Orchestrating Famine - a Must-Read Backgrounder on the Food Crisis

[nosmokes]

A long but very informational article complete w/ video breaks containing a wealth of information re: how the power elite are setting up(or have set up) the system to control our very sustenance.
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original-permaculture

Orchestrating Famine - a Must-Read Backgrounder on the Food Crisis

Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, Population, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh

The era of cheap food is over — this means disaster for millions, and mega-profits for a few. How did we get into this mess?

Most objective observers of the current food crisis are understandably concerned. Around 45% of the world’s population live on two dollars per day or less. Skyrocketing food prices are now bringing stress to two billion people, and despair to millions — around one hundred million, actually. The situation is only expected to further deteriorate as: the price of oil continues to soar; climate change-related disasters increase in frequency and intensity, and as policy decisions such as mandated biofuel quotas in our fuel supply further strengthens the already strong price connection between fuel and food. It is a humanitarian disaster that’s well underway, and one which seriously threatens to destabilize international security. As I’m sure you can appreciate, a hungry man is an angry man.

Making a killing

And yet, this situation is playing into the arms of large corporations who are making windfall profits out of desperate demand for the most basic of needs, and who see even greater opportunities for a lot more of the same in the coming months and years.

Much of the news coverage of the world food crisis has focused on riots in low-income countries, where workers and others cannot cope with skyrocketing costs of staple foods. But there is another side to the story: the big profits that are being made by huge food corporations and investors. Cargill, the world’s biggest grain trader, achieved an 86% increase in profits from commodity trading in the first quarter of this year. Bunge, another huge food trader, had a 77% increase in profits during the last quarter of last year. ADM, the second largest grain trader in the world, registered a 67% per cent increase in profits in 2007.

Nor are retail giants taking the strain: profits at Tesco, the UK supermarket giant, rose by a record 11.8% last year. Other major retailers, such as France’s Carrefour and Wal-Mart of the US, say that food sales are the main sector sustaining their profit increases. Investment funds, running away from sliding stock markets and the credit crunch, are having a heyday on the commodity markets, driving prices out of reach for food importers like Bangladesh and the Philippines.

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complete article here

[FirstLight]

1. Rec! Though it IS a long article, it's worth understanding...

But here's the main thing: I have understood for along time that globalization could lead to our undoing. While it is a great idea in theory, in practice it creates much too much dependence on cheap energy costs and long distance shipping, etc for it to work at all...which we are rapidly finding out. Small local farmers, farmers' markets, 100 mile diet, etc are all ways we can being shifting the gears towards self sustainability...what about a movement af community gardening? Bartering locally for goods AND services? I would love to houseclean or something for a month to get my car fixed!

think globally, act locally...it has always been a good idea!