Food Insecurity / Hunger
this category refers to international geopolitical aspect; for US see Hunger/obesity
SEE FAMINE GAZA SUDAN
see doge coup musk USAID
USDA BROOKE ROLLINS FASHY
see financialization
see also water, hunger
aha hunger is system resilience buffer fail see social safety net
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an 4 25
Anna Pesek saw a federal program supporting local food purchases as much more than a boost to her Iowa pork and poultry farm.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture grant program that allowed schools and food banks to buy fresh products from small farms helped her forge new business relationships. It allowed her to spend more with local feed mills and butchers, and was starting to build a stronger supply chain of local foods.
But now that the Trump administration has yanked the funding, she worries that rural economic boost might end too.
“With the razor-thin margins on both sides, those partnerships are just really hard, if not impossible, to sustain,” she said.
The co-owner of Over the Moon Farm, Pesek said her operation was never entirely reliant on the local food programs; it represented about 10% of her business. While she knew the federal money wouldn’t last forever, she was planning on the funding lasting through 2028 — but then the Trump administration last month nixed more than $1 billion for local food programs.
The federally funded Local Food Purchase Assistance and the Local Food for Schools programs, both begun during the pandemic, focused on small, local farms in aims of building stronger domestic food supply chains. Grants allowed schools and food banks to buy meat, dairy and produce from small farms — including many healthy products that are often too expensive for those institutions.
USDA’s local food programs specifically aided some of the nation’s most disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, including newcomers, small farmers and those who have faced racial discrimination.
Federal cuts squeeze already-struggling food banks, school lunch programs
The local food programs were initially funded by 2021’s American Rescue Plan Act but were later expanded by the Biden administration. The Trump administration, though, has cut the funding that went to thousands of small farms, saying that it’s instead “prioritizing stable, proven solutions that deliver lasting impact.”
Pesek noted that the federal government has subsidized commodity agriculture like corn and soybeans for more than a century.
“It’s not a novel idea, right? This is how the relationship between the federal government and farmers has looked,” she said. “And so all this program did was allocate some of the funds to go to different kinds of farmers versus just commodity farmers.”
Just after cutting the local food programs, USDA announced it was expediting $10 billion in direct payments to commodity farmers through the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program, which helps farmers offset high input prices and low sale prices for crops. The White House isreportedly considering billions more in farm subsidies as President Donald Trump escalates global trade wars.
Andy Ollove, food access program director at Fresh Approach, a California nonprofit that works on building a healthier and more resilient food system, said the government’s long-standing farm subsidies flow to some of the nation’s biggest operators. Conversely, the local food programs benefited small farmers and communities directly.
“The economic multiplier to this program just seems way more impactful than the traditional subsidy model of the USDA that the administration is continuing to invest in,” he said. “It’s just a giveaway.”
Fresh Approach has helped administer the food bank program in California. While implementation delays mean farmers won’t lose access to the program as quickly as in other states, he expects elimination of the program to put small farmers out of business across the country.
Some states have launched their own local food programs, but nothing on the scale of the federal investment. That’s left advocates for small farmers, local foods and food banks pushing for reinstatement of the federal program or getting it included in the next round of farm bill negotiations, when Congress outlines a five- or six-year spending plan for the nation’s food policy and agriculture sector.
Ollove expects philanthropists will fund parts of California’s program after federal money is depleted. But it won’t have the same reach.
“I do feel confident that these types of programs will continue in California … sporadically and piecemeal,” he said. “But not in the way that we’re administering it, in a way that I think is changing a lot of things and improving the food system.”
A mixed response from states
The noncompetitive USDA local food grants allowed many new farmers to break into markets. And the aid for food hubs, which link small producers to larger markets, helped farmers distribute products to schools and food banks.
In Wisconsin, for example, more than half of the nearly 300 farmers who benefited from the food bank program were early career farmers,according to state officials.
In Illinois, the state prioritized funds towardsocially disadvantaged farmers, such as those who have faced racial or ethnic prejudice.
“Attacking this program was really an attack on Illinois’ most vulnerable, whether it’s a socially disadvantaged farmer or the food recipient,” said Kristi Jones, deputy director of the Illinois Department of Agriculture.
Her department administered the federal food bank program, which helped beginning farmers get their businesses off the ground.
“A lot of these farmers, they’re living their dreams,” she said. “They are living their goals because of this program.”
Illinois had been planning on nearly $15 million from the next round of funding for the food bank program. Jones said farmers already had begun planning and spending on seeds and equipment.
“You just don’t put something on the ground and have the product the next day,” she said. “ … So that uncertainty was incredibly challenging for farmers who already deal with enough uncertainty.”
