Eat Your Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Weapons, Mr President WAR George Bush! Darling Condy Imperialism Personified!
Plash Biswas
I spit on thee, US Imperialism!
I stand with you US Freedom movement! US Human rights aware Citizens! Anti Imperialism Resistance! Democratic Forces!
I hate your Galaxy Post Modern Manusmriti Apartheid Hindu Zionist White Order!
I hate the Global Ruling Class born from the Womb of Indian VARNA system and Wetern Apartheid, just two sides of the same coin!
I hate your Comradors agents ruling most of the countries including our Sub continent!
Mind you, we are chined for thousands and thousands years deprived of our Human Rights. Deprived of Food, Education, Health Care, Livelihood, Clothing. But we Have Nots won`t bear this infinite Enslavement for eternity!
The sackles have to be broken Any day Any Time Any Where!
Mr President! Just withdraw your forces from Iraq!
Hands off from Iran!
Quit Afganistan!
Quit Waziristan!
Call back US forces and Warships from different parts of this glob!
Withdraw US MNCs from every part of this universe which are engaged in destruction!
Close the Open Neo Liberal Market devastating Indigenous Production system everywhere!
Stop ethnic cleansing calling it War against terrorism!
Stop Conspiracies against Humanity and Nature!
Annihilate your Mind control Gestapo deployed everywhere!
Disband Nato!
Break UN! Pentagon! WTO! IMF! World Bank! GATT!
Just do all these things and you have not to speak so Nonsense!You would be able to hold your dirty tongue for a while until Brack Obama or hillary Clinton takes over defeating War Monger Republicans!
There won`t be any Food Crisis anymore!
There won`t be any Global Warming in Future!
This Universe will be full of Peace without Civil Wars , Wars and Military Intervention!
Prosperity in countries like India is "good" but it triggers increased demand for "better nutrition" which in turn leads to higher food prices, US President George W Bush said. ( Watch )
Mr President, You won`t allow the Black Untouchables of this Planet to have their daily Meal. You perhaps visulise the Great Famines of India and China in World War Time. Mind you, US Imperialism and US intersts got its Roots in those Famines. War is the mother of Famines and all food problems, American president won`t accept this. Even after Iraq and afganistan while US Economy has turned bank rupt. Zionist MNCs and Weapon industries took over the Global Humanity in your regime, Mr President. US children sleep without their daily meal, in your regime. Bush Economics has destroyed the Indigenous production system everywhere including United States of America. Peasnts worldwide have no way for survival. Capitalist development uproots peasnts from their homeland. New Global Order has made half of the peole worldwide Desettled, Refugees. Land is captured by the Ruling Class. Indigenous people are being annihilated by the Comradors of US imperialism worldwide. In India, Nandigarm, Singur, Kalingnagar and navi Mumbai are the symbols of the desatruction of indian villages, agro sector and the Indigenous people. In china also, the open market policy has played havoc in the life of chinese People. The middle class quoted by George Bush are benefitted most by the New Post Modern Manusmriti Apartheid Galaxy Order. They belong to sensex shining India and have no relation with the indigineous starving people.
Mr Bush, it may be true as far as the upsurge of so called purchasing power owning Middle Class in India, but the fact remeians that seventy eight percent of India are suffering food insecurity.Metroes are developed with ethnic cleansing of the Ruaral People by the global ruling calss consisting of all colors of political and ideological entities.
Mr Bush People starve becuase US MNCs led Ruling Nasdaq sensex class opt for Americanised XXX life style full of wine and women. They have captured all resources and Common people fastly tured in Have Nots starve worldwide! So, it happens in United states also.
Mr Bush, the United States and Mother Freedom may not bear the burden of your war Economics!
The comments come close on the heels of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's controversial statement that "apparent improvement" in the diets of people in India and China and consequent food export caps is among the causes of the current global food crisis.
At an interactive session on economy in Missouri, Bush argued that there are many factors for the present crisis, only one of which was investment on biofuels like ethanol.
"Worldwide there is increasing demand. There turns out to be prosperity in developing world, which is good. It's going to be good for you because you'll be selling products in the countries, you know, big countries perhaps, and it's hard to sell products into countries that aren't prosperous. In other words, the more prosperous the world is, the more opportunity there is," the US President said.
