Food prices worldwide hit record highs in 2006, and all the signs are that they will go on rising this year, and for the foreseeable future. The era of cheap food, the experts say, is over and we are going to have to get used to it. This is easier said than done for millions around the world, as evidenced by protests in Mexico over the cost of corn tortillas, and in Italy last September about the price of (wheat) pasta. Staff writer Peter Ford looks at why.
What is behind the increases in food prices?
Certainly not bad harvests. Although a drought hit the traditionally bountiful Australian wheat harvest this past year, world cereal harvests hit 2.1 billion metric tons, a record production level, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Two major trends have been pushing prices up faster than they have risen for more than 30 years. One is that increasingly prosperous consumers in India and China are not only eating more food but eating more meat. Animals have to be fed (grains, usually) before they are butchered. The other is that more and more crops – from corn to palm nuts – are being used to make biofuels instead of feeding people.
At the same time, the world is drawing down its stockpiles of cereal and dairy products, which makes markets nervous and prices volatile.
The result, says Joachim von Braun, who heads the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington, is that "the world food system is in trouble. The situation has not been this much of a concern for 15 years."
How big a factor is the biofuels boom?
It is significant enough for the FAO to be warning about the dangers of turning too much food into fuel, and for the Chinese government, for example, to ban the construction of new refineries that use corn or other basic foods. In fact, earlier this month Beijing announced tax breaks and subsidies to encourage the use of cellulose, sweet sorghum, and cassava (nonfood crops in China) for biofuels.
Some analysts estimate that as much as 30 percent of the US grain crop will go toward producing ethanol this year, a doubling from 2006. IFPRI forecasts that if the world sticks to current biofuel expansion plans, the price of corn will go up 26 percent by 2020, and the price of oilseeds (such as soybean, sunflower, rapeseed) by 18 percent. If governments double efforts to produce this alternative fuel source, corn prices are expected to go up 72 percent and oilseeds by 44 percent in 12 years' time.
Who gets hit hardest? Does anyone benefit?
As usual, it is the poorest people in the world who suffer most, because food takes up a bigger share of their daily shopping bill than it does for richer people. A family in Bangladesh, for example, living on $5 a day, typically spends $3 of that on food. The 50 percent rise in food prices the world has seen in recent years takes a $1.50 chunk – nearly 30 percent – out of the family budget.
Even farmers are not immune. On the whole, small-scale farmers in developing countries buy more food than they sell, so they, too, are net losers. Relatively few peasants have holdings large enough to benefit from price increases.
Big farmers in the rich countries, however, are doing well: US corn farmers have seen the price their crop fetches jump by 50 percent since 2000. Other net food exporters, such as India, Australia, and South Africa, will also do well out of rising prices. Major dairy producers, such as New Zealand, have done well as consumption of milk, yogurt, and cheese rises in Asia. As a result, while property values in New Zealand are generally expected to soften, flat rural land, where cows can graze, is expected to continue to rise in price, according to a survey by Massey University in New Zealand.
Will market forces correct the situation, as farmers switch to the high-earning crops?
Not as quickly as you might expect, though the European Union, the largest food exporter in the world, has suspended a "set-aside" program that had paid its farmers to leave 10 percent of their land fallow (so as to prevent oversupply).
Cereal prices are considered "inelastic," meaning that a 10-percent price increase tends to boost supplies by only one or two percentage points. While prices are high, they are also very volatile at the moment, which scares a lot of farmers off making the investments they would need to switch crops.
At the same time, the food market overlaps with the fuel market. Farmers can now sell their corn, their palm nuts, or their sugar to biodiesel refineries. So the price of palm oil, for example, traditionally the cheapest in Africa, is now set not by the cooking oil market, but by the fuel market.
It will not help that climate change and the accompanying floods and droughts will reduce cereal output in more than 40 developing countries, mainly in Africa, according to recent studies.
Where will food shortages be most acute?
