FoodGlobal: Corn and Soyabean: World moves into a great food-price shock

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World moves closer to food price shock

The world has moved a step closer to a food price shock after the US cut stock forecasts for key crops, sending corn and soyabean prices to the highest level in 30 months -- posted by  Politicarp  update [jan14,2k11]  Kenneth Anderson, Volokh Conspiracy World Food Supplies and Prices Posted: 14 Jan 2011 09:22 PM PST (Kenneth Anderson)In conversation with someone who, as a senior NGO executive in international development and food aid, is well situated to respond on the question of rising commodity prices for food globally.  I asked specifically about the Wall Street Journal news story a few days ago on this topic, which reported: Prices of corn and soybeans leapt 4% Wednesday and wheat gained 1%, continuing the broad rally in commodity prices that began in June. With yesterday’s gains, prices of corn futures contracts are now up 94% from their June lows; soybeans are up 51% and wheat is up 80%. The USDA’s revisions reflect the impact of dry weather in South America and floods in Australia, which have compounded supply constraints that first started to emerge in the middle of last year, when a drought in Russia ravaged that country’s wheat fields. The agency also cut estimates for U.S. harvests of corn and soybeans. At the same time, demand is increasing. The USDA said ethanol producers likely will increase their use of corn, and consumption by emerging market countries continues to be strong. Prices of many agricultural commodities are still below the levels that sparked food riots in poor countries around the world in 2008. But economists see few signs that prices for grain, livestock and cotton will cool significantly anytime soon, signaling potential headaches for consumers and food companies. I was told that, if anything, this article understated the problem, at least if consumers in poor countries were taken into account and that food riots akin to those of 2008 would be unsurprising.  I was asked in turn why the US continues to subsidize ethanol, for which I had no good answer. (See also this story, HT Insta, and commenters are correct to note the Tunisian food riots.)

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FoodUSA: New law: Senate resisted a year, now House of Reps accepts Senate new version, and off it goes to the Prez's desk

Washington Post carries a detailed article by Lindsey Layton,  Senate passes sweeping food safety bill" (Nov30,2k10).

The Senate on Tuesday approved the biggest overhaul to the nation's food safety laws since the 1930s. The 73-to-25 vote gives vast new authorities to the Food and Drug Administration, places new responsibilities on farmers and food companies to prevent contamination, and -- for the first time - sets safety standards for imported foods, a growing part of the American diet.

The name in the forefront of the opposition is that of Glenn Beck who seems to hate the very idea of a Food and Drug Administration.  I don't.

But other perspectives are more telling -- "small farmers" who reporter Layton in WaPo mistakenly subsumes to the quarrel between "burgeoning local-food market" over against "major agriculture businesses."  I don't use the category  "snall farmer" and prefer instead "family farmer."  The chief concern of this appraoch is to choose for exemption those farmers who live on their land and have a more-than-hobbyist interest in the quality of their products / commodities in the marketplace.  But undoubtedly the new legislation contains a definition of "small farmer," where the absolute s+z of acreage is not the issue as such.  Why jettison "family" in the terminology?  Becawz bachelors may be owning and operating a farm, before they start their own families (or remain single)?  Or becawz the appearance of the word "family" in the formulation of the key concept of the new law m+t bring down the rage of anti-family lobbyists?  It's difficult to know in this day and age.

The opposition to "the burgeoning local-food movement," "small farmers," "family farmers," and any truly deserving of the exemption proposed by Sen Jon Tester (D, Montana) is Produce Marketing Association and United Fresh Produce Association who "withdrew their support" for the House version, upon Sen Tester's amendment.  Senator Tester is a farmer.

"Food illnesses affect one in four Americans and kill 5,000 of them each year, according to government statistics. Tainted food has cost the industry billions of dollars in recalls, lost sales and legal expenses."  I tend to think that the big b+t will come when FDA follows the new standards set now for imported foods which will insist that food importers "verify that products grown and processed overseas meet safety standards."

Another take supplies some further details.  Says the email newsletter of DC Morning:

The Food Safety Modernization Act "would allow the FDA to mandate that a company recall a food product it suspects is infected," writes The Daily Caller's Matt Boyle. "The bill also expands the FDA’s inspection powers, and would force food producers to open their production facilities to more FDA inspections officers and follow new in-depth inspection procedures." Thanks to an amendment exempting farms that make less than $500,000 from stepped-up inspections, the bill is likely to pass. But at least one person is worried about the expansion of the FDA's power. “I think over time the powers given by the bill could possibly whittle away at the protection provided by [the amendment]," said Pete Kennedy, the president of the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund. "[The FDA] will have broad power, and unfortunately under their existing power, what we see right now they seem to have three particular targets, which are raw milk, raw cheese, and supplements.” In case you're curious, here's what it looks like when the FDA decides to exercise its enforcement powers. 