"It also, however, increases demand. So, for example, just as an interesting thought for you, there are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle class. That's bigger than America. Their middle class is larger than our entire population.
"And when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up," he said.
Bush also listed change in weather patterns and increase in basic costs like that of energy as factors contributing to higher food prices.
"No question that ethanol has had a part of it. But I simply do not subscribe to the notion that it is the main cost driver for your food going up," Bush said.
Several international experts have in recent days held biofuels, until recently cast as a miracle alternative to polluting fossil fuels, for being responsible for usurping arable land and distorting world food prices.
"Actually, the reason why food prices are high now is because, one, energy costs are high, and if you're a farmer, you're going to pass on your cost of energy in the products you sell, otherwise you'd go broke.
"And when you're paying more for your diesel, paying more for your fertiliser because it's got a lot of, you know, natural gas in it, in other words, when your basic costs are going up, so does the cost of food," Bush said.
He said there are two aspects of rising food prices -- its effect on US citizens and the fact that there is a food scarcity in the world.
"We don't have a scarcity issue in America...We got a price issue. Our shelves aren't going empty, it's just costing more money," Bush said.
"There is scarcity in the world, and I happen to believe when we find people who can't find food we ought to help them find it," he said adding, "America is by far the most generous nation when it comes to helping the hungry."
"We're an unbelievably compassionate nation," he said. "I think we ought to change our food policy in Africa and other developing countries...buying food directly from farmers as opposed to giving people food. I think we ought to be saying, 'Why don't we help you be able to deal with scarcity by encouraging your farmers to grow and be efficient growers? Otherwise, we're going to be in this cycle forever."
George Bush has proposed spending an additional $US770 million ($820 million) in emergency food assistance for poor countries, responding to rising food prices that have resulted in social unrest in several nations.
The President's proposal came days after Democrats in Congress called for increases and it received a largely positive response, although some Democrats criticised the fact that the additional aid would not be available until the next financial year, which begins in October.
"In some of the world's poorest nations, rising prices can mean the difference between getting a daily meal and going without food," Mr Bush said.
Food aid agencies commended the plan's flexibility and support for long-term agricultural sustainability, but they said more needs to be done to avert a humanitarian crisis.
Mr Bush's proposal underscored how quickly the global food crisis has risen to the top of Washington's agenda.
Global food prices rose 43 per cent between March last year and this year, Edward Lazear, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, said.
The $US770 million would be included in next year's budget, increasing total US food assistance to $US2.6 billion, the deputy budget director, Stephen McMillin, said. In the current year, the Administration has proposed spending $US2.3 billion, he said.
Senator Richard Durbin, the chamber's second-ranking Democrat, welcomed the President's proposal "as a sign of the magnitude of this problem". But another Democrat, Senator Robert Casey, said the Administration needed to endorse a swifter increase.
In his remarks, Mr Bush also called on other countries to ease trade barriers restricting agricultural imports or exports and to lift bans on genetically modified foods. He urged Congress to give the Government greater flexibility in dispersing assistance.
The US and the European Union have taken a "criminal path" by encouraging use of food crops to produce bio-fuels and thus contributing to an "explosive rise" in global food prices, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food has said.
Jean Ziegler held fuel policies pursued by the US and the EU to be main causes for the current worldwide food crisis.
Last year, the US used a third of its corn crop to create bio-fuels, while the European Union is planning to have 10 per cent of its need supplied by bio-fuels, he said and called for a for a five-year moratorium on the production of bio-fuels.
Ziegler also said that speculation on international markets was behind 30 per cent increase in food prices. Besides, hedge funds are also making huge profits from raw materials markets and called for new financial regulations to prevent such speculation.
The Special Rapporteur, in a press conference, warned of worsening food riots and a "horrifying" increase in deaths by starvation.
Meanwhile, speaking in Rome, a nutritionist with the UN World Food Programme (WFP), said that "global price rises mean that food is literally being taken out of the mouths of hungry children whose parents can no longer afford to feed them."
Andrew Thorne-Lyman said that even temporarily depriving children of the nutrients can leave permanent scars in terms of stunting their physical growth and intellectual potential.
