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Agriculture’s new ‘golden age’
David Olive, The Star (Toronto, Canada)
It’s becoming a cliché in the world’s commodity trading pits: Food is the new oil.
After decades when every year seemed to be a struggle for the agricultural sector, farmers have watched with amazement the past year’s skyrocketing in global prices for wheat (up 287 per cent), corn (up 149 per cent), coffee, peas, lentils, soybeans, rice, canola, dairy products and other cropland commodities.
Canadian farmers are poised to reap a bountiful reward for their crops this year in what Robert Moskow, agricultural analyst at Credit Suisse SA, describes as a new “golden age” of agriculture.
In a sidebar:
The amount the price of various agricultural crops has risen since Jan. 1, 2006:
* Wheat, +287 per cent.
* Corn, +149 per cent.
* Coffee, +139 per cent.
* Soybeans, +129 per cent.
* Rice, +60 per cent.
(2 March 2008)
King of soya: environmental vandal or saviour of the world’s poor?
Rory Carroll and Tom Phillips, The Guardian
Vast plantations are a source of cheap food – but also encourage deforestation
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Erai Maggi does not look like a villain who is destroying the planet; nor does he look like a hero who is saving the world’s poor. Wearing jeans and work boots, he can be found on a typical day driving a battered Fiat car on one of his farms south of the Amazon rainforest.
For someone who excites extreme views he seems miscast, neither Darth Vader nor Indiana Jones. But the 48-year-old Brazilian farmer is protagonist in a drama about climate change, globalisation, poverty and hunger.
Maggi owns more than 200,000 hectares (494,000 acres) of soyabean plantations in Mato Grosso state. It is reckoned to be the biggest such holding in the world making him the king of soya.
(3 March 2008)
My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables)
Jack Hedin, New York Times
IF you’ve stood in line at a farmers’ market recently, you know that the local food movement is thriving, to the point that small farmers are having a tough time keeping up with the demand.
But consumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits and vegetables not just at farmers’ markets, but also in the produce aisle of their supermarket, will be dismayed to learn that the federal government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the local food movement from expanding. And the barriers that the United States Department of Agriculture has put in place will be extended when the farm bill that House and Senate negotiators are working on now goes into effect.
As a small organic vegetable producer in southern Minnesota, I know this because my efforts to expand production to meet regional demand have been severely hampered by the Agriculture Department’s commodity farm program.
(1 March 2008)
South Africa: Farmers Can Plan – But Not Indefinitely
Stephanie Nieuwoudt, Inter Press Service via allAfrica
Millions of dollars worth of agricultural produce have been lost due to the electricity crisis in South Africa, which has seen rolling power cuts – referred to locally as “load shedding” – across the country over the past few months.
Yet industry players who spoke to IPS about the crisis seemed positive about their ability to weather the storm.
…According to Lindie Botha, an economist at the Agricultural Business Chamber, South African farmers are ready and willing to invest in alternative fuel sources.
“We will not immediately see huge changes, but this crisis is the kick that was needed to really start investigations into alternative sources. We will see great changes within the next three to five years,” she said.
“There will be investments in solar and wind energy, not only because it makes electricity users less dependent on electricity, but because it is cost effective. It is interesting that dairy producers — who are more dependent on technology than, say, cattle farmers — are those that for a long time have been more open to alternative power sources.”
(29 February 2008)
Okla. fight over poultry waste escalates
Justin Juozapavicius, Associated Press
In a region that produces billions of pounds of the nation’s poultry, part of doing business for the past half-century was trying to ignore the smelly waste dropped by the birds.
Now, the chickens have come to roost, as Oklahoma wants a federal judge to stop 13 Arkansas-based poultry companies from dropping any more chicken litter in a once-pristine watershed.
(3 March 2008)
Priced Out of the Market
Editorial, New York Times
The world’s food situation is bleak, and shortsighted policies in the United States and other wealthy countries – which are diverting crops to environmentally dubious biofuels – bear much of the blame.
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the price of wheat is more than 80 percent higher than a year ago, and corn prices are up by a quarter. Global cereal stocks have fallen to their lowest level since 1982.
As usual, the brunt is falling disproportionately on the poor.
(3 March 2008)
In Hungry Zimbabwe, Pet Food as a Priority
Exports Stressed Despite Shortages For Basic Needs
Craig Timberg, Washington Post
Meals come only once a day for Helen Goremusandu, 67, and the six children she is raising. With prices for the most basic food products increasingly beyond her reach, that daily meal often consists of nothing more than boiled pumpkin leaves, washed down with water.
About a mile away, a Zimbabwean government grain mill is churning out a new product: Doggy’s Delight. Announced by its creators in January, the high-protein pet food is aimed at the lucrative export market, one of the dwindling sources of foreign exchange in a collapsing economy.
The shift away from making food for humans — or for pigs, chickens and other animals that humans might eat — is just one of the more striking distortions in an economy ravaged by government price controls, hyperinflation and a severe food crisis.
(3 March 2008)
