Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Let's see: we're going to save agriculture with "More fertilizer, with
genetically modified seeds, and with advanced machinery and technology"?
With more and more of the same that got us into this mess? What's wrong
with this picture?

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
-----------------------

Forget oil, the new global crisis is food
http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=213343
Alia McMullen, Financial Post  Published: Monday, January 07, 2008

BMO strategist Donald Coxe warns credit crunch and soaring oil prices will
pale in comparison to looming catastrophe

A new crisis is emerging, a global food catastrophe that will reach further
and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen. The credit
crunch and the reverberations of soaring oil prices around the world will
pale in comparison to what is about to transpire, Donald Coxe, global
portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group said at the Empire Club's 14th
annual investment outlook in Toronto on Thursday.

"It's not a matter of if, but when," he warned investors. "It's going to
hit this year hard."

Mr. Coxe said the sharp rise in raw food prices in the past year will
intensify in the next few years amid increased demand for meat and dairy
products from the growing middle classes of countries such as China and
India as well as heavy demand from the biofuels industry.

"The greatest challenge to the world is not US$100 oil; it's getting enough
food so that the new middle class can eat the way our middle class does,
and that means we've got to expand food output dramatically," he said.

The impact of tighter food supply is already evident in raw food prices,
which have risen 22% in the past year.

Mr. Coxe said in an interview that this surge would begin to show in the
prices of consumer foods in the next six months. Consumers already paid
6.5% more for food in the past year.

Wheat prices alone have risen 92% in the past year, and yesterday closed at
US$9.45 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade.

At the centre of the imminent food catastrophe is corn - the main staple of
the ethanol industry. The price of corn has risen about 44% over the past
15 months, closing at US$4.66 a bushel on the CBOT yesterday - its best
finish since June 1996.

This not only impacts the price of food products made using grains, but
also the price of meat, with feed prices for livestock also increasing.

"You're going to have real problems in countries that are food short,
because we're already getting embargoes on food exports from countries, who
were trying desperately to sell their stuff before, but now they're
embargoing exports," he said, citing Russia and India as examples.

"Those who have food are going to have a big edge."

With 54% of the world's corn supply grown in America's mid-west, the U.S.
is one of those countries with an edge.

But Mr. Coxe warned U.S. corn exports were in danger of seizing up in about
three years if the country continues to subsidize ethanol production.
Biofuels are expected to eat up about a third of America's grain harvest in
2007.

The amount of U.S. grain currently stored for following seasons was the
lowest on record, relative to consumption, he said.

"You should be there for it fully-hedged by having access to those stocks
that benefit from rising food prices."

He said there are about two dozen stocks in the world that are going to
redefine the world's food supplies, and "those stocks will have a precious
value as we move forward."

Mr. Coxe said crop yields around the world need to increase to something
close to what is achieved in the state of Illinois, which produces over 200
corn bushes an acre compared with an average 30 bushes an acre in the rest
of the world.

"That will be done with more fertilizer, with genetically modified seeds,
and with advanced machinery and technology," he said.