Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Diane Kann" <dianek59@gmail.com>]

I believe we need to let supply and demand take care of itself.  It has always worked.  We as individuals should not let people starve, of course, but if we keep playing with the system, we may all anyway.  If a society needs to learn to feed itself, there are ways for groups to help them (notice I said groups, not governments).  It is NOT government's role to feed people, let alone in other countries.  I'm not being harsh; in fact, our family assists many very cheerfully.  But our government multiplies the problems when it pays farmers to grow (or not to grow) certain crops, then turns around and guarantees them a minimum price, then buys the product at the government's price, uses more tax dollars to ship it overseas (and more to distribute it)....in the end, no one is actually being helped, except for the government itself (more money flowing through it, more control).  

A better solution would be to allow private groups/individuals to help those they see need help, allow farmers to grow what they feel will sell, allow farmers to sell at whatever price they can (if we run into a rice shortage, the farmers selling rice sell at a higher price, then more farmers decide to grow more rice and the price stabilizes again....it IS supply and demand, basic economics).

An added bonus is that our government can run on much less money and we can use our own $$ as we see fit!

Diane K

On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 12:41 PM, <activism98201@verizon.net> wrote:

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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