China's rising grain prices could signal global food crisis

[GermanDJ]

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/112103_china_food.html

"US environmentalist Lester Brown warned Wednesday that sudden food price hikes in China could be the sign of a coming world food crisis brought on by global warming and increasingly scarce water supplies among major grain producers."

(...)

"In the past few months, wheat prices in northeast China have shot up 32 percent, maize prices have doubled and rice prices are up by as much as 13 percent, official reports show. China faces a 40 million ton grain shortfall this year, following five years of smaller harvests. Brown said that the world will be facing a 96 million ton shortfall in grain this year following poor harvests in the United States and India in 2002, and a poor harvest in Europe due to scorching temperatures this year."

(...)

"When China turns to the world market for grain, it will need 30, 40, 50 million tons, more than anyone else in the world imports," Brown said. "They will first come to US markets, which is going to make a fascinating geo-political situation."


This is pretty scary stuff IMHO.

The guys at _From The Wilderness_ have on ongoing series about the consequences of Peak Oil. And when you read these articles it becomes pretty clear why the US (and some other nations as well) do behave the way they do (attacking and scaring ressource-rich nations, deploying troops to Asia, etc.)

[cliss]

1. Thank you for the post, GermanDJ

Let's take a look at the implications. China is running low on grains to feed its people. It's probably due to weather-related reasons. Also, China has 1.5 billion people - a lot of mouths to feed. It will be forced to import huge amounts of grain. The question is: is there enough world-wide to supply this amount? And what about all the other countries?

Price implication:

This will raise the price of grains worldwide. It will probably increase the price of ALL grains, because if the Chinese can't get rice and corn, they will import other grains to make up the difference. This would probably be a good time to go out and buy grain, or even invest in grain futures, if you are so inclined.

Political implication:

This is bound to cause instability in world markets. There will be scrambling to fill the need, and then after that it could get ugly.

Declining Oil

You're right, there is SO much behind the scenes that they don't tell us. A lot of it has to do with the dwindling supply of oil. Stan Goff has written several articles on this subject. He says that the world has the capacity to feed about 2 billion people. With oil, that capacity has been boosted to over 6 billion people. In about 10 years, oil production is going to start a rapid decline. This means that we have a surplus of 4 billion people who won't get enough to eat. And yes, the implications are enormous.

This is obviously the reason why the US is behaving like a lunatic and is belligerent beyond belief. They know what they are facing, and they want the oil for themselves. They just don't tell us that.