Western countries have upgraded the food and fuel crisis into a national security concern as they fear record high energy and agriculture commodity costs are destabilising key developing regions of the world.
The concerns come as the world suffers for the first time since 1973 from the confluence of record oil and food prices. Corn, soyabean and meat prices jumped this week to all-time highs, while oil prices hit a record of almost $140 a barrel.
This shift toward a national security concern will become apparent at Sunday’s oil meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where ministers are expected to warn that developing countries are cracking under the burden of record oil and food costs.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer and the only country able to raise output, has recognised the danger after developing countries, including US-ally Pakistan, pleaded for a reprieve from oil payments.
Morocco was forced last month to ask for an $800m loan from Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates to cushion the impact of oil and cereal imports.
One Washington official said: “What we have been watching is behaviour [that indicates] China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam [and] Malaysia simply can’t bare the burden on the central budget and that the medium to long-term confluence of oil and food prices is just too much.” He added: “It is leading to a real security issue where the streets are talking to the president.”
Martin Bartenstein, Austria’s economics minister who is travelling to Jeddah, said on Friday that the risk of social tension caused by high oil prices driving inflation to double digits will be a main tenet of his argument.
“It is very high on our agenda,” said a senior diplomat from a larger European nation.
Senior active and former US, European and United Nations officials said they had met US White House staff on the issue for briefings having been prompted in part by the unrest that toppled Haiti’s government and more recently after several Asian countries risked popular anger by cutting fuel subsidies.
_________________ "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."
-Friedrich von Schiller
"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."
John Kenneth Galbraith
Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 8:38 am Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
wisconsin_cur quoted:
Quote:
Western countries have upgraded the food and fuel crisis into a national security concern as they fear record high energy and agriculture commodity costs are destabilising key developing regions of the world.
wisconsin thanks for keeping us updated on this building, catastrophic development.
The growing food crisis is an amalgamation of a failed economic policy, Globalization. It was nothing more than the hallucination that the Western World could export a non-sustainable life style to the rest of the world. PO is putting the final cravat around that delusion.
Unfortunately many will undoubtedly die, as a result of our grandiose schemes to acquire unrivaled wealth, unravel. Nothing else will be able to depict the ignored principal of a finite world, like the scene of starving children.
Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2008 7:07 am Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
Shortages, Prices Hit California Food Banks as Schools Recess
I don't think the government will be passing out gruel to the masses if they can't keep a few school children fed. _________________ There will come a day when we would have wished to do a little evil for a greater good.
Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2008 10:25 am Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
shortonoil wrote:
wisconsin_cur quoted:
Quote:
Western countries have upgraded the food and fuel crisis into a national security concern as they fear record high energy and agriculture commodity costs are destabilising key developing regions of the world.
wisconsin thanks for keeping us updated on this building, catastrophic development.
The growing food crisis is an amalgamation of a failed economic policy, Globalization. It was nothing more than the hallucination that the Western World could export a non-sustainable life style to the rest of the world. PO is putting the final cravat around that delusion.
Unfortunately many will undoubtedly die, as a result of our grandiose schemes to acquire unrivaled wealth, unravel. Nothing else will be able to depict the ignored principal of a finite world, like the scene of starving children.
Blaming "The West" for the worlds problems eh? And the poor here in America blame the rich, the Democrats blame the elite....
Typical.
Trust me, nobody in "The West" if forcing these people in turd world countries to have babies, I assure you that. As much as you may like to blame someone for the problem, the problem of population rests squarely on 2 individuals shoulders. A mother and a father, except in cases of rape. You may need to find a new scapegoat this time. _________________ "Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the
Abyss, the Abyss gazes also into you."
Ammo at a gunfight is like bubblegum in grade school: If you havent brought enough for everyone, you're in trouble
Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2008 10:40 am Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
Thats a good point. I was in the Carribean and they have large families and so poor and starving. What mother or father would do that to a child. Just dont have sex etc. They seem so stupid that way. But children in most of those cultures are seen as a source of old age pension. Someone to take care of aging parents, etc.
It would be so good if the govt there would encourage a one or two child policy and help the ppl with birth control etc. Their countries would benefit so much from that alone.
USDA: Corn, soybean conditions improve slightly
Crops in some areas looking good; weather remains the major wild card
Jeff Caldwell
Agriculture Online News and Features Editor
6/23/2008, 3:36 PM CDT
Monday's USDA Crop Progress report shows there's no reason to count out the nation's corn and soybean crops just yet.
Despite continued flooding in parts of the Midwest, the condition of the nation's corn and soybean crops is seen improving overall. Monday's report shows a two-percent rise in corn conditions, with 59% of the crop in good-to-excellent condition compared to 57% a week ago. Fifty-seven percent of the soybean crop is in the same high-end shape, compared to 56% last week.
Joined: Apr 05, 2005 Posts: 1627 Location: Springsteen Country (NJ)
Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 6:04 am Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
OilFinder2 wrote:
Crops in some areas looking good; weather remains the major wild card
You'll be the one standing up to your neck in floodwaters going "Hey, the water's not rising quite as fast!!!".