Democratic leaders have bashed the Trump administration’s decision: Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, for example, called it “a slap in the face to Illinois farmers and the communities they feed.”
But conservative leaders in other states have downplayed the cuts.
In Texas, Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller characterized USDA’s decision as “a reassessment.”
He said the state was not dependent on the federal funds and would continue its Farm to School and Farm to Food Bank programs, which encourage the local purchase of Texas agricultural products.
“There’s always room for refinement, and we may see a revised version of the policy down the road that is even better for agriculture producers,”he said in a statement last month.
Texas funds programs to help distribute excess food to schools, food banks and charities. But it does not have a grant program like USDA’s to help those organizations purchase local food, said Marshall Webb, spokesperson for the state agriculture department.
Iowa’s agriculture department recently started its own local food program.
The Choose Iowa program has made about $300,000 available to support local food purchases — though the statelost out on about $11.3 million because of the federal cuts.
Don McDowell, spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Agriculture & Land Stewardship, said the agency would continue to ask lawmakers to expand funding for the Choose Iowa program.
“Programs designed to forge relationships between Iowa farmers, food hubs, food banks and schools are important to our farmers and communities,” he said.
Iowa Farmers Union President Aaron Heley Lehman said his organization, which represents family farmers and ranchers, would like to see the state step in to fill the void.
“But we don’t anticipate that that’s going to be an easy thing for the state of Iowa to do,” he said. “So not only is it local farmers that are feeling like they’ve had the rug pulled out from underneath them, but the state of Iowa has, too.”
Creating a new food system
In Southern California, Dickinson Family Farms has worked to gather produce from dozens of small farms across the region, allowing even the smallest operators without distribution capabilities to sell to local food banks.
Democrats and Republicans take on soda, but they’re using different tactics
Andrew Dickinson, who owns the farm with his father, said the federal local food program also helped reduce food waste. Farmers were able to get fair market prices for vegetables with cosmetic damage or fruits deemed too small or large for grocery store shelves.
Dickinson said the federal program has provided a reliable marketplace for small operators that otherwise depend on more inconsistent sales streams like farmers markets.
“It will create a vacuum,” he said.
About 60 miles east of Los Angeles, sixth-generation farmer Anna Knight said the federal funds were much more than a handout to farmers. To her, they were about creating a new kind of food system.
She said supporting local producers creates more supply chain resilience — something many people didn’t appreciate until the pandemic.
“We don’t want to go back to that world,” she said. “When we invest in our local food system, we’re really investing on onshoring our food production system, on making new food systems local and increasing their resiliency in moments of crisis.”
Old Grove Orange, her California farm, has been supplying citrus to some local school systems for years. But she said the federal funds were the “single biggest changemaker” for pushing schools to buy local for the first time.
To her, that’s key in promoting lifelong healthy eating: Local produce like her freshly picked oranges pack more of a nutritional punch and just taste better than produce that takes weeks to ship from abroad.
“When you are giving a child a delicious piece of fruit, you are really cultivating their palate for life,” she said. “You are setting this expectation of what a fruit is supposed to taste like, and you are sparking this love for fruits and vegetables for the rest of their life.”
Knight said the nation doesn’t have to choose between big and small farms. But small farms are vanishing all around her.
“This is a ticking bomb,” she said. “The clock is running out if we don’t really find a way to help make these small, medium-sized farms sustainable.”
*Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.
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AHA NO TOPIC GENERATES AS MUCH BAD FAITH Rationalization hypocrisy than tariffs?
Greg Gutfeld: Tariffs create higher food prices that “disincentivizes” eating
02/13/25 MMA
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an common dr 5 24
echoing early May criticism of U.S. House Republicans' blueprint for the next Farm Bill, anti-hunger and green groups on Friday fiercely condemned the GOP's discussion draft text of the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2024.
Released by U.S. House Committee on Agriculture Chair Glenn "GT" Thompson (R-Pa.), the draft is competing with a Democratic proposal—Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow's (D-Mich.) Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act.
While Thomspon claimed that his bill "is the product of extensive feedback from stakeholders and all members of the House, and is responsive to the needs of farm country through the incorporation of hundreds of bipartisan policies," Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.), the panel's ranking member, said that the draft "confirms my worst fears."
"House Republicans plan to pay for the farm bill by taking food out of the mouths of America's hungry children, restricting farmers from receiving the climate-smart conservation funding they so desperately need, and barring the USDA from providing financial assistance to farmers in times of crisis," he warned, referring to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The economic impact of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) cuts alone "would be staggering," Scott emphasized. "A $27 billion reduction in food purchasing power would not only increase hunger, but it would also reduce demand for jobs in the agriculture, transportation, manufacturing, and grocery sectors."
