of the 10 million tonnes consumed each year. But Mr Sumeth said this should also be increased for “the sake of rice importing countries”.

Developing nations are also recommended to strengthen small farms to become self-reliant.

Technorati Tags: famine

This guy hit the nail on the head…

Source: Gerald Warner

This will end in tears. The Obama hysteria is not merely embarrassing to witness, it is itself contributory to the scale of the disaster that is coming. What we are experiencing, in the deepening days of a global depression, is the desperate suspension of disbelief by people of intelligence – la trahison des clercs – in a pathetic effort to hypnotise themselves into the delusion that it will be all right on the night. It will not be all right.

We have been here before. In the spring of 1997, to be precise, when a charismatic, young prime minister entered Downing Street, cheered by children bussed in for the occasion waving plastic Union Jacks. A very few of us at that time incurred searing reproaches for denouncing the Great Charlatan (as I have always denominated Tony Blair) and dissenting from the public hysteria. Three times a deluded Britain elected that transparent fraud. Yesterday, when national bankruptcy became a formal reality, we reaped the bitter harvest of the Blair/Brown imposture.

The burnt child, contrary to conventional wisdom, does not fear the fire. After the Blair experience there is no excuse for anybody in Britain falling for Obama. Yet today, in this country, even some of those who remained sane during the emotional spasm of the Diana aberration are pumping the air for Princess Barack. At a time of gross economic and geopolitical instability throughout the Western world, this is beyond irresponsibility.

To anyone who kept his head, the string of Christmas cracker mottoes booming through the public address system on Washington’s National Mall can only excite scepticism. It is crucial to recall the reality that lies behind the rhetoric. Denouncing “those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents” comes ill from a man whose flagship legislation, the Freedom of Choice Act, will impose abortion, including partial-birth abortion, on every state in the Union. It seems the era of Hope is to be inaugurated with a slaughter of the innocents.

Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan is like one of those toxic packages traded by bankers: it camouflages many unaffordable gifts to his client state. With a federal deficit already at $1.2 trillion, Obama wants to squander $825 billion (which will undoubtedly mushroom to more than $1 trillion) on creating 600,000 more government jobs and a further 459,000 in “green energy” (useless wind turbines and other Heath-Robinson contraptions favoured by Beltway environmentalists).

It is frightening to think there is a real possibility that the entire world economy could go into complete meltdown and famine kill millions. Yet Western – and British – commentators are cocooned in a warm comfort zone of infatuation with America’s answer to Neil Kinnock. We should be long past applauding politicians of any hue: they got us into this mess. The best deserve a probationary opportunity to prove themselves, the worst should be in jail.

It is questionable whether the present political system can survive the coming crisis. Whatever the solution, teenage swooning sentimentality over a celebrity cult has no part in it. The most powerful nation on earth is confronting its worst economic crisis under the leadership of its most extremely liberal politician, who has virtually no experience of federal politics. That is not an opportunity but a catastrophe.

These are frank, even ungracious, words: they have the one merit that, unlike almost everything else written today about Obama, they will not require to be eaten in the future.

Technorati Tags: Obama, global depression, famine

Source: farminguk.com

NO BUTTER AVAILABLE IN JAPAN,NO BREAD IN EGYPT,NO BEEF IN RUSSIA XMAS 2008,WHAT HAS GONE WRONG.

Its very hard to believe that in 1976 we had the famous Beef Mountain, Butter Mountain a Wine Lake and Milk Lake in Europe.

Beef was being subsidized and given to the Soviet Union, along with butter in the hundreds of thousands of tonnes. Milk was being poured down deserted mine shafts all over Europe and Apples and Plums were rotting by the train load as no one wanted them.

Every newspaper on a global basis has carried the story of the world food shortage for the last few months, CNN have set up a special web site www.cnn.com/worldfoodcrisis with numerous versions of the root cause of the problem.

In 2003 the EU farm commission were concerned that there was an over production of rural products in the European Union, they decided to act on the problem.

In May 2005 farmers were to be paid, the average of the previous 5 years subsidy on corn of fattening cattle on condition that they did not keep any animals or plough a field , this payment system is in its third year next month and continues until the year 2112.