Wherever the underlying trends of rising prices and scarcer supplies are compounded by special problems. Sometimes they are natural disasters, such as the cyclone and flooding that hit Bangladesh last November, wiping out many people's stocks of food. Sometimes they are man-made, as in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where continuing civil conflict and mismanagement disrupt the market, or in Zimbabwe, where inflation of more than 7,000 percent and a crumbling economy are threatening people already short of food.
"The hot spots of food risks will be where high prices combine with shocks from the weather or political crises,", says Dr. von Braun. "These are recipes for disaster."
What effect will high prices have on hunger-prevention programs?
A big one says the World Food Program (WFP), the UN agency in charge of emergency food aid, which reported last year that food aid flows had reached their lowest levels since 1973.
Food prices "are an incredible concern for us at the moment" says WFP spokesman Robin Lodge. "The same dollars don't buy the same amount of food as they used to," and donations to the agency are flat.
The WFP has been making a big effort to buy food from countries as near as possible to crisis zones, to cut transport costs, and in 2007 it had 15 million fewer people to feed than in 2006 because there were fewer major emergencies.
"But we are now about as tight as we can get, so unless donations go up there is no doubt about it, we will have to reconsider who we are feeding and the rations" says Mr. Lodge. "There is no other way around it."
Many food aid organizations are trying to buy more food locally. The FAO is reportedly working on a program to offer poor farmers vouchers for seeds and fertilizer to help them adapt to changing climate conditions.
The violent death of Benazir Bhutto on December 27, is the latest event in a culture of violence that has been steadily spreading in the body politics in Pakistan.
Ms. Bhutto's assassination took place in Liaqat Park 28 years after the execution in April 1979 of her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a democratically elected prime minister of Pakistan, at the hands of a military dictator. The prison where his execution was carried out is hardly a mile away from the Liaqat Park, a site where the first prime minister of Pakistan, Liaqat Ali Khan, fell to an assassin's bullet 28 years earlier in October 1951. A power struggle among the ruling elite was said to be the cause of the Liaqat tragedy, but that killing was never professionally investigated and I doubt very much that her tragic demise will ever be.
These and numerous other tragic events in the 60 year history of Pakistan are of far reaching national and international consequences because Pakistan occupies a strategic position in a very volatile region. These events imperil national, regional and international peace. The magnified exposure of these tragic events in the world media is closely linked to protecting western interests fails to adequately express concern for the safety and welfare of Pakistan and its people.
I have known both Bhuttos personally for over a quarter century. I met Ms. Bhutto for the first time in 1984 in New York when she was invited to meet with a politically active group of young Pakistanis. My meeting with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was arranged on August 1974, in the Prime Minister's house in Rawalpindi. Subsequently I maintained contacts with both of them. I served as an economic advisor in his administration from 1975 to 1977. Memories of a long relationship and my observation of their tenure as public servants are still fresh in my mind. Both leaders were idols of the people and had developed close bonds with the poor and dispossessed.
Ms. Bhutto had inherited her father's legacy as a political leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) which he had founded in 1967, and the mission of democracy and economic reform which he planned for his nation. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was an astute politician, possessing Clintonian talents and a statesman of international stature. He had made the mission of his life to serve the poor and downtrodden and worked tirelessly in promoting international cooperation and world peace. In both my meeting with him on August 8, 1974, and the subsequent contacts which I maintained with the Bhutto family he spoke of his agenda of political and economic reforms and the difficulties he was encountering in their implementation. He went on to reiterate his commitment to make a difference in the lives of the common man and peace with India at any cost and sacrifice. His economic reforms, as he explained to me, aimed at providing the basic necessities of life--bread, clothing, shelter--to the poor of Pakistan, but were negated by bureaucratic controls and conspiracies by the feudal lobby. The three sins that made him a pariah among international powers were his nuclear program, an Islamic summit, and the drive for third world unity. These programs drew strong opposition from the western world in general and the US in particular. For these sins, as the world events have witnessed, he paid with his life.