Families in the developing world are "finding their buying power has been slashed by food price rises, meaning that they can buy less food or food which isn't as nutritious," he added.
Leftist extremist groups are "very active" in wide areas of impoverished rural eastern and Central India, the US State Department has said.
The Maoists also operate in parts of southern India, the State Department said in its latest annual report on terrorism.
It said hundreds of people were killed in conflicts between the government and various leftist extremist groups, such as Naxalites and the Communist Party of India (Maoists), and also in internecine war.
"The government of India is very concerned over the threat from leftist extremist groups to internal stability and democratic culture," it said.
The report mentioned that there were at least 971 Naxalite attacks in the first seven months of 2007 which, it said, was approximately equal to that of the entire previous year.
"The Leftist extremists are highly active across a wide swath of India, including the states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Uttarakhand and West Bengal. They were also active in some areas of Orissa, Maharashtra and Karnataka," the report said.
On a visit to the Middle East, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she expected Israel to continue to dismantle barriers and asked the Jewish state not to "undermine" Palestinian forces as they deploy in the West Bank. (Report: E.Irvine for France 24)
All major political parties, including Congress, BJP and the Left, on Saturday lashed out at US President George W Bush for blaming the growing demand in India for the spiralling global food prices even as the Opposition also used the opportunity to attack the government.
Reacting sharply to the remark coming from Bush, most parties said a major reason for spiralling global food prices was diversion of land producing foodcrops in the US to bio-fuel production.
Minister of state for commerce Jairam Ramesh said Bush was "completely wrong" in his assessment.
The reaction in India comes after Bush repeated the statement a few days after his secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said the same thing.
Rice blamed rising prosperity of India’s huge middle class for the spiralling global food prices.
"George Bush has never been known for his knowledge of economics. And he has just proved once again how comprehensively wrong he is. To say that the demand for food in India is causing increase in global good prices is completely wrong," Ramesh said.
Congress criticised the US President saying the analysis was "completely erroneous" as India was not a food importer but a food exporter.
"India is a not a net food importer. It is a food exporter. The assumption that local prices are increasing because of a changed India is completely erroneous," AICC spokesperson Manish Tewari said, adding: "The crisis is actually because of diversion of arable land in the developed world for ethanol production and because of changes in the climate pattern."
While the Left parties blamed the "neoliberal economic policies imposed on India by the Bush administration", BJP used the US President’s statement to attack the Congress-led coalition at the Centre over its "failure" to control inflation.
"The statement by Bush fixes into the frame of irrelevancy of the statements of the UPA ministers. It is the same like Praful Patel saying that price rise is due to change in food habits," BJP spokesman Prakash Javadekar said.
He said there was bound to be greater demand for essential commodities as the economy grows and said it was the responsibility of planners and the government to ensure food supply and control prices at the same time.
"At a time when millions of people in India are unable to get enough food to eat and suffer from malnutrition, Bush’s insensible remarks about India’s prosperity affecting global food prices are adding insult to injury," CPM general secretary Prakash Karat said.
He said the US policy of subsidising and promoting bio-fuel out of crops was the major reason for the shortages and spurt in food prices.
"This is what President Bush has sought to cover up."
CPI leader D Raja blamed US policies for all major crises facing the world, particularly in energy and food sectors.
"The Bush administration is trying to cover up its own fault by shifting the blame to developing countries. It is the US which has shifted agricultural production from foodgrains to bio-fuel, thereby creating a food crisis and pushing up prices," he said. Raja described Bush’s comment as "a kind of racial statement" which blames India and China for heightened demand.
Raja added that India grew its own food and did not "exploit other nations like US imperialism".
Prosperity in countries like India is "good" but it triggers increased demand for "better nutrition" which in turn leads to higher food prices, Bush said.
U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice on Sunday met Israel's defense minister to
discuss removing West Bank roadblocks as she began a day of
meetings that aim to speed up Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Let's get to work," Rice said as she sat down with Ehud
Barak, who heads the Israeli defense ministry and exerts great
influence over the network of checkpoints and roadblocks that
Israel argues it needs to prevent suicide bombings.
Palestinians view the barriers as collective punishment and
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who is to join Rice in
a three-way meeting with Barak later in the morning, say they
blight the Palestinian economy.