What used to known as the worlds great exporting countries are now importing countries and farmers are being paid in the EU, not to produce.

We now have to add the other factors, increased demand from emerging economies such as Russia, India and China that have blossomed from nowhere in the last ten years.

James Neilson raised a very valid point in the Buenos Aires Herald when he said “The greenbacks collapse (US Dollar) has contributed greatly to a commodity boom which would look far less impressive if the prices of grain, soybeans, oil and minerals were set in euros. And the great food crisis ,he adds has little to do with production ,which is at record levels ,and a great deal to do with money” Mr Neilson is indeed correct in relation to Latin America especially Brazil and Argentina and there is no doubt the decline of the dollar earlier in the year has caused many problems.

However the aforementioned facts along with facts like Peasants in China have not been growing rice for the last 5 years, only enough for their own requirements, until this year when the price they receive justifies the labor.

In Argentina we are slaughtering cattle at 350 kilos as opposed to the rest of the world at 650 kilos,
Pig Farmers from England Ireland and Australia have losing money hand over fist, because of the cost of feed and the demand for low prices in supermarkets.

Poultry Producers have gained immeasurably for whilst meat and bone meal has been banned in feed for cattle because of the threat of BSE mad cow disease. However it is still allowed to be fed to poultry. Whilst no proof has been established of a link between cooked By products and BSE, one can reasonably assume if humans can indeed become infected by beef they can as easily become infected by chicken.

There have been Food Riots in Egypt over the price of bread and the Police in fact baking 70,000 loaves a day in Cairo for the poor, Butchers shops in Egypt are turning over the same amount of money as last year but selling 50pc less beef.

From the worlds top 10 beef exporting countries 25 years ago, Botswana, South Africa, Zimbabwe ,Romania and the old Yugoslavian nations have become beef importers on a very large scale.

In the last year since 2007 Corn prices went up 36pc, Rice has risen 75pc, Soymeal 87pc, in many countries bread has gone up 130pc in price, until the marker collapsed again two months ago.

Beef has been a luxury item in wealthy countries for many years, which has been compensated by the advent of processed foods, with the same protein at affordable prices such as burgers hot dogs and kebabs. However in the EU, they are now going to ban the use of mince beef or ground beef as they call it in the USA.

France has been used to high meat prices for many years, consequently they are big users of offal liver, heart, tripe tails head meat and lambs heads.

Robert Zoelick head of the World Bank, believes the current food crisis threatens Global security. However Josette Sheeran, director of the UN World Food Program, concurs with Mr Neilson and said last month “We are seeing a new face of global hunger, we are seeing food on the shelves, yet people are unable to afford it”.

Recently in Australia farmers were complaining that they can buy their own beef cheaper in the supermarkets of the USA and Japan, than they can at home, despite the costs of shipping thousands of miles away and the additional refrigeration and packaging.

In Argentine we consume 69 kilos of beef per person per year, this is a staggering figure compared to the EU where consumption is 17.5 kilos .In Argentina as in France we also have a healthy appetite for offal.

We have seen in recent months India, Vietnam, Egypt and Brazil ban the export of Rice to conserve supplies for the domestic market, In Argentina we have banned export of beef and wheat for the same reasons.

There have been food riots in Egypt, Haiti, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Bangladesh and Vietnam, water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink, as it’s the price as much as the shortage causing the problem.

Is it a big problem to fix, indeed not, farming has always been feast or famine, ask any farmer in Outback Australia, who has to battle the elements of drought or floods.

In Australia during the late eighties and early nineties at the time of the wool mountain. The Hawke Government were giving farmers 20 cents for each sheep they had. This was the price of a government subsidized 22 bullet, in order to shoot there sheep at the governments cost then dig a hole to bury them. Millions of sheep were disposed of this way and today we have a food shortage.

Which came first the chicken or the egg, without the arable farmer tilling his corn, wheat, barley, maize or soybean we have no basic food for pigs, poultry and cattle, in the majority of countries where they have to be wintered in yards,

Man cannot live on bread alone, our farm animals cannot survive on grass alone only in exceptional countries in the Southern Hemisphere, Argentina, Australia, Brazil and New Zealand. Whilst the framework is still in place in the African countries, politics has got in the way of farm production, until we can find a compromise between colonialism and nationalism .

