Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[<activism98201@verizon.net>]

As tragic as this all is, I believe that it is necessary.  At first glance it 
may appear that the big folks are winning but it's really their death that's 
happening too.  Big AG is doomed to fail.  By lobbying that it "has lost 
touch with its most basic goal: that of feeding people" we're playing into 
their hands of obtaining yet further control over our food supplies.

We shouldn't have our "representatives" in other parts of the world telling 
people what they should and shouldn't grow.  And don't believe that the loss 
of exports is going to affect people's ability to feed themselves ("economic 
health"); dollars aren't necessary.

It's the people's job of feeding themselves.  If we let this hemorrhaging 
take place it'll result in more local control of food by the people 
themselves.


-Mark Nagel
Everett, WA


=====================
From: shashi.pkumar@wipro.com

New from GRAIN
28 April 2008
http://www.grain.org/nfg/?id=565

MAKING A KILLING FROM THE FOOD CRISIS

A new report by GRAIN - http://www.grain.org/2/?id=39

The world food crisis is hurting a lot of people, but global agribusiness 
firms, traders and speculators are raking in huge profits. 

Much of the news coverage of the world food crisis has focussed on riots in 
low-income countries, where workers and others cannot cope with skyrocketing 
costs of staple foods. But there is another side to the story: the big 
profits that are being made by huge food corporations and investors. Cargill, 
the world's biggest grain trader, achieved an 86% increase in profits from 
commodity trading in the first quarter of this year. Bunge, another huge food 
trader, had a 77% increase in profits during the last quarter of last year. 
ADM, the second largest grain trader in the world, registered a 67% per cent 
increase in profits in 2007. 

Nor are retail giants taking the strain: profits at Tesco, the UK supermarket 
giant, rose by a record 11.8% last year. Other major retailers, such as 
France's Carrefour and Wal-Mart of the US, say that food sales are the main 
sector sustaining their profit increases. Investment funds, running away from 
sliding stock markets and the credit crunch, are having a heyday on the 
commodity markets, driving prices out of reach for food importers like 
Bangladesh and the Philippines.

These profits are no freak windfalls. Over the last 30 years, the IMF and the 
World Bank have pushed so-called developing countries to dismantle all forms 
of protection for their local farmers and to open up their markets to global 
agribusiness, speculators and subsidised food from rich countries. This has 
transformed most developing countries from being exporters of food into 
importers. Today about 70 per cent of developing countries are net importers 
of food. On top of this, finance liberalisation has made it easier for 
investors to take control of markets for their own private benefit.

Agricultural policy has lost touch with its most basic goal: that of feeding 
people. Rather than rethink their own disastrous policies, governments and 
think tanks are blaming production problems, the growing demand for food in 
China and India, and biofuels. While these have played a role, the 
fundamental cause of today's food crisis is neoliberal globalisation itself, 
which has transformed food from a source of livelihood security into a mere 
commodity to be gambled away, even at the cost of widespread hunger among the 
world's poorest people. 

==============================================

GRAIN, Making a killing from hunger: We need to overturn food policy, now! 
"Against the grain", April 2008, http://www.grain.org/2/?id=39 and in PDF 
http://www.grain.org/2/?id=39&pdf 

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