There comes a point when optimism is counter adaptive. You're so past that point it's ridiculous.
One day it will hit you that constant growth in a finite environment is not only impossible, but completely undesirable. I just hope you post something here admitting your quest for more oil and more food to allow the human population to further overshoot the planet's carrying capacity was wrong, but I'm not hopeful. You'll probably just stop posting one day.
Here's a quote from an interview Bill Moyers had with Isaac Asimov.
Quote:
MOYERS: What happens to the idea of the dignity of the human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?
ASIMOV: It will be completely destroyed. I like to use what I call my bathroom metaphor: If two people live in an apartment, and there are two bathrooms, then both have freedom of the bathroom. You can go to the bathroom anytime you want to and stay as long as you want to for whatever you need. And everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom; it should be right there in the Constitution.
But if you have twenty people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up times for each person, you have to bang at the door: "Aren't you through yet?" and so on. In the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people onto the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies. The more people there are, the less one individual matters.
_________________ Joe P. United Political Debate
"Only when the last tree is cut; only when the last river is polluted; only when the last fish is caught; only then will they realize that you cannot eat money." - Cree Indian Proverb
Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 8:33 am Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
There are hundreds of millions of acres that go unplanted due to govt programs. and that doesnt count the acreage in Mexico, Canada and other countries that is not farmed or farmed inefficiently.
Think of the acres up and down the interstate hwys that is mowed each year. IN one county alone here in Kansas there is over 300,000 acres in CRP where the govt pays the farmer NOT to plant it. Good grief.
Its a matter of allocation of resources not lack of land or grain supplies. We have yet to produce even half of what we can produce with modern methods.
This is going to be the best wheat crop on record too. Yields are huge so far in Kansas and Oklahoma and Texas.
Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 8:07 pm Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
patience wrote:
We can raise a lot of food in the US, IF:
1) We have fuel and fertilizer.
2) We have reasonable weather and rainfall,
3) Food prices allow a reasonable profit to the farmers.
Not all of those caveats are in place every year. It looks like we may have a problem with diesel at $5/gal, and fertilizer at $1,200/ton.
The food will probably be available, but at what price?
And if you cannot afford it than it is not really available is it? _________________ "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."
-Friedrich von Schiller
"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."
John Kenneth Galbraith
Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 8:51 pm Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
wisconsin_cur wrote:
patience wrote:
We can raise a lot of food in the US, IF:
1) We have fuel and fertilizer.
2) We have reasonable weather and rainfall,
3) Food prices allow a reasonable profit to the farmers.
Not all of those caveats are in place every year. It looks like we may have a problem with diesel at $5/gal, and fertilizer at $1,200/ton.
The food will probably be available, but at what price?
And if you cannot afford it than it is not really available is it?
Yep just like with peak oil prices finding a happy medium between dupply and demand, food will find a happy medium between who can afford it and at what price.... _________________ Tired of high gas prices? Then stop driving to work, duh..... Learn to Work from home
NEWARK, Del. - June 23, 2008 (WPVI) -- Police are still trying to find a very heavy haul stolen from the Food Bank of Delaware - heavy as in a tractor and two trailers packed with food.
Police have surveillance video of the crime, taken Saturday night between 9 and 10 p.m. They're enhancing it now.
Only 40% of the Food Bank of Delaware's transport fleet is left. The rest of it was stolen from a loading dock over the weekend: two trailers and a blue Freightliner tractor, all were marked with the Food Bank of Delaware's insignia.
The trailers contained 57,000 pounds of chicken donate by Frank Perdue. The total loss for the food bank is nearly $500,000.
With demand up, donations down and an 8% cut in state funding, this is a devastating blow.
Patricia Beebe of the Food Bank of Delaware tells Action News, "We have a decrease in funding. We have theft. We're paying more for food. We have a decreased amount of donated product and we have demand going up& gas is through the roof."
The food bank distributes 10 million pounds of food to Delaware's poor each year. Thousands of prepared meals are designated each month for children in after school hunger relief programs and to cooperating agencies in the summertime.
Food prices go up.
Some people are "demand destructed" and cannot afford food, sending more to the food bank.
Food Bank sees increased traffic and increased cost. Some personal contributions contract as former donors do not feel as able to give.
Food is more valuable. charities once immune to theft become victims, further limiting supply.
Yes there is plenty of food in the supermarket...
yet a crisis continues to snowball. _________________ "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."
-Friedrich von Schiller
"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."
John Kenneth Galbraith
Joined: Mar 26, 2008 Posts: 1140 Location: Seattle
Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 11:01 pm Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
Somehow I don't think someone stole 57,000 pounds of chicken because they were hungry.
In fact, I bet they were more interested in stealing the tractor and the trailer than they were the chicken. _________________ Abundance - what a concept!
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Then stop driving to work, duh..... 