The whole world situation can be turned around in under two years, this is physically possible if the politicians could see the wood for the trees.

The subsidy system has served the farmers of Europe and the USA well for the last 55 years, whilst the farmers of the Southern Hemisphere have had to battle on and farm every hectare to its best advantage, with no assistance through drought or flood except their tears and blood.

Technorati Tags: famine, food shortage

We will be growing a lot more potato and corn this coming year…

Also see US generals planning for resource wars and Food shortage catastrophe creeping up on the world

Wikipedia: Because it provides “an assessment of the price of moving the major raw materials by sea,” according to The Baltic, “… it provides both a rare window into the highly opaque and diffuse shipping market and an accurate barometer of the volume of global trade — devoid of political and other agenda concerns.”

Baltic Dry Index

Source: Associated Content

The Baltic Dry Index which is a direct indicator of the health of vital worldwide shipping and supply activity as well as the potential health of the global economy has recently slipped more than 93%. Its value has gone from over 11,000 to less than 800 with little except for a floor of zero to suggest the slide will stop in the near future. This means that worldwide, the demand for cargo ships and more importantly raw materials that go into producing the everyday items that consumers buy has come to a near standstill. This is an indicator of a massive worldwide slump and likely foreshadows more economic woes for not only the US, but also the entire globe.

To understand the Baltic Dry index one has to approach this economic telltale from multiple angles. Basically, the index is set where the supply of raw materials meets the demand for ships to be booked to carry those materials from country to country or continent to continent. The index is broken down into different segments that take into account the size of the ship and the type of the cargo that is being shipped. It can be observed at the Investment Tools website at http://www.investmenttools.com/futures/bdi_baltic_dry_index.htm

Generally, when the BDI is charting a gain, stocks will likely close up and countries’ whose currency are good market indicators of worldwide exchange, like the value of the Canadian and Australian Dollars are on their way up as well. When the BDI is performing badly, generally the US and worldwide stock markets are likely to also perform badly in the near future and the currencies of the countries previously mentioned, who are heavily affected by the foreign goods and raw materials exchange will also likely soon show losses. This is because the BDI shows exactly where the worldwide demand for raw goods and materials rests at any given period. When these raw goods and materials are not being moved around, production of almost everything imaginable slows due to the tightening supply of worldwide goods.

Full Story

Pilgrim's Pride

Source: Charlotte Business Journal:

Pilgrim’s Pride Corp., a chicken processor with operations in Union County, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The company, based in Pittsburg, Texas, says it does not expect the move to affect its daily operations. A Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing allows companies to protect their assets while they reorganize.

Pligrim’s Pride has been hit hard this year by several factors, including the high cost of ingredients for chicken feed and lower consumer demand for meat.

Earlier this year, the company shut down a facility in Siler City where it had employed more than 800 workers.

“We expect to emerge from this restructuring a stronger, more competitive company that is well-positioned for growth and enhanced profitability,” says Clint Rivers, chief executive. “We are proud of the consistently high quality of our products, our valued customer relationships and the high level of service we provide.”

Pilgrim’s Pride (NYSE:PPC) says it has reached an agreement to obtain $450 million debtor-in-possession financing from a group of lenders led by Bank of Montreal.

Pilgrim’s Pride says it expects to lose $802 million, or $10.83 per share, in the fourth quarter. The company says the latest results will include a $501.4 million charge tied to the impairment of goodwill associated with Pilgrim Pride’s purchase of Gold Kist Inc.

That company lost $33.2 million, or 50 cents per share, in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Pilgrim’s Pride has 48,000 employees. The company operates 35 chicken processing plants and 11 prepared-foods facilities.

Technorati Tags: Famine, Pilgrim’s Pride

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.

…

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….

Full Story

Technorati Tags: famine

Yes indeed, working families are starting to seek food assistance from food banks and rescue shelters. Will it be another seven months before people realize that the food crisis is upon us? I hope not. I don’t dwell on the food emergency too much on this blog, but it is real, it’s happening now, and it will only get worse.