Leaders at advocacy groups on Friday similarly slammed the Republican bill. Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, reiterated her previous condemnation of GOP attempts to cut the benefits of hungry families, saying that "this is unacceptable; Congress should reject it."
"Every SNAP participant would receive less to buy groceries in future years than they would under current law, putting a healthy diet out of reach for millions of people. This would be the largest cut to SNAP since 1996 if enacted and these cuts would grow even deeper over time," Jones Cox explained, debunking Thompson's description of the changes.
"And the cut to future SNAP benefits isn't the only harmful policy in this bill. For example, it would allow states to outsource SNAP administration to private contractors. But prior privatization efforts delayed benefits for people in need, worsened errors, and increased costs," she continued. "Congress should reject Chair Thompson's harmful proposal and instead work to pass a farm bill that truly protects and strengthens SNAP." Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, executive director and CEO of MomsRising, argued that "at this time when skyrocketing food prices have increased hunger and food insecurity, forcing tens of millions of U.S. families to make impossible choices between food and other essentials, it would be mean-spirited and shameful for Congress to cut the SNAP benefits moms and families rely on; and it also would be damaging to our economy."
Describing the benefits, formerly called food stamps, as "the nation's first line of defense against hunger," Rowe-Finkbeiner highlighted that "more than 42 million people count on SNAP benefits each month and nearly four in five of them are children, seniors, people with disabilities, or veterans."
"In contrast, the bipartisan Senate Farm Bill—the Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act—aids farmers and treats hunger in America as the emergency it is," she noted. "It is a bold bill that would protect SNAP benefits and increase access to this essential program for groups that have long been excluded, reducing barriers to participation for older adults, military families, some college students, and others. It is an easy choice. Without question, the Senate Farm Bill is the version that should become law." The GOP's efforts to restrict food assistance aren't limited to the United States, as Gina Cummings, Oxfam vice president for advocacy, alliances, and policy, pointed out Friday, declaring that "at a time when over 281 million people are suffering from acute hunger, any proposal to undercut crucial international food assistance programs is damaging."
As Cummings detailed:
The resilience-building programs housed in Food for Peace are vital to preparing frontline communities for future shocks that could impact their food security—whether it be from climate change, conflict, or economic downturns.
Oxfam has raised concerns about the American Farmers Feed the World Act, which is where many of the cuts to Food for Peace originate from—since its introduction last summer. The bill has proposed gutting funding for resilience-building activities that ensure communities can build up their local markets, withstand the next drought, flood, or conflict, and not go hungry. The House Farm Bill as it is currently written includes some of the most concerning provisions of the bill and would render these vital interventions inoperable, resulting in as many as 3 million fewer people being reached by these programs based on their current scale.
The House must reject the provisions of the American Farmers Feed the World Act included in the House Farm Bill draft as the bill goes for markup. The inclusion of such provisions is a threat to global food security and a shift towards a less-efficient model of international aid by the United States.
The AFL-CIO said on social media that it "strongly opposes" the Republican proposal, adding: "Families rely on Food for Peace—and also SNAP, SNAP's Thrifty Food Plan, and other federal nutrition and food security programs. We cannot support making harmful policy changes or funding cuts to any of them."
In addition to calling out the GOP for trying to leave more people hungry, advocates denounced Republican efforts to gut climate-friendly requirements from the Inflation Reduction Act and enact the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act.
"The Farm Bill is a seminal opportunity to reform our food and agriculture sector away from factory farms and corporate greed," said Food & Water Watch managing director of policy and litigation Mitch Jones. "Instead, House Republicans want to double down."
"Some of leadership's more dangerous proposals would take us backwards on animal welfare, and climate-smart agriculture—both the EATS Act and support for factory farm biogas must be dead on arrival," he asserted. "It's time Congress put the culture wars aside and got back to work on a Farm Bill that puts consumers, farmers, and the environment above politicking and Big Ag handouts." Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that "weakening safeguards that protect people from pesticides, slashing protections for endangered species, and recklessly expanding industrial logging should have no place in the Farm Bill."
"It's unfortunate that chairman Thompson has put forward such a destructive farm bill to appease the most fringe members of Congress," Hartl added. "This bill can't pass the House and it's a waste of everyone's time."
In a joint statement released Friday after a meeting with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Democrats on Thompson's panel, Scott and Statenow stressed that members of their party are "committed to passing a strong, bipartisan Farm Bill that strengthens the farm and family safety nets and invests in our rural communities."