Speaking before she arrived on Saturday for a two-day visit
to the region, Rice said she would assess Israel's steps on the
ground to see if they had improved the daily lives of
Palestinians, including promised removal of barriers.
"The first thing we are going to do is to review the ones
that were supposedly moved," Rice said, adding she wanted to
discuss with Israeli officials how significant those barriers
were to allowing greater movement for the Palestinians.
"Not all roadblocks are created equal," Rice said.
Rice met Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert after her
arrival in Jerusalem on Saturday night and will meet Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday.
Abbas and Olmert, who are due to meet on Monday following
Rice's departure, agreed in November to resume peace talks with
the aim of reaching an agreement by the end of this year. The
peace negotiations have yet to show tangible progress.
After Rice's last trip in late March, Israel said it planned
to remove 61 barriers in the occupied West Bank. But a U.N.
survey subsequently found that only 44 obstacles had been
scrapped and that most were of little or no significance.
Western pressure is mounting on Olmert to do more to ease
travel restrictions and take other steps to shore up Abbas,
whose authority has been limited to the West Bank since Hamas
Islamists took over the Gaza Strip in June.
On Saturday, Abbas's security forces deployed to the
northern West Bank city of Jenin for a law-and-order campaign
meant to show the government is laying the ground for statehood.
Rice also plans to hold trilateral meetings with the top
peace negotiators, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and
Ahmed Qurei of the Palestinians.
U.S. officials are sensitive to the lack of demonstrable
progress in the talks and they hope to use a visit by U.S.
President George W Bush, who will travel to the region this
month to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Israel's founding, to
nudge them along.
Bush points food finger at India
K.P. NAYAR
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080504/jsp/frontpage/story_9223624.jsp
Washington, May 3: India became the latest target of US President George W. Bush’s talent for verbal indiscretions when he said yesterday that demand for “better nutrition and better food” by Indians was one of the reasons for the looming global food crisis.
Answering a question about the challenge of rising food prices worldwide, Bush said: “Just as an interesting thought for you, there are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle class. That is bigger than America. Their middle class is larger than our entire population. And when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food. And so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.”
The latest “Bushism”, however, does not appear to be the result of any original thought by the President unlike his other faux pas which have already filled at least two volumes of books.
In this instance, Bush has merely borrowed the thoughts from his trusted aide, secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.
She said last week that “improvement in the diets of people, for instance, in China and India” was contributing to a food shortage because of rising demand.
But unlike her boss, the secretary of state made out a cogent case in support of her argument, laying out a full picture of the international food crisis.
According to Rice, “we obviously have to look at places where production seems to be declining and declining to the point that people are actually putting export caps on the amount of food”.
She made a case that in countries like India and China, it was not as much a problem of declining production as growing prosperity, which has pushed up demand resulting in “pressures to keep food inside the country”.
Bush’s tone was almost accusatory, as if Indians had no right to be prosperous and demand better things.
Of course, he did not dwell on the fact that because of the problem of plenty, Americans waste more food every year than could feed the poor of a continent.
Bush, however, was not unhappy with another aspect of India shining. “There turns out to be prosperity in developing world, which is good,” the President said. “It is going to be good for you because you will be selling products into countries — big countries perhaps — and it is hard to sell products into countries that aren’t prosperous. In other words, the more prosperous the world is, the more opportunity there is” for American businesses.
The real reason for the latest “Bushism” is, however, not hard to seek. The President’s reputation is that of a simple man, who is transparent and cannot cloak his real feelings in political correctness.
One interpretation here was that yesterday’s references to India were a manifestation of his disappointment that things were not moving ahead with India as Bush had hoped three years ago.
No nuclear deal, no quick orders for 126 multi-role combat aircraft... and on top of it all, as Bush saw it, Manmohan Singh, whom he considered a friend, had spent more than three hours a day earlier with someone Bush despises: Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
It is also possible that the global food crisis was on his mind because an American, former undersecretary of state for economic affairs, Josette Sheeran, is director of the UN’s World Food Programme.
Knowing Bush, Sheeran framed the global crisis as a “silent tsunami” in terms that would catch Bush’s attention. It prompted a call by him to the US Congress to put up an additional $770 million in urgent food aid.
