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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] The speculative scrum driving up food prices

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Dieter Brand <diebrand@yahoo.com>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] The speculative scrum driving up food prices
  • Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2011 02:19:45 -0800 (PST)

Speculators are a scourge. There are no two ways about it. Yet even they
have their usefulness. Like a virus, they attack the weakest point of a
system and thus serve as an early warning system that needs to be heeded.
The weakness of industrial food production is that it destroys its very
basis: fertile soil.

We are now loosing farming soil at a rate of several millions acres a year.
A quarter of the remaining farming land is much degraded and risks
desertification. The situation is particularly bad in China and India. It
is no accident that China is buying up vast tracks of farming land in Africa
and elsewhere. At the same time, World population keeps on growing and is
expected to reach 9 billions in 40 years time.

The industrial revolution in farming that has resulted in an increase in food
production to feed the growth in World population during that last 50 years
cannot be repeated because it is the very reason for the loss of soil
fertility.

People can always agree on bashing the bankers, but nobody is prepared to
look at the real reasons for the World food crisis. Looks like future
generations will have to pay a high price.

Happy Christmas,
Dieter





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