"America's farmers, families, workers, and rural communities deserve the certainty of a five-year Farm Bill, and everyone knows it must be bipartisan to pass," the pair said, blasting divisive GOP proposals. "Democrats remain ready and willing to work with Republicans on a truly bipartisan Farm Bill to keep farmers farming, families fed, and rural communities strong."
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CFTC act
Food prices[
Institutions such as hedge funds, pension funds and investment banks[93] have been instrumental in pushing up world food prices in the last five years, with investment in food solely as a commodity rising from $65bn to $126bn (£41bn to £79bn) between 2007 and 2012, contributing to 30-year highs. Financial institutions now make up 61% of all investment in wheat futures.
According to Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on food, there was a rush by institutions to enter the food market following the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.[93] De Schutter told the Independent in March 2012: "What we are seeing now is that these financial markets have developed massively with the arrival of these new financial investors, who are purely interested in the short-term monetary gain and are not really interested in the physical thing – they never actually buy the ton of wheat or maize; they only buy a promise to buy or to sell.
The result of this financialisation of the commodities market is that the prices of the products respond increasingly to a purely speculative logic. This explains why in very short periods of time we see prices spiking or bubbles exploding, because prices are less and less determined by the real match between supply and demand."[93]In 2011, 450 economists from around the world called on the G20 to regulate the commodities market more.[93] Rising food prices over recent years have been linked with social unrest around the world, including rioting in Bangladesh and Mexico,[93] and theArab Spring.
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2 mil migrant workers in san joachin vly
RR did immigration reform that included acctability for hiring illlegals, never implemented b/c big ag did not want it
UN study drought --> hunger centr am 1 tortilla/day! 2.1 mill hungry
trump cuts food aid!
bath riots texas ft carmelita louse bath every day, naked pix posted in bars. latx rosa parks
hunter sr got border wall built san diego, forced ppl in desert who died; bro rocket sci studied routes and started water stations
history pete w behind 20 pts kathleen brown, prop 187 boosted polls
https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-june-25-2019/
john carlos frey sp bk sand and blood
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some good news on int'l agreements? fish
Losing Wild Fish Would Be a Nuisance in Some Places, a Health Crisis in Others
By Amy McDermott
Local, wild seafood is essential for global health. Around the world, more than 3 billion people rely on fish as a substantial part of their diet. Nearby fisheries offer vitamins and minerals otherwise unavailable in poor coastal areas.
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How a Seed Bank, Almost Lost in Syria's War, Could Help Feed a ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/climate/syria-seed-bank.html
Oct 13, 2017 - TERBOL, Lebanon — Ali Shehadeh, a seed hunter, opened the folders with the greatest of care. Inside each was a carefully dried and pressed seed pod: a sweet clover from Egypt, a wild wheat found only in northern Syria, an ancient variety of bread wheat. He had thousands of these folders stacked ...
Svalbard global seed vault has its seeds returned by Syria | WIRED UK
www.wired.co.uk/article/svalbard-seed-bank-syria
2.
Syria Just Made a Major Seed Bank Deposit | Smart News | Smithsonian
www.smithsonianmag.com/.../why-scientists-just-made-major-seed-bank-deposit-180...
2.
In the midst of war, this Syrian seed bank is still going | Grist
grist.org/article/in-the-midst-of-war-this-syrian-seed-bank-is-still-going/
1.
Syrian Civil War Prompts First Withdrawal From Doomsday Seed Vault ...
https://www.npr.org/.../syrian-civil-war-prompts-first-withdrawal-from-doomsday-seed-...
Sep 23, 2015 - Researchers in the Middle East have requested the first-ever withdrawal from the "final backup" seed bank because of destruction caused by the Syrian civil war.
Syrian seed bank gets new home away from war : Nature News ...
https://www.nature.com/news/syrian-seed-bank-gets-new-home-away-from-war-1.20725
Oct 5, 2016 - A major seed bank in Aleppo, Syria, holds genes that might help researchers breed crops to survive climate change. But the conflict tearing the country apart has rendered the bank largely inaccessible for the past four years. Now an effort to duplicate its seed collection at more-accessible locations is ...
mark shapiro forthcoming book seeds of resistance: seed bank taken by rebel who happend to be agronomist, but lost to___, seeds smuggled out to Lebannon?
https://kpfa.org/episode/voices-of-the-middle-east-and-north-africa-december-20-2017/
https://www.amazon.com/Seeds-Resistance-Fight-Save-Supply/dp/1510705767
Seeds of Resistance: The Fight to Save Our Food Supply
Sun. Soil. Water. Seed. These are the primordial ingredients for the most essential activity of all on earth: growing food. All of these elements are being changed dramatically under the pressures of corporate consolidation of the food chain, which has been accelerating just as climate change is profoundly altering the conditions for growing food. In the midst of this global crisis, the fate of our food has slipped into a handful of the world’s largest companies. Food Chained will bring home what this corporate stranglehold is doing to our daily diet, from the explosion of genetically modified foods to the rapid disappearance of plant varieties to the elimination of independent farmers who have long been the bedrock of our food supply.