Bhutto had trained Benazir from his prison cell to pick up the pieces of his reforms and democracy and prepared her mentally for sacrifices that she might have to make. In my meeting with her in New York she talked about her commitment to the PPP's political and economic agenda emphasizing the need for building a strong popular support and forging unity among the ranks of party's leaders and workers.
Ms. Bhutto's day to govern the country came in 1988. On the strength of her party's political and economic programs and with the support of the people she was elected prime minister of Pakistan twice, first in 1988 and for a second term in 1993; each time her tenure lasted for two years. Sadly she failed to demonstrate the qualities of a competent governor for which her father had tried to prepare her, and she was unable to achieve any worthwhile program for socio-economic progress. She made herself the chairperson of the PPP for life, dominating the decision making processes exhibiting little taste and patience for democracy. In the government she developed a close alliance with the bureaucratic establishment, surrounded herself with powerful feudal and corrupt party leaders. She only paid lip service to educational programs in general and female literacy in particular. During her tenure as prime minister the economy was largely mismanaged, poverty rose and governance standards deteriorated.
Much is made of her education at Harvard and Oxford preparing her to meet the challenges of leadership in a modern world. Throughout her life she remained beholden to feudal interests and preferred a life of "The Rich and Famous." While in office, she and her husband, Asif Zardari, according to the Pakistani media and the New York Times stole as much as $1.5 billion from government accounts. Neither the people of Pakistan nor the international media missed her during her eight years of self exile. Only when Washington needed her as a front for democracy in Pakistan did she reemerge as a political force by the international media. She stridently defended the war against militancy and Al Qaeda and seldom referred to the many other urgent problems facing the people of Pakistan.
Pakistan is a country of 170 million people and they have never been allowed to have a say in shaping their destiny. Without their active participation in national affairs, stability and democracy is not possible. Two fundamental conditions for creating stability and democracy in Pakistan are critical. First, the country needs the rule of law, and second, it must become a functioning democratic state. Without reinstating the sacked justices of the Supreme Court and formation of a national government able to conduct free and fair elections the rule of law and democracy can not take hold in Pakistan. To tackle the militancy and violence in Pakistan restoring the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and installing an elected government in Islamabad are critical at this time.
The death of Benazir Bhutto and the current violence in its wake provides an open opportunity for the ruling elite in Pakistan and their international backers, to rethink the real issue of a stable and democratic Pakistan. The need to make these necessary evolutionary changes is ever more urgent
Today, we're all lab rats in an uncontrolled, unregulated mass human experiment the results of which are unknown. Once GM seeds are introduced to an area, the genie is out of the bottle for keeps.
Reviewing F. William Engdahl's "Seeds of Destruction" - by Stephen Lendman (Part I)
Engdahl's newest book is just out from Global Research: "Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation" and subject of this review. It's the diabolical story of how Washington and four Anglo-American agribusiness giants plan world domination by patenting life forms to gain worldwide control of our food supply and why that prospect is chilling. The book's compelling contents are reviewed below in-depth so readers will know the type future Henry Kissinger had in mind in 1970 when he said: "Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people."
Remember also, this cabal is one of many interconnected ones with fearsome power and ruthless intent to use it - Big Banks controlling the Federal Reserve and our money, Big Oil our world energy resources, Big Media our information, Big Pharma our health, Big Technology our state-of-the-art everything and watching us, Big Defense our wars, Big Pentagon waging them, and other corporate predators exploiting our lives for profit. Engdahl's book focuses brilliantly on one of them. To fully cover its vital contents, this review will be in three parts for more detail and to make it easily digestible.
Part I of "Seeds of Destruction"
In 2003, Jeffrey Smith's "Seeds of Deception" was published. It exposed the dangers of untested and unregulated genetically engineered foods most people eat every day with no knowledge of the potential health risks. Efforts to inform the public have been quashed, reliable science has been buried, and consider what happened to two distinguished scientists.
One was Ignatio Chapela, a microbial ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley. In September, 2001, he was invited to a carefully staged meeting with Fernando Ortiz Monasterio, Mexico's Director of the Commission of Biosafety in Mexico City. The experience left Chapela shaken and angry as he explained. Monasterio attacked him for over an hour. "First he trashed me. He let me know how damaging to the country and how problematic my information was to be."
