Global Food Supply Near The Breaking Point

Have to hand it to our economic/ideological system for ingenuity: There's a worldwide oil shortage, which drives prices up and doubles the profits of oil companies, while millions in the oil producing countries starve and hundreds blow themselves up by trying to cut holes in the pipelines to steal gas to survive.

Now we have the same situation with the growing shortage of food. Thousands of farmers are going broke, or commit suicide in many parts of the world, while the agribiz giants are socking it to the public and skim off huge profits by putting farmers out of busines to steal their lands, so they can poison it with all kinds of chemicals for monocropping.

But people buy this as "progress". We can't sell our government inspected organic veal, while the same cuts are selling in the local supermarkets for $19.50, obviously undercutting our $3.50.

This is what the Swedish author Johan Norberg describes in his book "In Defence of Global Capitalism", debunking the anti globalization movement, as: " By capitalism I mean a liberal market economy with free competition. A system where the individual is his own master of his property, with the power of making contracts and starting up a business, and the ability to move about, travel, and trade regardless of national boundaries. Decision- making, as far as possible, rests with people themselves, not with politicians and government"

Yep, "masters of our properties" provided those properties are not our farms, or our oil, or our resources, or our businesses, or our homes.

Come on Michael Scott and stoutlimb, tell us how good things are and developing for "global prosperity". Of course, the 3,000 Indian farmers who committed suicide in the past year were only "structural adjustments for the benefit of all", because they must have been commie pinko leftwingers who didn't appreciate the glories of "free enterprise" taking their lands and homes.

Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC.

<blockquote>Have to hand it to our economic/ideological system for ingenuity: There's a worldwide oil shortage, which drives prices up and doubles the profits of oil companies, while millions in the oil producing countries starve and hundreds blow themselves up by trying to cut holes in the pipelines to steal gas to survive. Now we have the same situation with the growing shortage of food. Thousands of farmers are going broke, or commit suicide in many parts of the world, while the agribiz giants are socking it to the public and skim off huge profits by putting farmers out of busines to steal their lands, so they can poison it with all kinds of chemicals for monocropping.</blockquote> Bush, sycophants, and fellow travellers at their best. Everything that the current US government has done in the past 6 years (and for some time before that, but never has it been so apparent as now) has served to multiply the profits of the largest corporations, all at the expense of the very lives of the hoi polloi. It a feeding frenzy, as though the sharks know that there is an end, and they want to gorge themselves as quickly and as insatiably as is possible. <p>---<br>RickW

<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2006/05/19/wwf-overfishing.html">http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2006/05/19/wwf-overfishing.html</a><p>---<br>RickW

I don't exactly agree with this story. For anyone who has ever worked in a grocery store would know that massive amounts of food are thrown away when it is not bought, or has slight imperfections like in the case of produce.

One of my first jobs was working in a produce department for a major chain, and it amazed me the amount of food that was simply thrown out. I asked why some was not packaged and sent to the local food banks, and I was told they didn't want it, or would not accept 'damaged' produce, or grocery goods. Don't know if they still do that or not, but it makes one wonder how much we do throw out. Think of thousands of such stores throwing out thousands of pounds of food per month each and every month of the year and how many people that would feed!

Beyond that, so much farmland is available but is just not used - it sits empty, or is used for cash crops.

Lastly we in the West consume far more calories than do others in Africa, Asia or South America. Hence the numbers of obese people.

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If there was ever a time for Canadians to become pushy - now is the time - for time is running out on this nation called Canada.

First Ed, I want to thank you for your intelligence. Reading vive and tyee I am
continuously amazed at how much stupidity exists, and it is always a relief to
encounter one of your messages among the neocon blathering.

As for Leahy's blatherings, I have to wonder why the concern is not also with
food distribution. People may be eating more grain today, but I wonder how
much of this is food aid in the shape of corn because indigenous agricultural
systems have been destroyed by government and corporate efforts to force
people to grow cash crops. How much of it in the west is processed crap, like
the corn syrup in pop? I recently even read an Oxfam Tanzania representative
bemoaning that people had stopped growing cash crops in favour of feeding
themselves, which apparently was the death of "agriculture." What happened
to Oxfam priding itself on teaching people to feed themselves?

The problem is corporate agribusiness and its chemical and oil dependent
monocrop methods which force people off their land and end their self-
sufficiency. GM corn and soy will never feed the world as they designed to
make profits for corporations. Corporate agribusiness is the most wasteful
and destructive system of food production imaginable and it is beyond me
whay so many people continue to buy into the "Green revolution" and
biotechnology lies. The only hope is organic and indigenous agriculture
suited to the actual peoples and lands feeding themselves.

In BC's Fraser Valley which was once a center of agriculture, when I go to the
local supermarket I am lucky to find anything that was not shipped from
California, Chile, NZ, China or South Africa even when it is in season here.
Talk about a waste of fossil fuels in shipping alone, and not even considering
the oil that went producing this monocropped produce. But apparently
consumers are so stupid they would rather buy strawberries in March from
California which taste like cardboard than wait for the real thing in season
when they sell for a fraction of the cost. Still Save On is full of posters on how
they support local farmers despite no evidence in the produce section.

As for beef, over the past few years I had a large enough pasture that I raised
some veal on a cow and a few steers. While not officially organic, as I could
never afford the cost of organic hay, they were raised organically with no
antibiotics and only organic grain. In the end I lost money due to the price of
beef since the border closed. I have to wonder how many hamburger
consumers know that despite prices not dropping rock bottom, they are
eating a dairy cow for whom the farmer received a bill rather than a cheque
when he sent her into the auction.

Of course since corporate agribusiness increasingly controls agriculture in
Canada, pushing out family farms, we should not expect people like Wells of
the NFU to be speaking for anyone but Monsanto and their like.

We should also remember the huge amounts of grain grown and used to pump up cattle in feedlots, by making them fat.

Go to google and type in: Grain used in cattle feedlots.

The list of articles promoting the use, or rather the waste, of grain is astonishing.

My cattle never see any grain until I sell them, when they're pumped full with antibiotics, steroids and hormones on their way to huge feedlots for more fattening. Of course, the practice raises the GDP, while mine doesn't. The only thing I raise is healthy meat on land not suitable for any other kind of food production.

Ed Deak.

What a load of crap - we produce FAR and away enough food to feed the entire world - we're just too greedy let those that cannot pay through the nose have enough of it.<br />
<br />
This sounds a lot like a "create a problem then present your chosen solution". Want to bet the next article is about the miracle of bio-engineered crops and how they will save us all from certain starvation? Monsanto, saving the world from hunger!<br />
<br />
Here's a trailer of a documentary about food that should be required viewing in every school in the country. I saw the whole video from google videos, but it seems to have disappeared from there.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.thefutureoffood.com/trailer.htm">http://www.thefutureoffood.com/trailer.htm</a><br />

Speaking of Tanzania:<br />
<a href="http://www.darwinsnightmare.com/">http://www.darwinsnightmare.com/</a><p>---<br>RickW