US eats 5 times more than India per capita
4 May 2008, 0100 hrs IST,Subodh Varma,TNN
Even as the world spins into a global food crisis, a popular theory — voiced by the likes of US President George W Bush and secretary of state Condoleezza Rice — is that the Chinese and Indians are responsible. The 'logic': due to zooming incomes, they are eating more, causing worldwide shortages. But is that true? ( Watch )
Due to their huge populations, countries like India and China may appear to consume gigantic amounts of food. But the real elephant in the room that nobody is willing to talk about is how much each person gets to eat. And the answer will shock many.
Total foodgrain consumption — wheat, rice, and all coarse grains like rye, barley etc — by each person in the US is over five times that of an Indian, according to figures released by the US Department of Agriculture for 2007.
Each Indian gets to eat about 178 kg of grain in a year, while a US citizen consumes 1,046 kg.
In per capita terms, US grain consumption is twice that of the European Union and thrice that of China. Grain consumption includes flour and by conversion to alcohol.
In fact, per capita grain consumption has increased in the US — so actually the Americans are eating more. In 2003, US per capita grain consumption was 946 kg per year which increased to 1046 kg last year.
By way of comparison, India’s per capita grain consumption has remained static over the same period. It’s not just grains. Milk consumption, in fluid form, is 78 kg per year for each person in the US, compared to 36 kg in India and 11 kg in China.
Vegetable oils consumption per person is 41 kg per year in US, while Indians are making do with just 11 kg per year. These are figures for liquid milk, not for cheese, butter, yogurt and milk powders which are consumed in huge proportion in the more advanced countries.
A significant proportion of India’s population is vegetarian, and so, this is all the food that they get, apart from vegetables and pulses. But the source of carbohydrates and fats is mainly derived from food grains and oils.
As far as meat consumption is concerned, the US leads the world in per capita consumption by a wide margin. Beef consumption, for example, is 42.6 kg per person per year, compared to a mere 1.6 kg in India and 5.9 kg in China. In case you are thinking that perhaps Indians might be going in for chicken, think again. In the US, 45.4 kg poultry meat is consumed every year by each person, compared to just 1.9 kg in India.
Pork consumption is negligible in India, while it is a major item elsewhere. In the European Union, 42.6 kg pork is consumed per person every year, while in the US, 29.7 kgs are consumed. Pork is a staple for Chinese, and so over 35 kg are consumed per person per year. And, we are not talking about various other types of meat, like turkey.
All these comparisons are for powerful economies, whether of the west or the east.
But the story would not be complete without mentioning the plight of Africa, where foodgrain consumption in 2007 was a mere 162 kg per year for each person, or about 445 grams per day. Don’t forget they are not getting any meat or milk products out there.
Perhaps, it is time to include the lifestyle choices of the West in the whole feverish debate on how to tackle the global food crisis.
These figures are collated by the US Department of Agriculture. US per capita grain consumption rose from 946 kg in 2003 to 1046 kg last year. India’s per capita consumption remained static in this period.
Bush bites into food debate, netas boil
4 May 2008, 0237 hrs IST,Chidanand Rajghatta,TNN
WASHINGTON: A preachy America and a prickly India are both mouthing off over the world food crisis.
Some of India’s political leadership was foaming at the mouth on Saturday after misconstruing US President George Bush’s remark that increasing prosperity in India had led to better diets, greater demand, and increasing prices, all of which had contributed to the global food crisis.
But the US President’s comments regarding India were more complimentary than condemnatory and the flaming reaction back home appeared completely misplaced, given the broad range of reasons the US president identified for the food crisis.
Asked about the rising food prices at an event in Missouri on Friday, Bush launched into an explanation about the increasing demand worldwide arising from greater prosperity in the developing world "which is good" because it enabled the US to sell products into big countries.
Bush then offered the example of India — "just as an interesting thought for you" — which he said has 350 million people who are classified as middle class. "That’s bigger than America. Their middle class is larger than our entire population. And when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food. And so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up," he said.
Several US lawmakers and economists have referred in the same vein to the growing prosperity and increased consumption in China and India, but none have implied that the two countries should eat less or go hungry — the prickly interpretation being bandied by India’s tetchy politicians.