-- EconoMix

China: Food: Swiss ethicist examines moral accounts of China

World Council of Churches' Ecumenical News International email newsletter (Nov5,2k10):

China is making a contribution to human rights through its ability to feed its population of 1.3 billion people, says a Swiss ethicist while noting Beijing's violation of individual rights. "If China is able to promote peace to contribute to justice by helping developing its economy to feed 20 per cent of the world's population, then it's a major contribution to human rights," said Christoph Stückelberger, of the Geneva-based Globethics.net group, after delivering a lecture about global and contextual ethics on 28 October in Nairobi. "They [the Chinese] may violate individual rights, which is not justified. Of course they have to respect individual rights, but we should not forget they do something for fundamental rights," said Stückelberger, a part-time lecturer at the University of Basel.
The ethicist Christoph Stückelberger outshines his own topic by introducing a novel way of moral accounting, as apparently China's OK, if not A-OK, becawz it tries to feed its people.  Hmmm, are Tibetans (Buddhists), Uighurs (Moslems), and Mongols (concentrated in Korean-speaking Northwest of China) fed as equitably as are the dominant Han people often treated synonomously as "the Chinese"?  


But that question may be marginal to the main one on which Stuckelberger perhaps runs stuck:  what of the simultaneity of norm realization as a primary norm for the ent+rty of China's (and our countries's) moral-political goals?  Dr Bernard Zylstra (Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto) posed this question to all the activities of govts, esp in dealing with human beings within a given country's territory.  


Now, Dr Peter Singer, the Princeton ethicist, m+t want to wei in with the idea he proposes that animals (all sentient beings) shoud also be fed equally and obtain human r+ts equally (does this includes l+c, fleas, bedbugs, etc? Or is he more concerned with species that share more characteristis with humans, l+k gorillas, chimps, and apes?).  


But, of course, China doesn't even afford to all its human beings, Chinese but perhaps not even all the dominant Han ethnic majority, the full range of human r+ts, which must include in a premier place religious r+ts (I use the Oslo Forum18 definition here).  Among those human r+ts are those of conscience when it comes to religion and faith-association.  Read refWr+t's blog-entry yesterday on the Guong Yijun case.  It shows not only the bigotry of the China's Communist-atheist state which denied him and 200 others visas to attend Lausanne III in Capetown, South Africa, but also the bigotry of even the co-workers of Guong Yijun in the Transporation Ministry who squeezed him out of his job (and, thus, out of his paycheck and the food it woud by for his family).  Aspects of this have clearly to do with religion, the puppetry China practices regarding unofficial churches s+nd up to do the Communist-puppteers' bidding.  Thus, aspects of both faith and religious r+ts are communal, and are transgressed becawz China doesn't want a multi-communal society multi-religions society where people may associate in groups differently, faith groups, and also labour unions, for example.  China needs human r+ts, not just food.  Are the prisoners and those prisoners in work camps in China receiving a decent set of decent meals everyday, especially when nutrition coud be considered in exchange for their hard labour, Dr Christoph, sir?  


China m+t get more food onto tables of its ent+r populace if it gave societal and associational space to a w+d range of faith-communities, some of which may want to establish free-standing unions like a Christain Labour Association of China.  I won't here rehearse the list of cr+mz of China's govt and the Party that runs it, cr+mz against numerous citizens of various faiths that exist, despite all of the govt-party's efforts to cage them and erase them.


-- Politicarp

Economy: Food: Big Agriculture designs a new sweet patoto, but what about diabetics like me?

ConAgra is a mega-corporation that dicks around with the genomes of food, and I worry that it's part of obsolescing historic varieties that nature, under God. developed for itself, so to speak. Humans were incidental to the process, except as farmers conducted experimental Mendelian hybriding. Then along came Big Ag in the USA and around the world (the Green Revolution in the Punjab, India). In Louisiana university research is cooperating with ConAgra to develop a new kind of sweet potato. My main question about including sweet potatoes in my diet is precisely their sweetness, their sugar-content. I'm wondering if we're going to have genetically altered sweet potatoes, why do they have to be so sweet? Coudn't a niche product be developed that woud make this variety of "potato" give us more more like a mild tabasco-taste, or a minty taste, or even a licorice taste perhaps? --less sugar, for instance?

-- EconoMix

Daily Darfur: Hunger: Darfur region of Sudan remains a hotspot for food relief

A report on the ReliefWeb website of the World Food Programme (WFP) of the United Nations Humanitarian Commision Relief (UNHCR) carries a list and write-up of "Hunger's global hotspots: 22 Feb 2007." The countries singled out for special concern are Afghanistan, Burundi, Chad, Congo DR, DPRK (North Korea - the two words appear nowhere in the text), Ethiopia, Guinea, Occupied Palestinian Terroritories (notice the politically-loaded designation), Sri Lanka, Somalia, and the country I've single out for attention below, Sudan, especially its Darfur region.