People, you need to purchase and stockpile some basic food supplies, for the sake of your family. If you have some money still, places like Nitro-Pak.com might be a good way to go, assuming the canneries are keeping up the pace with demand. Aldi’s, Costco, Sam’s Club…wherever you need to go to get the basics, do so now. Unfortunately, the gardening season is coming to a close, at least where I live, but think about spring time NOW, and plan accordingly. The system is too fragile, too volatile, to rely on; It is already running low on supplies.

My grandparents always had stack upon stack of seasoned fire wood available, and a fully stocked pantry. For them it wasn’t hoarding, or showed a lack of faith…it was simply prudent and wise; it was how they were raised, and it’s about time we take to heart some of the practical lessons that those who lived through hard times (like the last Great Depression) have to teach us.

Do it, do it now, stop fooling around. Stop trying to convince yourself that everything will be OK. If you have a family, if you have children, get busy now.

Source pressofatlanticcity.com

Tough economic times are making it hard for the state’s food pantries to keep their shelves stocked.

State officials said New Jersey’s food banks are reporting as much as a 30 percent increase in the number of families seeking food assistance, while food supplies are down by 19 percent from the same time last year.

In some cases, they said, a few of the facilities simply closed after running out of supplies.

The situation is so bad that Gov. Jon S. Corzine recently announced the early distribution of nearly
$1 million to the state’s six emergency food distribution centers to ease the shortages reported by the food pantries.

Of those funds, $14,444 went to the Southern Regional Food Distribution Center in Vineland, where Executive Director Tammy Morris said people requesting food are not just those on fixed incomes.

“Now we see more working families coming in requesting food,” she said. “It’s not looking good.”

Full Story…

famine

Source: WORLD FOOD DAY: Eating Less, Paying More

Despite wall-to-wall media coverage of the financial crisis rocking the U.S. and, increasingly, other financial systems around the world, a crisis with a larger scope is brewing with little attention.

Many people around the globe are feeling the burden of higher food and energy prices, found a new international poll of 26 countries released ahead of World Food Day Thursday.

The rising food prices, said the poll from the BBC World Service conducted by University of Maryland’s Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and the polling firm Globescan, were sometimes so acute as to affect people’s eating habits, especially in developing countries.

“The financial crisis is taking up a tremendous amount of coverage in the media right now, but what is going to affect a larger number of people around the world [are the crises of rising energy and food costs],” Clay Ramsay, the research director at PIPA, told IPS. “It’s important to see all these dimensions at once and not regard the financial crisis as the be-all and end-all of our problems.”

Ramsay told IPS that the first of these crises involved energy costs, which subsequently affected food costs because of the fuel and electricity needed for production, transportation, and storage.

“The financial crisis is the newest one — it’s the icing on a very bad-tasting cake,” Ramsay said. “All of these factors are going to interact, but the one that was the underlying one for many parts of the world was the increased energy costs. That has exacerbated the food crisis.”

With energy and food costs soaring of late, many perceive the increases as having a large effect on them, even leading some to cut down the amount of food they eat.

Full Story…

famine

• 30 Hour Famine: View from behind the stage

Source: Times Online

Britain is facing its worst harvest for at least 40 years as 30 per cent of the country’s grain lies in waterlogged or sodden ground. Hilary Benn, the Rural Affairs Secretary, is expected to give the go-ahead today for farmers to salvage what is left of their crops by using heavy machinery on wet fields.

European Union rules ban farmers from using combine harvesters on wet land to protect soil quality. Those who flout the ban can be prosecuted. The exemption is expected to last for about three weeks.

The poor harvest is unlikely to lead to a rise in the price of bread, cakes, biscuits and flour, however. Gordon Polson, director of the Federation of Bakers, said that although much of the milling wheat was of a poor quality it could still be used for bread and flour.

He said: “The poorer wheat means it has less protein, but manufacturers can add gluten to ensure the proper quality for making bread. We are not happy and we may still have to import some milling wheat, but no one is talking about price rises for bread.”