In fact, the India-China growth is just one of the reasons being advanced by what some economists are calling a "perfect storm" that is leading to a worldwide crisis. Bush and others have also referred to drought in various parts of the world and the role of an evolving bio-fuel policy.
While some economists and scientists have blamed the US and EU for the food crisis because of its excessive emphasis on bio-fuels leading to diversion of arable land and food crops to making energy, Bush defended the policy, calling himself "an ethanol person".
"The interim step to getting away from oil and gas is to go to ethanol and battery technologies for your automobiles. I think it makes sense for America to be growing energy. I’d much rather be paying our farmers when we go to the gas pump than paying some nation that may not like us," Bush said.
The role of bio-fuels in the escalating food crisis has been a more heated topic of discussion than the improving diets in China and India, both of which are self-sufficient in foodgrains and consume what they grow. Many US leaders and economists have criticized the heavy subsidies offered to wealthy American farmers, blaming the policy for diversion of farmland to growing bio-fuel crops like corn.
On Thursday, a US lawmaker turned up a press conference with a cob of corn, a box of cereal, and a dime, to argue that it was unfair to blame farmers for trying to get better returns by growing corn for bio-fuel. Not only was such corn inedible, but the farmers also made only a dime on each box of cereal if they grew food crops, maintained Senator Charles Grassley, one of the two farmers in the US Senate.
Food crisis: Rice blames it on better diet in India, China
29 Apr 2008, 1921 hrs IST,PTI
WASHINGTON: The "improvement in the diets of people in India and China", which is forcing the governments there to keep food "inside" is a cause for the current global supply shortage, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said.
In an interactive session at the Peace Corps 2008 Country Directors Conference, Rice said the ongoing food crisis was mainly due to "four causes", even as she specifically pointed out the exchange rate and the simple "inability" of getting food to the people.
"There are, kind of, four causes that we really have to look at. Weve got to understand better what is happening in some conflict areas in terms of the distribution of food. Its obvious that there are places like Sudan, where weve had a sudden uptick in the inability to distribute food," Rice said.
The top Bush administration official said: "We obviously have to look at places where production seems to be declining and declining to the point that people are actually putting export caps on the amount of food.
"Now, some of that is not so much declining production as apparently improvement in the diets of people, for instance, in China and India, and then pressures to keep food inside the country. So, thats another element that we have to look at," she said.
The "incredible cost" that fuel prices, everything from fertilizer to transportation costs, was bringing on the ability to distribute or to get food to people, was identified as another factor by Rice.
The fourth factor was the one relating to "biofuels", which was "not a large part of the problem, but it may, in fact, be a part of the problem," she added.
Grain pain: Rationing in US as rice gets pricey
25 Apr 2008, 0056 hrs IST,Chidanand Rajghatta,TNN
WASHINGTON: Some outlets have begun rationing rice, the price of wheat flour has gone through the roof, there's no butter on store shelves, and gas at the pump is at an all-time high.
The usual developing country woes from Asia, Africa, and Latin America?
Try again. These are stories from the United States and Japan, the world's most advanced nations that bespeak prosperity and plenitude. Astonishing accounts of panic buying and rationing are surfacing from Tokyo to New York as world leaders are breaking out in cold sweat over tightening food supply chain.
On Wednesday, two of America's largest warehouse chains -- Wal-Mart's Sam's Club and rival Costco --imposed limits on purchase of rice, citing panic buying amid tightening supplies and rising prices.
Some Indian and Asian grocery stores also reported a run on rice as the perceived worldwide food shortage continued to make headlines, fed by the 24-hour news cycle.
Meanwhile, Japan, one of the world largest food importers, announced that it had exhausted its annual grain budget with two months remaining even as the country ran out of butter -- both as a consequence of rising prices and shortage of supply from countries such as Kazakhstan and Australia.
Assurances by US producers and grain analysts that there was enough cereal in the pipeline did little to arrest the panic in a country where forecast of a few inches of snow is enough to clear out the supermarket shelves. The tabloid New York Post story on the subject was headlined: Pain, No Grain.
Ironically, amid all this vexation, it was news from India that calmed the markets a bit.
