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  • From: Kate Spinner <kespinner@gmail.com>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] AGRICULTURAL APOCALYPSE, 2010
  • Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 00:48:27 -0400

Not to say a food crisis isn't imminent, because it very well may be, but a lot of the crop failures this year in Florida and across the globe had to do with bizarre weather.

It was and still is an El Niño year, in which warmer than normal tropical sea surface temperatures in the Pacific create drastic and disrupting climate changes across the globe. The last big El Niño occurred in 1997-1998. There were problems that year as well. And in years before that.

Florida froze. Canada melted. The mid-Atlantic got Buffalo's snow. Other similar strange events happened in Europe.

So, the threat of food shortages now and in the future are an environmental problem, an economic problem and a political problem.

- Kate

On Apr 8, 2010, at 1:22 AM, Tradingpost wrote:


I hope catastrophic or “mass starvation” in places is too strong a word, but there is evidence I find credible, for what it's worth, which is why I passed it on. There have been reports of many growers running into a credit crunch from lenders to finance their current season. Winter vegetables have been decimated by U.S. weather. Just today we saw a fast food sign about tomatoes only on request if available. We know the biofuels boondoggle has driven up the cost of corn which goes into thousands of processed foods. And could our USDA put out a demonstrably false and contradictory report for political reasons? You tell me.

I'm starting extra tomatoes and peppers now.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 4/7/2010 at 10:09 PM Tradingpost wrote:

AGRICULTURAL APOCALYPSE, 2010
Wednesday, 07 April 2010
http://agriculture.imva.info/?p=12
Dwayne Andreas

The food business is far and away the most important business in the
world. Everything else is a luxury. Food is what you need to sustain life
every day.

When a large segment of the population is facing a drastic cut in income
in the face of escalating food prices we have a catastrophic problem in
the making. Today we have the simultaneous events of income deflation and
food inflation; two high-speed express trains coming down that tracks at
each other, a financial crisis colliding with staggering crop losses,
which are cutting deeply into available planetary food reserves. Prices of
food are again beginning to soar again just as millions are losing the
ability to afford a reasonable diet, though little of this is being
observed or reported. But soon even the blind will see.

From corn to crude, prices for a wide range of commodities are
on the rise across the globe. In recent months, global food prices
have been growing at a rate that rivals some of the wildest months
of 2008, when food riots erupted across the developing world.
[January 9th Wall Street Journal]

The cold is again freezing oranges in Florida. Temperatures in Miami
dropped to 36F; beating the record 37F set in 1938. Officials are saying
that hundreds of millions of dollars of food perished. Vegetables were
among the hardest hit. At least one major tomato grower, Ag-Mart Produce,
has already declared that most of its Florida crop is “useless due to the
freeze.” Other vegetable farms were expected to lose their entire crop,
and wholesale prices have already increased. “Tomatoes were down around
$14 for a 25-pound box; now they are up over $20,” said Gene McAvoy, an
agriculture expert with the University Florida, who predicted $100 million
in vegetable losses. “Peppers — just after New Year’s they were $8 a box;
now they’re up around $18.”

White sugar climbed to the highest price in at least two decades
in London on speculation that India, Pakistan and other importers
will purchase more of the sweetener as a supply deficit looms.
Excess rains in Brazil and a weak monsoon in India hurt
sugar-cane output from the world’s two biggest growers.
[January 20, 2010]

The world faces “mass starvation” following North America’s next major
crop failure. And it could even happen before year’s end. So says
Chicago-based Don Coxe, who is one of the world’s leading experts on
agricultural commodities, so much so that Canada’s renowned BMO Financial
Group named the fund after him. A crop failure in North America will have
particularly dire consequences for major overseas markets that are highly
reliant on U.S. crop imports.

Scientists in England are warning that a “perfect storm” of food shortages
and water scarcity now threatens to unleash public unrest and conflict,
the government’s chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, has
warned.[i] “People do not quite realise the scale of the issue,” said
Professor Mike Bevan. “This is one of the most serious problems that
science has ever faced.” In Britain the lives of hundreds of thousands of
people will be threatened by food shortages. The repercussions of food
shortages for any society are devastating. The world faces “mass
starvation” following more major crop failures in the United States and
other places around the globe. According to Chicago-based Don Coxe, who is
one of the world’s leading experts on agricultural commodities, so much so
that Canada’s renowned BMO Financial Group named the fund after him, this
mind boggling event could happen before year’s end.

We are facing a problem that literally has never been faced in human
history. Surging population and food demand, food inflation, diminishing
world food stocks, drought, flooding, cold, diminished credit,
infestations, soil erosion, industrial farming, factory farm pollution,
aquifers/wells going dry, relocation of produce for energy production are
all slamming into a global financial and economic crisis. And in some
places like the United States they don’t have enough farmers. Then on top
of everything else we have desertification, which is one of the world’s
most pressing environmental issues. New deserts are growing at a rate of
20,000 square miles (51,800 square kilometers) a year. Desertification
leads to famine, mass starvation and human migration.

According to Eric de Carbonnel, “There is overwhelming, undeniable
evidence that the world will run out of food next year. The 2010 Food
Crisis is going to be different. It is the crisis that will make all
doomsday scenarios come true. Early in 2009, the supply and demand in
agricultural markets went badly out of balance. The world experienced a
catastrophic fall in food production as a result of the financial crisis
(low commodity prices and lack of credit) and adverse weather on a global
scale. Normally food prices should have already shot higher months ago,
leading to lower food consumption and bringing the global food
supply/demand situation back into balance. This never happened because the
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), instead of adjusting
production estimates down to reflect decreased production, adjusted
estimates upwards to match increasing demand from china. In this way, the
USDA has brought supply and demand back into balance (on paper) and
temporarily delayed a rise in food prices by ensuring a catastrophe in
2010.”[ii]

According to the United States Department of Agriculture U.S. farmers
produced the largest corn and soybean crops on record in 2009. And there
are people who believe that anyone who believes government figures on
anything concerning the economy or anything else is a total moron.

Very few people in the US have given any serious consideration to the
question of food security. This essay should convince people that its time
to start. For the most part, we’re not aware of the problem but if we look
hard at the ‘hidden’ news we see that the handwriting is on the wall for
an unimaginable crisis that will come on us as early as this year.

More than 2.1 million hectares of grain have been destroyed
by drought in 2009 in Russia, Agriculture Minister Yelena
Skrynnik said. A total of 616,000 hectares have been
destroyed in the region, or 70% of the total amount planted.[iii]

“The world is blissfully unaware that the greatest economic, financial and
political crisis ever is a few months away. It takes only the tiniest bit
of research to realize something is going critically wrong in the
agricultural market. All someone needs to do to know the world is headed
for food crisis is to stop reading USDA’s crop reports predicting a record
soybean and corn harvests and listen to what else the USDA is saying.
Specifically, the USDA has declared half the counties in the Midwest to be
primary disaster areas, including 274 counties in the last 30 days alone.
These designations are based on the criteria of a minimum of 30 percent
loss in the value of at least one crop in the county,” continues de
Carbonnel.

[i]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/dec/13/britain-faces-food-shortage
[ii]
http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/12/2010-food-crisis-for-dummies.html
[iii] http://www.kyivpost.com/news/world/detail/44653/




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