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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