The announcement from New Delhi that India would produce a bounteous harvest of wheat (and rice) this coming summer beat back wheat prices to a six-month low in the US market. With the US acreage under wheat also improving under good weather conditions, the International Grains Council has forecast a seven per cent increase in global wheat production.
India is now the world's second largest producer of both wheat and rice, and but for its appalling storage and distribution systems that wastes more than ten per cent of its harvest, it is in a position not only to feed itself but also help other countries.
In an interview to the Times of India earlier this week, Nobel laureate Dr Normal Borlaug, father of India's Green revolution, said there was still plenty of upside to food production in India and there was no need for panic.
"The only thing that has held back higher grain production is complacency. New techniques and technology is available to increase food production," Dr Borlaug said.
But that will take some time to kick in. For now though, it is panic stations from Tokyo to San Francisco, not to speak of Philippines to Haiti, where there have been reports of foot riots going beyond hoarding and rationing.
In fact, it is India's restriction on export of all rice, except for basmati, that is being blamed in part for the rice stampede. Other major rice producing countries such as China, Thailand, and Vietnam have also banned exports as they seek to first meet local demand. Similar action has followed among major wheat producing nations such as Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
The consequences of the developing world's mantra of feed-your-own-first has not been happy for the US, which has diverted some of its grain to bio-fuels, and Japan, which is the world's biggest net food importer. On Wednesday, Tokyo announced that it will ask the World Trade Organization as early as next week to introduce rules to prevent countries from restricting exports of wheat, rice and other grains.
Whether the move is a recipe for a new food fight in the international arena amid what appears to be needless panic is something that will unravel over the next few weeks.
Grain pain: Rationing in US as rice gets pricey
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has warned that the crisis of rising food prices could reverse gains made in reducing poverty across the continent. Bank president Haruhiko Kuroda warned at its annual meeting in Madrid that "the cheap food era may be over". Donor countries have pledged more than $11bn (£5.5bn) to a fund to ease the hardship of Asia's poorest people. Meanwhile, the African Development Bank has pledged an extra $1bn for its loans portfolio to tackle the food crisis. UN shortfall The BBC's Alan Johnston says food prices are the key issue on the minds of the thousands of government officials and business figures who have gathered in Madrid. ADB president Mr Kuroda said it was critically important to provide financing for development projects in rural Asian areas. He said that progress made in the great effort to lift millions out of poverty could be reversed. The rising cost of food is helping to fuel inflation, which the bank predicts will rise to more than 5% across Asia this year - the highest level since the Asian financial crisis a decade ago. The cost of the benchmark Thai variety of rice is about $1,000 a tonne, three times the cost at the time of the bank's last meeting a year ago. Poor harvests, global warming, increasing demand and the transfer of food land to biofuel production have all been blamed as factors in the crisis. Developing countries have implemented a range of policies to try to tackle the problem. The most recent moves include an immediate 25% pay rise for public sector workers in Syria, in an effort to offset the effects of rising food prices and dearer heating oil. In Egypt - where there has unrest over food prices - President Hosni Mubarak recently announced an increase of about 30% in public sector wages. And Bangladesh's garment manufacturers' association has said it will distribute subsidised rice to thousands of low-paid workers. Curbing exports Asia has two-thirds of the world's poor, with about 1.7 billion people earning $2 a day or lower. Major rice producers like Vietnam and India are limiting exports to secure domestic supply. Last month, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced a high-level task force to deal with the global food crisis. Its first priority, Mr Ban said, was to close a $755m funding gap in the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), caused by the rising cost of food aid. Mr Ban warned of "widespread hunger, malnutrition and social unrest on an unprecedented scale" because of soaring food prices. The WFP believes 100 million people are currently going short of food. UNITED NATIONS – The U.N. Human Rights Council should meet urgently to spotlight the global food crisis as a human rights emergency affecting at least 100 million people whose right to adequate food is being massively violated, a U.N. expert said Friday. Olivier De Schutter, the council's new independent expert on the right to food, said a special session of the human rights body would bring into the debate over rising food prices and global shortages "the human right to adequate food which for the moment has been totally absent." "If we had a hundred million people arrested in a dictatorial regime, if we had a hundred million persons beaten up by police, of course we would be marching on the streets and we'd be convening