Our Awful Situation

Archive for the ‘Food’ Category

Corn hits record, soy rallies as floods expand

Posted by Charlie Kilo on June 13th, 2008

Food inflation will continue to skyrocket due to oil prices and flooding in the midwest:

Corn prices soared to record highs on Thursday as flooding damaged crop prospects in the U.S. Midwest, heightening concern over shrinking stocks and fueling the market’s relentless advance.

Torrential rains have swept across the Midwest, the key growing region in the world’s top producer, resulting in floods which have destroyed homes, as well as thousands of acres of corn and soybeans.

“It’s the worst in recent memory, at a time when demand has never been higher,” said Gavin Maguire, analyst with Iowa Grain in Chicago.

“We have lower (corn) acres to begin with, and now we have to expect a lower yield because of the bad growing season. So it all spells tighter corn supplies down the road,” he said.

Hunger Prompting Desperate Acts

Posted by Charlie Kilo on May 31st, 2008

I cannot imagine this:

An Afghan father, unable to feed his family, sold his 11-year old daughter for $2,000 to buy food for the rest of his family, IRIN News reported Sunday.

Illiterate and unable to find work, the man could no longer support his family by scavenging, he told a reporter for the UN-based news agency, because high food prices mean less food is being thrown away and more Afghans are scavenging.

“I know people will say I am a cruel and merciless father who sold his own child, but those who say so don’t know my hardship and have never felt the hunger that my family suffers,” said the Afghan man, identified only by a pseudonym.

Mideast reels as hunger outgrows oil earnings

Posted by Charlie Kilo on May 9th, 2008

Middle east food problems:

For years, food policy in the Middle East and North Africa was very simple: hydrocarbon exports paid for carbohydrate imports.

Rising agricultural commodities prices and a large population increase mean that the traditional policy is now untenable even if crude oil trades at about $120 a barrel, forcing countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia, to reconsider how it feeds its population.

Asia fears lost decade, unrest from food price shock

Posted by Charlie Kilo on May 4th, 2008

The food crisis is global in its reach and implications:

Soaring food prices may throw millions of Asians back into poverty, undo a decade of gains and stoke civil unrest, regional leaders said on Sunday as they urged a boost to agricultural production to meet rising demand.

Asia — home to two thirds of the world’s poor — risks rising social tension as a doubling of wheat and rice prices in the last year has slammed people who spend more than half their income on food, Japanese Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga said during the Asian Development Bank’s annual meeting.

If food prices rise 20 percent, 100 million poor people across Asia could be forced back into extreme poverty, warned Indian Finance Secretary D. Subba Rao.

“In many countries that will mean the undoing of gains in poverty reduction achieved in the past decade of growth,” Rao told the ADB’s meeting in Madrid.

U.N.’s World Food Program Cried Poverty While Sitting on Cash Stockpile of More Than $1.22 Billion

Posted by Charlie Kilo on May 3rd, 2008

“We do not apologize…”

Just weeks before it announced the onset of a global food crisis and the urgent need for donors to provide at least $775 million in additional funding, the World Food Program was sitting on a cash and near-cash stockpile of more than $1.22 billion.

The startling figure is contained in the latest audited statements of the WFP, which were endorsed by the WFP’s executive director, Josette Sheeran, on March 31, just a month before Sheeran announced at an international aid conference on April 22 that a “silent tsunami” in rising food prices demanded the huge infusion of cash for the WFP’s latest budget.

Total wheat crop failure?

Posted by patriot on April 26th, 2008

There’s fungus amongus:

On top of record-breaking rice prices and corn through the roof on ethanol demand, wheat is now rusting in the fields across Africa.

Officials fear near total crop losses, and the fungus, known as Ug99, is spreading.

Wheat prices have been soaring this week on top of already high prices, and futures contracts spiked, too, on panic buying.

Foreclosures and Food: Links to Various Stories

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 25th, 2008

There’s a lot going on in the news this morning so I thought I would compile several links here rather than create separate posts for each story:

As Food Prices Soar, Some Shortages Appear

Rising prices threaten millions with starvation, despite bumper crops

How will we feed the world?

California foreclosure “surge”: Up 327% from ‘07 levels

Pain of foreclosures spreads to the affluent

Beck: Food vs. Fuel

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 24th, 2008

Ethanol: You could feed an adult male for a year on the grain it takes to produce one tank of gas for an SUV:

WSJ: suburban farming, an idea whose time has come

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 23rd, 2008

Suburban farming:

Unthinkable: food rationing in the United States

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 21st, 2008

Here it comes:

Many parts of America, long considered the breadbasket of the world, are now confronting a once unthinkable phenomenon: food rationing. Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.

At a Costco Warehouse in Mountain View, Calif., yesterday, shoppers grew frustrated and occasionally uttered expletives as they searched in vain for the large sacks of rice they usually buy.

{

}