Seeds of Resistance will touch many nerves for readers, including concerns about climate change, chronic drought in essential farm states like California, the persistence of the junk food culture, the proliferation of GMOs, and the alarming domination of the seed market and our very life cycle by global giants like Monsanto.
But not all is bleak when it comes to the future of our food supply. Seeds of Resistance will also present hopeful stories about farmers, consumer groups, and government agencies around the world that are resisting the tightening corporate squeeze on our food chain.
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http://www.alternet.org/environment/what-would-happen-if-several-worlds-biggest-food-crops-failed-same-time
Less than one-quarter of Earth’s total cropland produces nearly three-quarters of the staple crops that feed the world’s population – especially corn, wheat and rice, the most important cereal crops. These areas are our planet’s major breadbaskets.
Historically, when a crop failed in one of these breadbaskets, only nearby areas had to contend with shortages and rising prices. Now, however, major crops are traded on global markets, which means that production failures can have far-reaching impacts. Moreover, climate change is expected to generate heat waves and drought that could cause crop losses in most of the world’s breadbaskets. Indeed, failures could occur simultaneously in several of these key regions....
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http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20012016/climate-change-raises-troubling-question-who-gets-eat-food-supply-agriculture
Policymakers on Capitol Hill got a dire warning that climate change threatens food production, safety and affordability.
That stark message came in a briefing by the American Meteorological Society to congressional staff members, climate scientists and federal regulators that linked climate change to a host of troubling scenarios involving worldwide food availability.
Wednesday's briefing drew on a peer-reviewed study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture released during the Paris Climate Conference last month. That report, "Climate Change, Global Food Security and the U.S. Food System," concluded that the effects of climate change on food will strike urban and rural populations in wealthy and poor nations alike.
While the threat depends on many factors, its impact will increase by mid-century, according to the report. Under the least-optimistic scenario––based on high carbon emissions and low international cooperation to combat climate change––agricultural yields could fall by as much as 15 percent, and food prices could rise more than 30 percent by 2050.
"Climate change puts the world's food security at risk through both direct and indirect factors," said Margaret Walsh, an ecologist in USDA's Climate Change Program Office and one of the authors the report.
Widespread drought caused by climate change could decrease crop production, Walsh told InsideClimate News. At the same time, sea level rise could impact cargo ships' access to docks for importing and exporting food.
"There are many, complex factors that have to be considered when assessing the threat to food security," Walsh said.
Global Warming, Global Warning
Global food security––defined as people having access to safe and nutritious food sufficient to lead healthy lives––has improved over the last six years, with 200 million fewer people at risk, Walsh said. (The USDA estimates that 805 million people worldwide do not have sufficient food today.) Yet predictions of increasing global temperatures could signal a halt in the progress toward curbing global hunger.
Risks to food security will increase as the magnitude and rate of climate change increases. Even moderate changes in global warming are predicted to have a detrimental effect on global food sources, Walsh said.
USDA scientists calculated the consequences associated with worst- and best-case scenarios, based on the current level of greenhouse gases, which is around 400 parts per million.
A worst-case projection based on high greenhouse gas concentrations in the 850 ppm range, coupled with high population growth and low economic growth, concluded that 175 million more people will be at risk of undernourishment by 2080. The same socioeconomic conditions at 550 ppm would result in 60 million additional people at risk, and if concentrations drop to 350 ppm, risk does not increase at all.
Climate is the most important influence on agriculture, Walsh said. Crops are adapted to particular patterns of temperature, rainfall and the length of the growing season. When climate changes those parameters, agricultural systems are disrupted.
'Who Gets to Eat?'
Ed Carr, a professor of international development, community and environment at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., used wheat production in northwestern Europe and rice production in eastern Asia to illustrate that tenuous balance. Together, those two regions produce one-third of the world's grain crops.
The wheat and rice output has been pushed to the limits that the soil can support and the grain variety can produce, said Carr, who was one of the speakers at the briefing.
"You add climate change to that mix and you are taking a stressed system and stressing it even more," he said.
Rising temperatures mean the grains won't germinate; rain patterns are disrupted so crops are stunted and growing seasons are altered, Carr said.
