The United Nation’s agency responsible for relieving hunger is drawing up plans to ration food aid in response to the spiralling cost of agricultural commodities.
The World Food Programme is holding crisis talks to decide what aid to halt if new donations do not arrive in the short term.
Josette Sheeran, WFP executive director, told the Financial Times that the agency would look at “cutting the food rations or even the number or people reached” if donors did not provide more money.
“Our ability to reach people is going down just as the needs go up,” she said.
WFP officials hope the cuts can be avoided, but warned that the agency’s budget requirements were rising by several million dollars a week because of climbing food prices.
B.C. Khatua, the chairman of the Forward Markets Commission, which regulates futures trading for food commodities ranging from wheat and rice to dried beans, said India urgently needed to improve agricultural productivity to stem food price rises, which hit the nation’s poor majority the hardest. “India has a deficit of oilseed, a deficit of many pulses and now a deficit of wheat – all the major staples are now getting hit by the demand-supply gap,” said Mr Khatua.
Oh yeah, and didn't I hear that India water table was falling because of the green revolution and that yields were going down?
No wonder Emann Singh Mann is a happy farmer-a rare commodity in India's northern state of Punjab, where overfarming and a falling water table have affected productivity on the broad plains that gave rise to India's first green revolution in the 1960s, a U.S.-led effort that helped feed India's starving millions by introducing high-yield varieties of wheat and rice. FieldFresh has leased 90 acres of Mann's land to grow vegetables that need less water than the wheat, rice, and sugarcane he used to grow. It will pay him slightly more than the $30,000 a year he was getting, and it hires his tractors as well as pays his workers. "I might have got out of agriculture," says Mann, 35, the son of a prominent local politician, who opened a computer-design school in nearby Chandigarh 18 months ago as a hedge. Now okra and chilies grown on Mann's land go to a warehouse for cooling, then travel 125 miles by road in a refrigerated truck to Amritsar, where they're put on a flight to Britain.
The story tries to be positive but can everyone change from rice and wheat to veggies? As anyone who has started to plan for a doomer scenerio finds out, the problem ain't the veggies so much as the staples.
Joined: Sep 16, 2004 Posts: 4450 Location: Southwest WI
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 10:06 am Post subject: Re: FT: Food Aid to be Rationed (maybe)
If they don't figure out whats killing all those bees (looks like insecticides/Nicotine), we'll be eating very few fruits. Looks like lettuce smoothies will be on the menu. _________________ "Oil is going up because we use too much oil, and the capacity to replace reserves is dwindling"
-President Bush 11/07/07
Arable land: 1,145,000 square km, 1.12 billion people, a total of 745 people per square km, about four times that of the US, but much better than its two nearby starving Muslim neighbors, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Population: 32% under 14, which is pretty high by western standards, but once again, somewhat better than their nearby starving neighbors, which are around 40-45% Their population growth rate is 1.6%, which is almost at the containment rate, only 2.8 births per female.
Estimating from the graph about half of the population was born since India's first nuclear test in 1974, so another case of turning aid money into people. The median age is 25, so that is about right.
The per capita income is about $900 so this "prominent member of the community" is obviously not one of the peasant class. infant mortality is about 35 per thousand, about five times higher than the US, so a lot of the little ones are not making it. Life expectancy, about 70, so the old timers make it quite awhile. 7.5% unemployment, and 25% below the poverty line. 60% of their population is employed in agriculture, so a lot of this is already being done by grunt work. The image we all have of the English-speaking jerks in the call centers is obviously on the upper end of scenarios.
They import about 2/3 of their 2.4 million barrels of oil per day, which is about 1/10 of the US total.
They are still getting about $1.7B in aid, so as to keep them friendly.
So I have to say, based on this few minutes of study, and also based on my biases, filtered by the western view of living standards, that these guys do not have it too bad for now.
But you have to wonder about their two maniac neighbors and historical rivals, and you also have to wonder about how they will do after the oil flow dries up.
Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 8:00 am Post subject: Re: FT: Food Aid to be Rationed (maybe)
Wait a minute [[hits the pause button]] doesn't Chindia own America? What are all these poor farmers doing in these rich, emerging economic powers? _________________ The organized state is a wonderful invention whereby everyone can live at someone else's expense.
Joined: Jun 13, 2007 Posts: 3637 Location: Minniesotuh
Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 9:19 am Post subject: Re: FT: Food Aid to be Rationed (maybe)
pup55 wrote:
Arable land: 1,145,000 square km, 1.12 billion people, a total of 745 people per square km, about four times that of the US, but much better than its two nearby starving Muslim neighbors, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Their population numbers will go up, making problems worse, when the people of Bangladesh come looking for someplace else to live:
Overpopulation & Impoverished Bangladesh Sinking into Watery Grave Due to Climate Chamge
… With 150 million people packed together at sea level, Bangladesh is vulnerable to the slightest climatic variation, never mind the changes caused by global warming. The partial melting of Greenland ice over the course of the 21st century could inundate a substantial amount of Bangladesh with salt water. A 20-centimeter rise in the Bay of Bengal by 2030 could be devastating to more than 10 million people, says Atiq Rahman, executive director of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies …
man the lifeboats _________________ "RRrrruuuunnnn!!!" ~Apocalypto
Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 10:06 am Post subject: Re: FT: Food Aid to be Rationed (maybe)
I think all the Indian sub-continent needs is a few more ethnic or religious wars to solve all their economic and food security problems. Let's see how many times the Indians, Pakistanis, Nepalese, Bhutans, Bangladeshi, Chits, Sri Lankans and Tamils can sub-divide their countries? It won't address climate change, but it will keep them fighting wars instead of growing food. Plus it keeps the UN and its agencies like WHO, World Bank, IMF, etc. busy. _________________ The organized state is a wonderful invention whereby everyone can live at someone else's expense.
Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 10:48 am Post subject: Re: FT: Food Aid to be Rationed (maybe)
Cuts in food aid is a step in the right direction for sustainability. Food aid does not address the problem of overshoot, and usually makes it worse. Local agriculture should support local populations. _________________ "If humans don't control their numbers, nature will." -Pimentel
"There is not enough trash to go around for everyone," said Banrel, one of the participants in the cattle massacre.
"George W. Bush loves poor people. He keeps making more of them." -unkn
Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 11:07 am Post subject: Re: FT: Food Aid to be Rationed (maybe)
I can't see any reason why one area can't sustainably produce an agricultural surplus and so feed a second area. After all, why single out food for such restrictions? You'd probably be better off saying "trade does not address the problem of overshoot, and usually makes it worse. Local production should support local populations." Of course, you won't hear many people on this site suggesting the closure of, for example, aluminum mines as that would affect the sustainability of people posting here, not the sustainability of someone thousands of miles away.
Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 4:10 pm Post subject: Re: FT: Food Aid to be Rationed (maybe)
Dukkha, you are right of course. The key word is "sustainable" though... countries should be sustainably producing enough food to feed their own population before they start producing excess to send elsewhere. To my (admittedly limited) knowledge, Cuba is the only place that comes close to this - is there anywhere else? _________________ We've tried nothin' and we're all out of ideas.
I am only one. I can only do what one can do. But what one can do, I will do. -- John Seymour.
Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 3:32 am Post subject: Re: FT: Food Aid to be Rationed (maybe)
Ebyss wrote:
Dukkha, you are right of course. The key word is "sustainable" though... countries should be sustainably producing enough food to feed their own population before they start producing excess to send elsewhere. To my (admittedly limited) knowledge, Cuba is the only place that comes close to this - is there anywhere else?
Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Poland, New Zealand, the Ukraine, the USA and others all produce an agricultural surplus even if they also trade for those goods not available locally.
I do not know where Cubaphiles get their information, but Cuba is anything but self-sufficient, and relies on the ongoing generosity of donor nations such as the former USSR, The People's Republic of China and Venezuela to prop-up their failed economic policies and keep the Castros in power.
Quote:
Ensconced in his Communist-run island, Castro has weathered ten American presidents and their economic embargo against him. He has outlasted by almost two decades the cold war and his former sponsor, the Soviet Union—long enough to benefit from a new era of anti-Americanism in which Hugo Chavez in oil-rich Venezuela has come to his aid.
Even their vaulted health system relies on donations of computers from countries like Canada.
Quote:
Mr Castro's supporters point out that he used his power to give Cubans world-class health and education services, at least until the Soviet subsidies dried up. Those achievements were genuine, but often exaggerated. In 1959 Cuba was already one of the five leading countries in Latin America on a variety of socio-economic indicators. And along with the schools and clinics came the dreary economic failures of central planning, the absence of political freedom and a police state. Cuba is outranked today in the UN human-development index by democracies such as Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Costa Rica, while Mexico is not far behind.
It rather reflects poorly on countries like VZL that they have to import Cuban doctors when they should be able to train their own? That balance in services is mainly tourism, and a dose of "Hey meester, buy my seester? She's only fourteen and reel cleen!" _________________ The organized state is a wonderful invention whereby everyone can live at someone else's expense.
Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 2:44 am Post subject: Re: FT: Food Aid to be Rationed (maybe)
Quote:
I can't see any reason why one area can't sustainably produce an agricultural surplus and so feed a second area. After all, why single out food for such restrictions?
It reduces the risk of famine, and also war. The longer distance that food has to travel the more things that can change or go wrong, either politically or physically. It reduces chance of war because if group A becomes dependent on food from group B, then group A could be facing zombie hordes if they stop selling food to group B. _________________ "If humans don't control their numbers, nature will." -Pimentel
"There is not enough trash to go around for everyone," said Banrel, one of the participants in the cattle massacre.
"George W. Bush loves poor people. He keeps making more of them." -unkn
Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 3:57 am Post subject: Re: FT: Food Aid to be Rationed (maybe)
I'm not sure that feeding non-local populations dramatically increases the probability of famine. If an area is producing a given amount of food, what difference does it make if it's people locally which are being fed by it? You may have supply chain interruptions which deprive those further away of food but, equally, you may have local mismanagement (Zimbabwe, the Ukraine, etc) which lead to localised famine. The whole issue of food aid is a convenient scapegoat for the real problem: over-consumption of resources by the global north. When the rich, fat pampered Brits, Yanks, Huns, etc. learn to tighten THEIR belts and learn to live within THEIR resource constraints, then they can start preaching to the rest of the world about overshoot but until that point they should shut up and learn a little humility.
Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 4:23 am Post subject: Re: FT: Food Aid to be Rationed (maybe)
I have been running a food deficit with the rest of the world now for over forty years. Sadly, it looks like I will never close that gap - ever? For my first 18-years I had generous sponsors that made up for that food deficit through financial aid. Since then I have been fortunate to be able to trade labor and know-how for those food imports. However, I am very vulnerable should the world stop exporting food to me. I would likely starve in a very short period of time despite being willing to sell more of my labor and know-how. I live knowing that I am only a meal or two away from being hungry. And a hungry man is an angry man! ; - ) _________________ The organized state is a wonderful invention whereby everyone can live at someone else's expense.
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