Chapela referred to what he and a UC Berkeley graduate student, David Quist, discovered in 2000 about genetically engineered contamination of Mexican corn in violation of a government ban on these crops in 1998. Corn is sacred in Mexico, the country is home to hundreds of indigenous varieties that crossbreed naturally, and GM contamination is permanent and unthinkable - but it happened by design.
Chapela and Quist tested corn varieties in more than a dozen state of Oaxaca communities and discovered 6% of the plants contaminated with GM corn. Oaxaca is in the country's far South so Chapela knew if contamination spread there, it was widespread throughout Mexico. It's unavoidable because NAFTA allows imported US corn with 30% of it at the time genetically modified. Now it's heading for nearly double that amount, and if not contained, it soon could be all of it.
The prestigious journal Nature agreed to publish Chapela's findings, Monasterio wanted them quashed, but Chapela refused to comply. As a result, he was intimidated not to do it and threatened with being held responsible for all damages to Mexican agriculture and its economy.
He went ahead, nonetheless, and when his article appeared in the publication on November 29, 2001 the smear campaign against him began and intensified. It was later learned that Monsanto was behind it, and the Washington-based Bivings Group PR firm was hired to discredit his findings and get them retracted.
It worked because the campaign didn't focus on Chapela's contamination discovery, but on a second research conclusion even more serious. He learned the contaminated GM corn had as many as eight fragments of the CaMV promoter that creates an unstable "hotspot." It can cause plant genes to fragment, scatter throughout the plant's genome, and, if proved conclusively, would wreck efforts to introduce GM crops in the country. Without further evidence, there was still room for doubt if the second finding was valid, however, and the anti-Chapela campaign hammered him on it.
Because of the pressure, Nature took an unprecedented action in its 133 year history. It upheld Chapela's central finding but retracted the other one. That was all it took, and the major media pounced on it. They denounced Chapela's incompetence and tried to discredit everything he learned including his verified findings. They weren't reported, his vilification was highlighted, and Monsanto and the Mexican government scored a big victory.
Ironically, on April 18, 2002, two weeks after Nature's partial retraction, the Mexican government announced there was massive genetic contamination of traditional corn varieties in Oaxaca and the neighboring state of Puebla. It was horrifying as up to 95% of tested crops were genetically polluted and "at a speed never before predicted." The news made headlines in Europe and Mexico. It was ignored in the US and Canada.
The fallout for Chapela was UC Berkeley denied him tenure in 2003 because of his article and for criticizing university ties to the biotech industry. He then filed suit in April, 2004 asking remuneration for lost wages, earnings and benefits, compensatory damages for humiliation, mental anguish, emotional distress and coverage of attorney fees and costs for his action. He won in May, 2005 but not in court when the university reversed its decision, granted him tenure and agreed to include retroactive pay back to 2003. The damage, however, was done and is an example of what's at stake when anyone dares challenge a powerful company like Monsanto.
The other man attacked was the world's leading lectins and plant genetic modification expert, UK-based Arpad Pusztai. He was vilified and fired from his research position at Scotland's Rowett Research Institute for publishing industry-unfriendly data he was commissioned to produce on the safety of GMO foods.
His Rowett Research study was the first ever independent one conducted on them anywhere. He undertook it believing in their promise but became alarmed by his findings. The Clinton and Blair governments were determined to suppress them because Washington was spending billions promoting GMO crops and a future biotech revolution. It wasn't about to let even the world's foremost expert in the field derail the effort. His results were startling and consider the implications for humans eating genetically engineered foods.
Rats fed GMO potatoes had smaller livers, hearts, testicles and brains, damaged immune systems, and showed structural changes in their white blood cells making them more vulnerable to infection and disease compared to other rats fed non-GMO potatoes. It got worse. Thymus and spleen damage showed up; enlarged tissues, including the pancreas and intestines; and there were cases of liver atrophy as well as significant proliferation of stomach and intestines cells that could be a sign of greater future risk of cancer. Equally alarming - this all happened after 10 days of testing, and the changes persisted after 110 days that's the human equivalent of 10 years.