Sudan

In Sudan's Darfur region, February distributions are continuing, despite on-going insecurity. WFP is planning to carry out as many double-distributions as possible in March as part of its preparedness and mitigation strategy.

In January, WFP and cooperating partners provided assistance to 2.4 million beneficiaries including 2.2 million IDPs and vulnerable residents in Darfur.

I'm guessing that "IDP" refers to "Internally Displaced Person/s"

Almost 158,000 people in Darfur did not receive food assistance in January as insecurity affected humanitarian access to locations in West and South Darfur.

Violent robbery

The majority of those not reached (122,000) were in Gereida camp, south Darfur, where WFP cooperating partner Action Contre La Faim (ACF) decided not to return following a violent robbery in December.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has now taken over food distributions in that camp.

I understand from the web that the former Red Cross has changed its name to the Red Chrystal, and dropped the sign of the Cross in favour of a boxed square called absurdly a "chrystal." I find this disgusting and anti-historical, to say the least. One has to fall in line with this semiotic shell-game in order to continue to support the former Red Cross. I must say that it has lessened my enthusiasm. There's a huge amount of internal and interagency politics among the various relief organizations.

FAO-WFP CFSAM recommends significantly reduced food aid and a phase out of general food assistance in Central and Eastern Sudan in favour of targeted interventions, like school or supplementary feeding.

Three-month food packages

In the Three Areas the focus will be on timely three-month food packages to an estimated 350,000 returnees expected to return to Abyei, Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile in 2007.

UNHCR and WFP signed a Joint Plan of Action for Blue Nile to cover the reintegration of both organised and spontaneous returnees in 2007. WFP is working with World Vision International, SUDO and UNHCR to finalise agreements on food distribution by the end of February.

An outbreak of meningitis in parts of southern Sudan forced the temporary suspension of humanitarian activities last month.

Africa > Sudan & Chad

Authorities say a ban on people congregating may soon be lifted. If so, WFP will resume distributions in parts of Northern Bahr El Ghazal in early March.

One really needs a map of Sudan to get the full import of these different areas, and the way in which food relief is being redeployed in certain regions. But Darfur on the border with Chad remains a standout as an absolutely necessary continuous recipient for some time, when armed conflict and the endangerment of the relief workers doesn't halt the distribution process. Some say the actual genocide is easing, fewer deaths of the Darfur people; but the Janjaweed govt-backed terrorists and land-grabbers are still active. Unfortunately, the Darfurians themselves are woefully divided into numerous rebel organizations, which spend much time and energy fiting one another and hurting the general population in the process. One imagines that some of these rebels would fit the category of "terrorists" themselves.

The situation in neiboring Chad is also very difficult. In Chad one of three hotspots for food relief involves Darfurian refugees from the Sudan who have fled their own country and crossed the border into Chad, already beset by severe hunger in places.

Chad

The security situation in eastern Chad continues to be unstable and complex. No improvement in either the inter-ethnic problems or the Government/rebel activity can be noted.

It is estimated that there are over 110,000 internally displaced persons ( IDPs) in eastern Chad most of whom are in need of assistance and WFP is increasing planning figures to 110,000 IDPs and host families.

Assessment

A WFP EFSA to assess IDP numbers and requirements for assistance is ongoing in eastern Chad.

To date WFP has provided food assistance to IDPs in Gassire (12,000 people), Am Timan (1,400) and Dogdore (over 18,000 people)

February distributions for the Sudanese refugees have been completed in 10 out of the 12 camps. Distributions in the remaining 2 camps are currently ongoing and should be completed during the week.

Distributions for the Central African Republic (CAR) refugees in the southern camps are still ongoing.

In the case of the Darfur region of Sudan, it's important always to keep in mind that the Sudanese govt is Arab Sunni Muslim and that it has been sponsoring the ongoing terrorism against and spoliation of Sudan's indigenous Black Sufi-influenced Muslim population in Darfur. There are additional dimensions to the conflict, in that population pressures are present, with increase of numbers among the nomadic Janjaweed driving the latter's expansion of territory. In contrast, the Black Darfurians are/were settled farmers scratching livelihoods from soil that is far from the richest in the world. In that setting, an image haunts me, an image that serves as a metaphor: the account encountered on numerous occasions of Janjaweed dumping the dead bodies of Darfurians into the wells, so important for life and farming. Well-ruination was a common tactic of the Janjaweed, as was rape. I'm not uptodate on whether these practices have mitigated, but the sources I try to monitor claim there is no let-up in the attacks or the govt's favouritism to the Janjaweed terrorists.
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On return trip, supply convoy from Libya to Darfur attacked
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