Full Story…

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Source: Reuters

Cash-strapped U.S. consumers could be turning their backs on two of the biggest trends in the food business — organics and convenience — in order to save money.

Food industry executives and analysts interviewed in the past week pointed to those two categories as among the most vulnerable to consumers trying to stretch food budgets. While cash-strapped consumers may be eating more at home, they are also cutting out some of the little time-saving or health- conscious luxuries to which they had grown accustomed.

These changes could be a boon to companies such as Kraft Foods Inc, General Mills Inc and J.M. Smucker Co, whose products are seen as building blocks to home- made lunches and dinners.

But forays by food producers such as Chiquita Brands International Inc and by supermarket chains such as Whole Foods Market Inc and Safeway Inc to sell pre-cut packages of fresh fruits and vegetables or prepared meals at a premium could be among the casualties.

“When the $75 doesn’t buy what it used to buy, you change what you buy,” said Bob Goldin, executive vice president at food and restaurant industry consulting firm Technomic. “Consumers really are willing to sacrifice convenience to manage their budgets.”

Demand for organic milk and meat remains strong, while purchases of packaged organic products such as crackers have dropped off, said Laurie Demeritt, president of market research firm Hartman Group in Bellevue, Washington.

Full Story…

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From: NYTimes.com

In a year when global harvests need to be excellent to ease the threat of pervasive food shortages, evidence is mounting that they will be average at best. Some farmers are starting to fear disaster.

Randy Kron, a farmer in Griffin, Ind., on land that was a cornfield, then a soybean field, but that is now flooded.

American corn and soybean farmers are suffering from too much rain, while Australian wheat farmers have been plagued by drought.

“The planting has gotten off to a poor start,” said Bill Nelson, a Wachovia grains analyst. “The anxiety level is increasing.”

Randy Kron, whose family has been farming in the southwestern corner of Indiana for 135 years, should have corn more than a foot tall by now. But all spring it has seemed as if there were a faucet in the sky. The rain is regular, remorseless.

Some of Mr. Kron’s fields are too soggy to plant. Some of the corn he managed to get in has drowned, forcing him to replant. The seeds that survived are barely two inches high.

At a moment when the country’s corn should be flourishing, one plant in 10 has not even emerged from the ground, the Agriculture Department said Monday. Because corn planted late is more sensitive to heat damage in high summer, every day’s delay practically guarantees a lower yield at harvest.

“This is pushing my nerves to the limit,” Mr. Kron said one recent morning, the sky as dark as the unplanted earth.

Last winter, as the full scope of the global food crisis became clear, commodity prices doubled or tripled, provoking grumbling in America, riots in two dozen countries and the specter of greatly increased malnutrition.

From tristateobserver.com

Larry Matlack, President of the American Agriculture Movement (AAM), has raised concerns over the issue of U.S. grain reserves after it was announced that the sale of 18.37 million bushels of wheat from USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust.

“According to the May 1, 2008 CCC inventory report there are o­nly 24.1 million bushels of wheat in inventory, so after this sale there will be o­nly 2.7 million bushels of wheat left the entire CCC inventory,” warned Matlack. “Our concern is not that we are using the remainder of our strategic grain reserves for humanitarian relief. AAM fully supports the action and all humanitarian food relief. Our concern is that the U.S. has nothing else in our emergency food pantry. There is no cheese, no butter, no dry milk powder, no grains or anything else left in reserve. The o­nly thing left in the entire CCC inventory will be 2.7 million bushels of wheat which is about enough wheat to make ½ of a loaf of bread for each of the 300 million people in America.”

The CCC is a federal government-owned and operated entity that was created to stabilize, support, and protect farm income and prices. CCC is also supposed to maintain balanced and adequate supplies of agricultural commodities and aids in their orderly distribution.

“This lack of emergency preparedness is the fault of the 1996 farm bill which eliminated the government’s grain reserves as well as the Farmer Owned Reserve (FOR),” explained Matlack. “We had hoped to reinstate the FOR and a Strategic Energy Grain Reserve in the new farm bill, but the politics of food defeated our efforts. As farmers it is our calling and purpose in life to feed our families, our communities, our nation and a good part of the world, but we need better planning and coordination if we are to meet that purpose. AAM pledges to continue our work for better farm policy which includes an FOR and a Strategic Energy Grain Reserve.”

