Infinite Unknown

• States and companies target developing nations
• Small farmers at risk from industrial-scale deals

Rich governments and corporations are triggering alarm for the poor as they buy up the rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in developing countries in an effort to secure their own long-term food supplies.

The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, has warned that the controversial rise in land deals could create a form of “neo-colonialism”, with poor states producing food for the rich at the expense of their own hungry people.

Rising food prices have already set off a second “scramble for Africa”. This week, the South Korean firm Daewoo Logistics announced plans to buy a 99-year lease on a million hectares in Madagascar. Its aim is to grow 5m tonnes of corn a year by 2023, and produce palm oil from a further lease of 120,000 hectares (296,000 acres), relying on a largely South African workforce. Production would be mainly earmarked for South Korea, which wants to lessen dependence on imports.

“These deals can be purely commercial ventures on one level, but sitting behind it is often a food security imperative backed by a government,” said Carl Atkin, a consultant at Bidwells Agribusiness, a Cambridge firm helping to arrange some of the big international land deals.

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Tags: Abu Dhabi, Cambodia, China, Economy, Egypt, Environment, Food, Food Prices, food supply, Government, Indonesia, Kuwait, Libya, Madagascar, Politics, Qatar, U.N., Ukraine

Traders walk on the trading floor as the market is suspended at the Indonesia Stock Exchange in Jakarta, 09 Oct 2008

Indonesia closed its stock exchange for the second day to halt a flurry of selling that sent the main stock index plummeting more than 20 percent this week, while Asian trading ended mixed. VOA’s Nancy-Amelia Collins has more from Jakarta.

Trading on the Jakarta Stock Exchange was canceled for a second straight day and officials say it may stay closed for the remainder of the week.

Stock exchange president Erry Firmansyah said it will remain closed to give investors a chance to “calm down before they make decisions.”

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Tags: Economy, Indonesia, Stock Market

Oct. 8 (Bloomberg) — Russia, Indonesia, Ukraine and Romania shut their stock exchanges after shares plummeted in the worst week for emerging-markets in at least two decades.

Russia’s Micex Index dropped 14 percent, having already slumped 20 percent this week, before trading stopped at 11:05 a.m. in Moscow. The exchange won’t reopen until Oct. 10 unless the Federal Financial Markets Service says otherwise, Micex spokesman Alexei Gerasyuk said by phone. The Jakarta Composite index fell 21 percent in its biggest weekly slump in at least 25 years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Investors are fleeing on concern the worsening global credit crisis will cause more banks to collapse and push the global economy into recession, lowering the price of the commodities that drive developing nation economies. The benchmark MSCI Emerging Markets index is headed for its worst weekly decline since it was established in 1987 after falling 21 percent.

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Tags: Dmitry Medvedev, Economy, Indonesia, Politics, Romania, Russia, Stock Market, Ukraine

Two strong off shore earthquakes have struck Asia, triggering tsunami alerts and evacuations in coastal towns.

Separate earthquakes hit off the coasts of northern Japan and Indonesia, but neither ultimately produced damaging waves and there were no reports of damage or casualties.

The most powerful tremor, with a preliminary magnitude of 7.0, hit off the coast of Hokkaido, Japan at a depth of 12 miles at 9.21am local time.

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Tags: Earthquake, Environment, Indonesia, Japan

This article is a must read.

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Nutricide - Criminalizing Natural Health, Vitamins, and Herbs (Dr. Rima Laibow, M.D.)

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By: Dr. Gregory Damato, Ph.D.

(NaturalNews) Codeath (sorry, I meant Codex) Alimentarius, latin for Food Code, is a very misunderstood organization that most people (including nearly all U.S. congressmen) have never heard of, never mind understand the true reality of this extremely powerful trade organization. From the official Codex website (www.codexalimentarius.net) the altruistic purpose of this commission is in “protecting health of the consumers and ensuring fair trade practices in the food trade, and promoting coordination of all food standards work undertaken by international governmental and non-governmental organizations”. Codex is a joint venture regulated by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO).

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Tags: Aflatoxin, Antibiotics, Argentina, Australia, Big Pharma, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, CODEX Alimentarius, Congress, Disease, Egypt, EU, FAO, FDA, Fluoridation, Fluoride, Food, food supply, Genetically Modified Organisms, Ghana, GMO, Health, Indonesia, Irradiation, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Minerals, Monsanto, Nigeria, nutrition, nutritional value, organic, Pesticides, Pharmaceutical Industry, pharmaceuticals, Politics, Singapore, South Africa, Sudan, toxic, U.N., U.S., vitamins, WHO, Zinc

There is a time for food, and a time for ethical appraisals. This was the case even before Bertolt Brecht gave life to that expression in Die Driegroschen Oper. The time for a reasoned, coherent understanding for the growing food crisis is not just overdue, but seemingly past. Robert Zoellick of the World Bank, an organization often dedicated to flouting, rather than achieving its claimed goal of poverty reduction, stated the problem in Davos in January this year. ‘Hunger and malnutrition are the forgotten Millennium Development Goal.’

