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Multinationals make billions in profit out of growing global food crisis
Geoffrey Lean,, Independent (UK)
Speculators blamed for driving up price of basic foods as 100 million face severe hunger
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Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry.
The prices of wheat, corn and rice have soared over the past year driving the world’s poor – who already spend about 80 per cent of their income on food – into hunger and destitution.
The World Bank says that 100 million more people are facing severe hunger. Yet some of the world’s richest food companies are making record profits. Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543m (£275m) to $1.12bn. Its profits increased from $1.44bn to $2.22bn.
Cargill’s net earnings soared by 86 per cent from $553m to $1.030bn over the same three months. And Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world’s largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42 per cent in the first three months of this year from $363m to $517m. The operating profit of its grains merchandising and handling operations jumped 16-fold from $21m to $341m.
Similarly, the Mosaic Company, one of the world’s largest fertiliser companies, saw its income for the three months ending 29 February rise more than 12-fold, from $42.2m to $520.8m, on the back of a shortage of fertiliser. The prices of some kinds of fertiliser have more than tripled over the past year as demand has outstripped supply. As a result, plans to increase harvests in developing countries have been hit hard.
(4 May 2008)
A Full Plate Today, Uncertainty Tomorrow
Faith D’Aluisio and Peter Menzel, Washington Post
… It may surprise you that a 26-year-old guy knows the price of flour at all — let alone that he can quote its rise from memory. But Sayani has a stake in the prices that his family pays for food. He and his brothers and sisters regularly pay into the family coffers to keep the extended family unit afloat. This sort of pooled purchasing power may be all that’s keeping bread on the plate these days in many corners of the world. People in the developing world are rioting over food prices, leaving dozens dead in some cities, because there’s simply little or no cushion in a poor family’s finances to afford even a minor increase in the cost of its food.
The world is used to hearing about hunger in the context of Darfurian refugees or crop failures and famine in sub-Saharan Africa. But now we’re facing something different. Large swaths of humanity can no longer be assured that the foods they’re eating today will be available tomorrow at prices they can afford — or available at all. This is not, in fact, as silent a tsunami as a World Food Program official suggested last week.
Sit down, as we do, with just about any family in the developing world, for whom eating traditional foods is still the norm, and get ready for a surprise: The family’s shopper (usually a woman) can tell you within an ounce or two exactly how much of each foodstuff she needs to buy to feed her family. And she could, at least until recently, tell you within a few cents what each item should cost and the expected total bill.
(27 April 2008)
It’s the meat not the miles
Rachel Ehrenberg, ScienceNews
Diet substance has a greater impact than diet origin on greenhouse gas emissions
access
Buying local certainly reduces the miles food goes before we eat. But consumers aiming to shrink their ecological footprint will get more bang for their environmental buck by eating less red meat and dairy, reports a new study. The analysis finds that transporting food to the consumer accounts for only 4 percent of food-associated greenhouse gas emissions, while production contributes a hefty 83 percent.
“There are many good reasons for going local,” comments Rich Pirog, associate director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University in Ames. “But this study is important. Food miles alone are not a reliable indicator of environmental impact.”
(1 May 2008)
The headline is plain wrong – looks like the headline writer didn’t read past the first paragraph. Give that editor a demerit.
Otherwise the article is balanced and informative. A couple of items should be added. Foods should be eaten when they are in season, to minimize energy and GHGs. Also, supporting local agriculture increases resilience – important when fuel supplies are problematic. For example, note this article from Haaretz (Israel) on food security. These days it doesn’t look like a good idea to rely on imports for food supply. -BA
Canada: Are we losing our food sovereignty?; Where do we grow from here?
Tiffany Mayer, The Standard (Ontario)
… the demise of the last Canadian fruit cannery means more than lost jobs and uncertainty for farmers like Kathryn and her husband, Joe, as they scramble to find a replacement crop for the processing peaches they’ve grown for 33 years.
As the “silent tsunami” – the world food crisis – swells with soaring fuel prices, the biofuel industry’s insatiable hunger for grain, and crop shortages, the couple can’t help but lament Canada’s lost capacity to provide canned fruit to Canadians. When the plant goes, they wonder if it’s taking a part of our food sovereignty with it.
“We’re giving a lot up and … you can’t go back,” Kathryn said about CanGro. “What if there was a war and all of a sudden we can’t feed ourselves?”
“Countries are going to feed their own people first,” Joe interjected, noting it’s already happening with some rice-growing countries banning exports in an effort to maintain their own supplies during the current shortage.
“If they close their doors to us, we have no control,” Kathryn added.
Food sovereignty is the right of people, communities and countries to define their own agricultural, food, labour and land policies that are ecologically, socially, economically and culturally appropriate to their circumstances. It also includes the right to safe and nutritious food and food-producing resources, and the ability to sustain themselves and their societies.
(3 May 2008)