GM foods today saturate our diet. Over 80% of all supermarket processed foods contain them. Others include grains like rice, corn and wheat; legumes like soybeans and soy products; vegetable oils; soft drinks; salad dressings; vegetables and fruits; dairy products including eggs; meat and other animal products; and even infant formula plus a vast array of hidden additives and ingredients in processed foods (like in tomato sauce, ice cream and peanut butter). They're unrevealed to consumers because labeling is prohibited yet the more of them we eat, the greater the potential threat to our health.
Today, we're all lab rats in an uncontrolled, unregulated mass human experiment the results of which are unknown. The risks from it are beyond measure, it will take many years to learn them, and when they're finally revealed it will be too late to reverse the damage if it's proved GM products harm human health as independent experts strongly believe. Once GM seeds are introduced to an area, the genie is out of the bottle for keeps.
Despite the enormous risks, however, Washington and growing numbers of governments around the world in parts of Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa now allow these products to be grown in their soil or imported. They're produced and sold to consumers because agribusiness giants like Monsanto, DuPont, Dow AgriSciences and Cargill have enormous clout to demand it and a potent partner supporting them - the US government and its agencies, including the Departments of Agriculture and State, FDA, EPA and even the defense establishment. World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) patent rules also back them along with industry-friendly WTO rulings like the February 7, 2006 one.
It favored a US challenge against European GMO regulatory policies in spite of strong consumer sentiment against these foods and ingredients on the continent. It also violated the Biosafety Protocol that should let nations regulate these products in the public interest, but it doesn't because WTO trade rules sabotaged it. Nonetheless, anti-GMO activism persists, consumers still have a say, and there are hundreds of GMO-free zones around the world, including in the US. That and more is needed to take on the agribusiness giants that so far have everything going their way.
In "Seeds of Deception," Jeffrey Smith did a masterful job explaining the dangers of GM foods and ingredients. Engdahl explains them as well but goes much further brilliantly in his blockbuster book on this topic. It's the story of a powerful family and a "small socio-political American elite (that) seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival" - future life through the food we eat. The book's introduction says it "reads (like) a crime story." It's also a nightmare but one that's very real and threatening.
This review covers the book in-depth because of its importance. It's an extraordinary work that "reveals a diabolical World of profit-driven political intrigue (and) government corruption and coercion" that's part of a decades-long global scheme for total world dominance. The book deserves vast exposure and must be read in full for the whole disturbing story. It's hoped the material below will encourage readers to do it in their own self-interest and to marshal mass consumer actions to place food safety above corporate profits.
Engdahl's book supplies the ammunition to do it and is also a sequel to his earlier one on war, oil politics and The New World Order and follows naturally from it. It covers the roots of the strategy to control "global food security" that goes back to the 1930s and the plans of a handful of American families to preserve their wealth and power. But it centers on one in particular that above the others "came to symbolize the hubris and arrogance of the emerging American century" that blossomed post-WW II. Its patriarch began in oil and then dominated it in his powerful Oil Trust. It was only the beginning as the family expanded into "education of youth, medicine and psychology," US foreign policy, and "the very science of life itself, biology, and its applications" in plants and agriculture.
The family's name is Rockefeller. The patriarch was John D., and four powerful later-generation brothers followed him - David, Nelson, Laurance, and John D. III. Engdahl says the GMO story covers "the evolution of power in the hands of an elite (led by this family), determined (above all) to bring the entire world under their sway." They and other elites already control most of it, including the nation's energy, the US Federal Reserve, and other key world central banks. Today, three brothers are gone, David alone remains, and he's still a force at age 92 although he no longer runs the family bank, JP Morgan Chase. He's active in family enterprises, however, including the Rockefeller Foundation to be discussed in Part II of this review.
