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In a growing world, milk is the new oil
Wayne Arnold, International Herald Tribune
…Driven by a combination of climate change, trade policies and competition for cattle feed from biofuel producers, global milk prices have doubled over the past two years. In parts of the United States, milk is more expensive than gasoline. There are reports of cows being stolen on Wisconsin dairy farms.
“There’s a world shortage of milk,” said Philip Goode, manager of international policy at Dairy Australia in Canberra.
But the biggest force driving up milk prices is the same one that has driven up prices for conventional commodities like iron ore and copper: a roaring global economy. Rising incomes, from China and India to Latin America and the Middle East, are lifting millions of people out of poverty and into the middle class.
It turns out that, along with zippy cars and flat-panel TVs, milk is the mark of new money, a significant source of protein that factors into much of any affluent person’s diet. Milk goes into infant formulas, chocolates, ice cream and cheese. Most baked goods contain butter, and coffee chains like Starbucks sell more milk than coffee.
Just meeting that demand, according to Alex Duncan, an economist at Fonterra, the dominant dairy cooperative in New Zealand and the world’s largest dairy-exporting company, will require the addition each year of the equivalent of New Zealand’s entire annual milk output.
…What is unusual, and somewhat confusing, about the milk boom compared with other booming commodities is that milk is not like oil: You can’t stick it in barrels and stockpile it. It goes sour. Even in powder form, the most commoditized version, milk has a shelf life. As a result, only about 7 percent of all the milk produced globally is traded across borders. The rest is consumed in domestic markets, which are protected by geography and just as often by tariffs or subsidies.
(31 August 2007)
Biofuels and Small Farmers
Victor M. Quintana S., IRC Americas Program
The biofuels boom is not just another trend or a passing fashion. It is the result of a new global food and energy cycle that entails very significant adjustments in our societies.
The cycle of hydrocarbons as the almost exclusive source of energy is ending. So is the use of basic grains as a food weapon and instrument of economic subordination, initiated with the Iran-Iraq war in 1979, and the export of U.S. wheat to the Soviet Union a year later. The dominant actors of this cycle have been the industrial agriculture transnational corporations that control the international market through the policy of low prices: grain companies such as Cargill and Archer Daniels-Midland; oil companies such as Exxon-Mobil and Shell; and biotechnology firms like Monsanto and Aventis-Novartis.
Problems With the Current Situation
It has been a very aggressive cycle against small farmers and against nature. The export of subsidized grain from the United States and the European Union has led to the bankruptcy of the small growers form the countries of origin and the importing countries. Large-scale cultivation of monocrops such as soybeans in the Latin American southern cone has spread, wiping out multifunctional farms, and its technologies have contaminated millions of hectares of soil and water.
Global warming, the depletion of hydrocarbons, and the growing proportion of fossil-fuel based fuels produced in countries or organisms outside the control of the United Status and the transnationals-such as Venezuela, Iran, or Russia-have led to the need for changes. New cycles for food and energy production are beginning, and among these, bioenergy plays a key role.
The bioenergy cycle is an open development cycle, whose evolution could follow several paths: it could be harnessed for restructuring domination, as the transnationals and the states that support them are attempting to do; or emerging powers could take advantage of it, such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China or OPEC; or it could be used by grassroots organizations of rural and indigenous people, and small producers.
Translated from: Biocombustibles y agricultura campesina
Translated by: Annette Ramos
Published by the Americas Program. Copyright © 2007.
(29 August 2007)
Food demand and climate straining soils
Alister Doyle, Reuters
World food demand will surge this century with a leap in population, highlighting a need to protect soils under strain from climate change, experts said on Thursday.
About 150 scientists and government experts will meet in Iceland from August 31-September 4 to try to work out how to safeguard soils from over-use and desertification when more food is needed and some farmers are shifting land to biofuels.
“Soil and vegetation are being lost at an alarming rate around the globe, which in turn has devastating effects on food production and accelerates climate change,” Iceland’s President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson said in a statement
…”With a rising world population and biofuels, more land is needed,” said Andres Arnalds, Icelandic head of the meeting’s organizing committee.
He said that land degradation and desertification was a “silent crisis” — according to some estimates, an area the size of Iceland loses it vegetation every year
(30 August 2007)
Get Local’ campaign aims at its neighbours
Derrick Penner, Vancouver Sun
Advocates want labels to reflect origin of goods for consumers
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The 100-mile diet got Vancouverites interested in the idea of consuming food grown close to home. And now, local-food advocates have crafted a “Get Local” brand so farmers, retailers, distributors and restaurants can label their products and make them easily identifiable on store shelves and restaurant menus.
But for the “Get Local” campaign organizers, their effort is about more than selling the produce, meat and foodstuffs produced by participating businesses.
They want the label to be a shorthand method to get people thinking about putting their food dollars into the local economy, about considering the “food miles” that their groceries are travelling, and how buying home-grown reduces their environmental impact.
(29 August 2007)
Goodman warns of a rise in food prices
Geoffrey Newman, The Australian
AUSTRALIA’S biggest listed food group has slashed costs and lifted prices to counter a surge in input costs, warning that food prices will continue to rise as demand from Asian consumers and the biofuels industry increases.
Goodman Fielder yesterday reported a 12 per cent rise in underlying net profit to $222.1 million for the year to June, excluding the proceeds from the sale of its Uncle Toby’s division the previous year. The figure was in line with market expectations.
But the maker of such well-known brands as Meadowlea and White Wings warned that the cost of agricultural commodities it used rose $75 million during theyear.
Wheat prices paid by the company rocketed by up to 25 per cent as surging demand from Asian countries and the biofuels industry combined with drought in several countries, which slashed the size of the wheat crop. Hedging and the strong Australian dollar mitigated some of the impact.
Market prices for wheat have jumped 95 per cent in the past year and touched a record $US7.54 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade last week.
(29 August 2007)