"We are already in a world where we are bumping up against the limit of what we can produce so any additional stress factors can have significant consequences," he said.
Less production means price increases and a shifting of markets, Carr said. The food will go to the markets that can afford the higher prices, leaving poorer nations wanting.
"What we see are the consequences of climate change radiating," he said.
Other factors that must be considered, according to the researchers, is that climate change also disrupts transportation, storage, packaging and delivering food–– making it harder for people to get enough of the right kind of food, especially in regions already facing shortages.
One of the least recognized factors is how social and cultural norms in various communities and even households will shape food distribution and preferences during shortages, Carr said.
"If there is inadequate food available to households––who gets to eat?" Carr said. "In parts of Africa, boy children will be fed preferentially over girl children.
"So basically we don't know a whole lot about the social and cultural norms that are critical to food access, so most of our measures of food access are related to food price, which is a very partial measure of access at best."
Although the United States may be vulnerable to climate change-related disruptions in productivity, it appears likely to endure with fewer hardships than the rest of the world, USDA researchers said.
Published Under:
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Monsanto and the World Food Crisis
Monsanto, ever on the lookout for a new financial opportunity, especially one which, on the surface at least, appears to be benevolent found one in biofuels. The growing of corn, in Monsanto's case, genetically engineered corn, for the production of ethanol purportedly to reduce the use of fossil fuels [10][11][12][13]. Unfortunately though, as is often the case with Monsanto, this silver lining has a rather large and ominous cloud, and in the massive diversion of land once used to grow food to growing crops for the fueling of automobiles yet another crisis has ensued. In early 2010, Monsanto, along with other biotech companies and philanthropists, became involved in an ongoing project designed to develop new African drought-tolerant maize varieties. While the new seeds promise increased yields during drought years, the project (specifically Monsanto's involvement) is not without controversy.
For more see Monsanto and the World Food Crisis.
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/the-global-1-exposing-the-transnational-ruling-class/
Estimates are that the total world’s wealth is close to $200 trillion, with the US and Europe holding approximately 63 percent. To be among the wealthiest half of the world, an adult needs only $4,000 in assets once debts have been subtracted. An adult requires more than $72,000 to belong to the top 10 percent of global wealth holders, and more than $588,000 to be a member of the top 1 percent. As of 2010, the top 1 percent of the wealthist people in the world had hidden away between $21 trillion to $32 trillion in secret tax exempt bank accounts spread all over the world.[iv] Meanwhile, the poorest half of the global population together possesses less than 2 percent of global wealth.[v] The World Bank reports that, in 2008, 1.29 billion people were living in extreme poverty, on less than $1.25 a day, and 1.2 billion more were living on less than $2.00 a day.[vi] Starvation.net reports that 35,000 people, mostly young children, die every day from starvation in the world.[vii] The numbers of unnecessary deaths have exceeded 300 million people over the past forty years. Farmers around the world grow more than enough food to feed the entire world adequately. Global grain production yielded a record 2.3 billion tons in 2007, up 4 percent from the year before—yet, billions of people go hungry every day. Grain.org describes the core reasons for ongoing hunger in a recent article, “Corporations Are Still Making a Killing from Hunger”: while farmers grow enough food to feed the world, commodity speculators and huge grain traders like Cargill control global food prices and distribution.[viii] Addressing the power of the global 1 percent—identifying who they are and what their goals are—are clearly life and death questions.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/dialogs/print/?id=175579
The Hunger Wars in Our Future
Heat, Drought, Rising Food Costs, and Global Unrest
173m lobbying on farm bill (lots of energy and utilitiy?) stalled b/c TP wants bigger food stamp cuts = ryan bill (30-3 b$)
http://grist.org/news/lobbyists-spent-173-5-million-trying-to-shape-the-2008-farm-bill/
parenti on DN: So you had the Arab Spring, to some extent, which is many, many positive aspects of this, but it is also associated with three wars, you know: Libya, Syria, Yemen. Part of what triggered that was, I think, climate change in grain-producing areas. The U.S. and Canada hit by floods. Australia, drought. drought in Russia—Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, which caused Russia to ban its wheat exports in 2010. Single-largest grain wheat importer in the world? Egypt. Food prices were running at over 20 percent inflation a year at that—from 2010 to 2011, when the Arab Spring kicked off. And if you go back and look, the first demands were all about the rising cost of living, with food being at the center of it. And that, to some extent, was, you could say, the expression of climate change impacting agriculture in other places, showing up as suffering and political crisis and then violence in the Middle East....