AAM’s support for the FOR program, which allows the grain to be stored o­n farms, is a key component to a safe grain reserve in that the supplies will be decentralized in the event of some unforeseen calamity which might befall the large grain storage terminals.

A Strategic Energy Grain Reserve is as crucial for the nation’s domestic energy needs as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. AAM also supports full funding for the replenishment and expansion of Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust.

The May 1, 2008 CCC Inventory report may be reviewed here: http://www.fsa.usda.gov/Internet/FSA_File/wid2a.pdf.

From: Reuters

Chicago corn futures rose to an all-time high in Asia on Monday, as U.S. grains and oilseed futures markets extended their rally from late last week on crude oil’s surge to a record high above $139.

Corn and soybean prices were also boosted by worries about young U.S. crops, due to torrential rains in the country’s heartland.

The lead July 2008 corn futures contract rose as high as $6.72 per bushel, up more than 3 percent and a record for a spot contract. It closed on Friday at $6.50-3/4.

The new-crop July 2009 corn contract scaled an all-time peak of $7.20 per bushel, after U.S. corn futures soared to a record above $7 on Friday.

Worries about tight fundamentals, such as low stocks and high demand, was likely to continue feeding the rally in corn, market participants said.

From: The Independent

Giant biotech companies are privatising the world’s protection against climate change by filing hundreds of monopoly patents on genes that help crops resist it, a new investigation has concluded.

The study – by the authoritative Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group), based in Ottawa, Canada – has found that nine firms have filed at least 532 patents around the world on about 55 different genes offering protection against heat, drought and floods. If granted, the companies would be given control of crucial natural raw material needed to maintain food supplies in an increasingly hungry world.

Last week, as world leaders met in Rome to discuss the food crisis, GM companies promoted their technologies as the answer to hunger. On Thursday, Monsanto – the biggest and most controversial firm – announced a “commitment” to increase food production, partly by developing crops that need less water.

“Together we must meet the needs for increased food, fibre and energy, while preserving the environment,” said the company’s head, Hugh Grant. “These commitments represent the beginning of a journey that we will expand on and deepen in the years ahead.”

The ETC Group calls this “an opportunistic public relations strategy”, adding: “Monsanto’s business is selling patented seeds for industrial agriculture – not addressing a humanitarian food crisis.”

The report of its investigation shows that Monsanto and BASF – which last year announced a $1.5bn “collaboration” to develop new GM crops, including “ones more tolerant to adverse environmental conditions such as drought” – have between them filed patents for 27 of the 55 genes. Others had been filed by companies such as Bayer, Syngenta and Dow.

The reports says some of the applications are sweeping. One would cover more than 30 crops from oats to oil palms, triticale to tea, and potatoes to perennial grass – “in other words, virtually all food crops”.

It says the “corporate grab on climate-tolerant genes” means that “a handful of transnational companies are now positioned to determine who gets access to key genetic traits and what price they must pay”.

Small farmers in developing countries will be particularly hard hit by such “climate-change profiteering”. Patenting will make the crops expensive and ensure that poor farmers have to buy them every year, by prohibiting them from saving seeds from one harvest to grow for the next.

According to the report, conventional, non-GM breeding techniques are making remarkable progress in developing crops that can tolerate heat, floods and drought. A new Asian rice, due to go on the market next year, can stand being submerged for two weeks without affecting yields, while a new African one flowers early in the morning, escaping the heat of the day.

But, it says, “the patent grab is sucking up money and resources that could be spent on affordable, farmer-based strategies for survival”.

It concludes: “These patented technologies will ultimately concentrate corporate power, drive up costs, inhibit independent research and further undermine the rights of farmers to save and exchange seeds”.

But Croplife, which represents the world’s plant-science industry, retorts; “Patenting is very important. That is how we protect intellectual property and ensure we continue to bring new innovations to the marketplace.” It denies that biotechnology companies are seeking to monopolise world food supplies.