Global food prices have gone through the roof, terrifying the 3 billion or so people who live off less than $2 a day. This should terrify everybody else. In November, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization reported that food prices had suffered a 18 percent inflation in China, 13 percent in Indonesia and Pakistan, and 10 percent or more in Latin America, Russia and India. The devil in the detail is even more distressing: a doubling in the price of wheat, a twenty percent increase in the price of rice, an increase by half in maize prices. Continue reading »

Tags: biofuel, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, China, Condoleezza Rice, Egypt, Food, Food Crisis, Food Prices, Food Riots, Government, Grain, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Mauritania, Mexico, Pakistan, rice, Robert Zoellick, Russia, Senegal, Somalia, U.N., Uzbekistan, Wall Street Journal, wheat, World Bank, Yemen

Food riots have broken out across the globe destabilizing large parts of the developing world. China is experiencing double-digit inflation. Indonesia, Vietnam and India have imposed controls over rice exports. Wheat, corn and soy beans are at record highs and threatening to go higher still. Commodities are up across the board. The World Food Program is warning of widespread famine if the West doesn’t provide emergency humanitarian relief. The situation is dire. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez summed it up like this, “It is a massacre of the world’s poor. The problem is not the production of food. It is the economic, social and political model of the world. The capitalist model is in crisis.”

Right on, Hugo. There is no shortage of food (This is disinformation - The Infinite Unknown); it’s just the prices that are making food unaffordable. Bernanke’s “weak dollar” policy has ignited a wave of speculation in commodities which is pushing prices into the stratosphere. The UN is calling the global food crisis a “silent tsunami”, but its more like a flood; the world is awash in increasingly worthless dollars that are making food and raw materials more expensive. Foreign central banks and investors presently hold $6 trillion in dollars and dollar-backed assets, so when the dollar starts to slide, the pain radiates through entire economies. This is especially true in countries where the currency is pegged to the dollar. That’s why most of the Gulf States are experiencing runaway inflation. Continue reading »

Tags: Ben Bernanke, Bush administration, CFTC, China, Commodities, crisis, Dollar, Enron, Financial Tsunami, Food Prices, Food Riots, Futures, Hugo Chavez, India, Indonesia, Inflation, Oil, rice, rice exports, Speculators, tsunami, U.N., Vietnam, Wall Street

Leading players in talks to forge a pact for tackling climate change took the lash on Thursday to President George W. Bush’s new blueprint for global warming, with Germany mocking it as “Neanderthal.”

At a ministerial-level meeting of major carbon emitters, South Africa blasted the Bush proposal as a disastrous retreat by the planet’s number-one polluter and a slap to poor countries.

The European Union — which had challenged the United States to follow its lead on slashing greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020 — also voiced disappointment.

His proposals “will not contribute to the fight against climate change,” EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told AFP, adding he hoped the US would “reconsider its options and policies.”

“Time is running out and we have the duty to reach an agreement in Copenhagen in 2009,” said Dimas.

Germany accused Bush of turning back the clock to before last December’s UN climate talks in Bali and even to before last July’s G8 summit.

In a statement entitled “Bush’s Neanderthal speech,” German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said: “His speech showed not leadership but losership. We are glad that there are also other voices in the United States.” Continue reading »

Tags: Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, climate, Climate Change, France, G8, George Bush, Germany, India, Indonesia, IPCC, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, United States

ROME (Reuters) - Food riots in developing countries will spread unless world leaders take major steps to reduce prices for the poor, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said on Friday.

Despite a forecast 2.6 percent hike (This is disinformation.) in global cereal output this year, record prices are unlikely to fall, forcing poorer countries’ food import bills up 56 percent and hungry people on to the streets, FAO Director General Jacques Diouf said.

“The reality is that people are dying already in the riots,” Diouf told a news conference.

“They are dying because of their reaction to the situation and if we don’t take the necessary action there is certainly the possibility that they might die of starvation. Naturally people won’t be sitting dying of starvation, they will react.”

The FAO said food riots had broken out in several African countries, Indonesia, the Philippines and Haiti. Thirty-seven countries face food crises, it said in its latest World Food Situation report. Continue reading »

Tags: biofuel, China, crops, Exports, FAO, Food, Food and Agriculture Organisation, Food Crisis, food demand, Food Prices, Food Riots, Food shortages, Gordon Brown, Haiti, Human Rights, India, Indonesia, maize, Philippines, Prime Minister, rice, Rome, security, U.N., UN Security Council, Vietnam, wheat

KABUL, April 14 (Reuters) - Impoverished Afghans struggling with rising wheat prices are not expected to get any relief soon with no sign prices are going to come down, a United Nations official said on Monday.

Top finance and development officials from around the world called in Washington on Sunday for urgent action to stem rising food prices, warning that social unrest will spread unless the cost of basic staples is contained.

Afghanistan is one of the world’s poorest countries with half its 25 million people living below the poverty line.

Wheat prices in Afghanistan have risen by an average of 60 percent over the last year with certain areas seeing a rise of up to 80 percent, the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) said. Continue reading »

Tags: Afghanistan, Africa, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Food Prices, Gordon Brown, Grain prices, Haiti, heroin, Indonesia, Niger, opium, Philippines, poppy, social unrest, United Nations, WFP, wheat, World Bank, World Food Programme, Zoellick