CHRISTIAN PARENTI: Well, it will—it will probably be compounded by speculation, that in situations like this, organizations—companies like Glencore get on top of it, and they increase the price even further through speculation.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Explain what that company is, I mean, what they do.
CHRISTIAN PARENTI: It’s the second largest commodity trading company in the world after Cargill, and they’re involved in mining and buying and selling agricultural commodities like wheat and soy. So, what that will mean in the Global South is that people, such as Egyptians, who pay 40 percent of—the average Egyptian pays 40 percent of their wages in food, they’re going to be pressed to the wall. And so, we’re going to see, as we saw in 2008 and to some extent in last year, probably more food riots, more protests. And at first it won’t look like it’s about climate change. You know, it’ll be about some kleptocratic president. It’ll be, you know, Christians and Muslims fighting each other in northern Nigeria. And it’s not to say that these conflicts are reducible to climate change, but they are exacerbated by climate change.
And the frightening thing is that one of the only institutions in the U.S. that seems to think about this is the Pentagon. And they don’t—you know, their job is to fight wars and prepare for wars. So they see this coming, and they are preparing for open-ended counterinsurgency on a global scale indefinitely. To their credit, they also say, you know, ultimately, we can’t handle this. If there is an appropriate policy from civilian leaders, who knows how civilization will cope with the next century and climate change kicking in very readily? But right now, the preparations are for policing this crisis. And that’s not going to help at all. That’s going to exacerbate it....
The rapid rise in prices for food, fuel and commodities has been disastrous for the world's poor, including Indonesian market vendor Lia Romi. But it's a bonanza for multinational trading firms such asGlencore.
While Romi has trouble feeding her family, Glencore - the world's largest diversified commodities trader - is planning a US$11billion share sale, likely the largest market debut ever seen on the London Stock Exchange.
"The price for our daily food has at least doubled in the past two years," Lia Romi told Al Jazeera through a translator. "Food costs 100 per cent of my family's daily income [of about $3]. I have nothing saved and I owe [money] from my [market stall] business."
While Romi, and millions like her, worry about feeding their families, the initial public offering from the commodity speculating giant will create at least four billionaires, dozens worth more than $100million and several hundred old fashioned millionaires. Chief Executive Ivan Glasenberg is set to make more than $9bn from the share sale. And speculating on food prices is an important part of his wealth.
Controlling prices
Valued at about $60billion, Glencore controls 50 per cent of the global copper market, 60 per cent of zinc, 38 per cent in alumina, 28 per cent of thermal coal, 45 per cent of lead and almost 10 per cent of the world's wheat - according to information the firm disclosed prior to its share sale. It also controls about one quarter of the world market in barley, sunflower and rape seed.
"They are possibly one of very few mining companies that are price makers, rather than price takers," said Chris Hinde, editorial director of Mining Journalmagazine. "They are the stockbrokers of the commodities business [operating] in a fairly secretive world. They are effectively setting the price for some very important commodities," he told Al Jazeera.
The firm employs about 57,000 people, generated a turnover of $145billion in the past year and has assets worth more than $79billion. Glencore's media department refused interview requests from Al Jazeera.
Based in Baar, Switzerland, where regulation is minimal, the company's sprawling interests span Bolivian tin mines, Angolan oil, zinc producers in Kazakhstan, Zambian copper mines and Russian wheat operations.
"Glencore's vertical integration really is unprecedented," said Devlin Kuyek, a researcher with GRAIN, a non-profit international organisation working on food security.
"Glencore owns almost 300,000 hectares of farm land and it is one of the largest farm operators in the world. They are engaging in speculation on the grain trade and have immense market power," he told Al Jazeera.
Global food prices have climbed recently, returning close to their 2008 peak, when bread riots swept parts of the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean.
"A disturbing amount of price increases, I fear, is being driven by speculative activity," Marcus Miller, a professor of international economics at the University of Warwick, told Al Jazeera. "Bets [on future price rises or declines] can become self-fulfilling if you are big enough to affect the market."
In March 2011, the World Bank's global food index was 36 per cent above levels from a year earlier, although prices for commodities have dropped in the past few weeks.
Some analysts believe price increases have more to do with a growing global population and rising middle classes, particularly in India and China, who are eating more meat and thus driving up prices for corn and other animal feed.
Duncan Green, the head of research at development organisation Oxfam Great Britain, said international markets for food and other commodities can be compared to the shape of a champagne glass. "There are a lot of people producing, and a lot of people consuming, but there is a pinch point in the middle, controlled by corporations who can walk away with the final value," he told Al Jazeera. "Many of the world's poor are -bizarrely - people growing food."
In 2010, investment bank Goldman Sachs warned of "violent price spikes" in commodities markets, and that prediction has more or less come true.
Knowledge and power
To make money betting on food, metals and energy, Glencore – like other trading houses and hedge funds – relies on one crucial commodity: Information.
"They have offices all over the world and unique access to information about production and distribution," said food security researcher Kuyek. "When the people who have that information are also the ones speculating, there is grave cause for concern; they can purchase forward contracts when they know prices are going up."
In August 2010, for example, Russia issued a :{ban on grain exports:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}:, after droughts ravaged crops. On August 3, the head of Glencore's Russian grain unit encouraged the governmet to halt exports. The government followed his advice on August 5, causing prices for cereals to rise 15 per cent in two days.
"Days before the export ban went into place, Glencore made huge bets," said Kuyek. "They had some kind of information there; companies with information are in the best place to capture profits from volatility." Glencore, for its part, said it also lost money as a result of the ban, because it had to fulfill delivery obligations to clients outside Russia at the new, higher price.
In addition to manipulating food prices – potentially with insider information - the trading giant appears to have broken laws on several continents.
Prosecutors in Belgium charged Glencore employees with criminal conspiracy and corruption, alleging they illicitly sought confidential information on European export subsidies from a public official. The case will be heard in Brussels on May 12.
Shady deals
During Saddam Hussein's rule in Iraq, and the UN sanctions which accompanied its final years, Glencore made handsome profits marketing embargoed oil. In February 2001, Glencore bought 1million barrels of Iraqi crude oil destined for the US and diverted the black gold to Croatia, where it was sold for a premium of $3million, according to a UN Security Council report.
When the news broke, the Sunday Timesnewspaper in the UK headlined their investigation "Secretive Swiss trader links City to Iraq oil scam".
Glencore's founder and lifelong commodities hustler Marc Rich was dubbed the "face of scandal", by Vanity Fairmagazine. After founding the company in 1974, Rich rose to prominence by pioneering "combat trading" -aggressive deal making in countries facing turmoil.
He traded oil for Ayatollahs when Iran was blacklisted by the US, did business with South Africa's apartheid government and skirted US trade embargoes on Cuba and Libya to make trades under the motto: Do whatever it takes.
"There will always be allegations that they [Glencore] are dealing with some unsavory folks," said Chris Hinde from Mining Journal magazine. "But I wouldn't say that makes them unusual for traders."
Tony Hayward, the disgraced former BP CEO who presided over the worst oil spill in US history, has been approached by Glencore to become a non-executive director on the board of the company when it becomes public.
While Rich sold the company in 1993, his take-no-prisoners approach to the commodities business lives on in today's traders and speculators, including the South African CEO Ivan Glasenberg, who gave Rich's trading empire the name Glencore.
In a January interview with the Financial Timesnewspaper, his first in 20 years, Rich supported the share sale, although he acknowledged that it is "much more convenient" for a trader not to be a public company as mandatory disclosure and regulatory oversight "limits your activity".
Perhaps, Glencore is going public to increase its size, allowing it to acquire large competitors, particularly the mining giant Xstrata. "They are so big now, that they cannot get any bigger unless they are listed," Hinde said, adding that some of the firm's 800 partners might want to take the company public with the hope of cashing out their millions over the next few years.
Food insecurity
Regardless of the firm's reasons, institutional investors from the US, East Asia and the Middle East have all committed to buying.
Aabar, the sovereign wealth fund from the United Arab Emirates, controlled by Abu Dhabi's oil-rich monarchs, is expected to become the largest "cornerstone investor", pledging to buy about $1billion worth of stock.
"It seems that they are buying a stake to strengthen the UAE's control over the global grain trade, for their own food security," said Kuyek. "In the absence of anything meaningful being done at the international level, - except for the same prescriptions of open markets and trade liberalisation." Food insecure countries in the Gulf, Northeast Asia, Korea and other regions are attempting to gain more direct control over food, as the market economy "can’t guarantee decent prices", he said.
Back in her hut in Indonesia, on the front lines of the global food crisis, Lia Romi hasn't been following Glencore's stock flotation. She is worried about how to feed her three kids.
"I've sacrificed several times not to buy books or clothes for my daughter and son, just for our daily food because I have no savings at all," she said.
As Glencore's directors prepare to pocket their millions, it's unlikely that they will bet on Romi's future, as fluctuations in the global market could push her family over the edge.
"Stability is to be prized," said Oxfam's David Green. And that is the last thing Glencore wants, as it's instability which is most profitable - for those who have the inside knowledge to exploit it.
Follow Chris Arsenault On Twitter: @AJEchris