special sessions of the Human Rights Council," De Schutter said, during a news conference. "Every single one of these hundred million individuals deserves the same degree of attention from the international community." He expressed hope that the Geneva-based Human Rights Council could hold a special session on May 22 or May 23, ahead of a high-level international meeting in Rome from June 3-5 which organizers hope will lead to global action on multiple fronts to tackle the food crisis. De Schutter, a law professor at the University of Louvain in Belgium and currently a visiting professor at Columbia University's Law School in New York, said the consequences of the food crisis "are immense." Food prices on international markets have almost doubled in three years, 100 million persons are threatened with not having enough to eat, according to the World Bank, and efforts to reduce global poverty are being set back by 5-10 years, De Schutter said. "The human right to adequate food, as recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ... should be treated as a right equally important as the rights not to be subject to arbitrary detention or freedom of expression," De Schutter said. In order for the council to hold a special session, 16 of its 47 members – one third of the total – must ask for one. The council was created in March 2006 to replace the widely discredited and highly politicized Human Rights Commission. "The Human Rights Council was established as a standing body so it would be able to respond to human rights emergencies," De Schutter said. "This is one, and the council should not remain silent." He said the right to food is "far too important to be left to politics" and he expressed hope that 16 countries can be found to back his call for a special session. De Schutter said a special session would have great value "not only at the symbolic level but also because practical consequences would follow from defining the ... crisis as a massive violation of the right to adequate food." He said it would have consequences in terms of international cooperation among states "who are acting at the moment unilaterally, undercutting one another's efforts with beggar-thy-neighbor policies." De Schutter said the crisis could have been mitigated if countries had put in place safety nets and measures protecting the right to adequate food. "This is not a natural disaster. It's not an earthquake. It's a crisis which is man-made. We know what the causes are," he said. "We can act on these causes." But De Schutter expressed fear that the international community will only react with emergency measures. He said measures already taken by countries – including restrictions or bans on food exports, lowered import tariffs to make food affordable, strengthened social safety nets and distribution of food to the neediest – "are all important, justifiable, legitimate, although sometimes they annul one another." But De Schutter said these measures "should not blind us to the fact that this crisis has structural causes on which we should act" immediately. First, he said, "it is irresponsible to continue pursuing in such a blind fashion our bio-energy policies." De Schutter called for an immediate freeze on new investments on turning corn, wheat, and other food crops into fuel for cars and trucks. "And we should discuss in an open and transparent manner whether the current levels of production of bio-diesel, bio-ethanol, which are not so bio, should continue," he said. De Schutter called for increased support for agriculture in developing countries, noting that in 1980 World Bank lending for agriculture was 30 percent and by last year it dropped to 12 percent. He called for a global trade deal which considers the impact of agricultural subsidies not only on producers but on non-producers who might be hit with higher prices if subsidies are removed. As for food production and distribution, De Schutter said power is often in the hands of a limited number of actors who have immense power in dictating prices. "I would like to have an open dialogue with them," he said. "I would like to explore the plans they have to act responsibly and to respect the human right to adequate food in their activities." De Schutter said he will also be "exploring ways to limit the impacts of speculative investments." The increase in food prices "has been very much encouraged and has accelerated due to speculative investments," he said. "There are ways to insulate food prices from the risks and the volatility which are the result of these speculative movements of funds, but for this we need to act as one single community." Is the world headed for a food crisis? India, Mexico and Yemen have seen food riots this year. Argentines boycotted tomatoes during the country's recent presidential elections when the vegetable became more expensive than meat; and in Italy, shoppers organized a one-day boycott of pasta to protest rising prices. In late October, the Russian government, hoping to ease tensions ahead of parliamentary elections early next year, announced a price freeze for milk, bread and other foods through the end of January. Add another item to the list of threats to world peace: Food. Related Articles Food Price Hi... The idea of the starving masses driven by their desperation to take to the streets and overthrow the... When there’s a food emergency in the world, the World Food Program (WFP) is the agency called in to ... Haitians are no strangers to hunger. But even the resilience of the hemisphere’s poorest citizens ca... What's the cause for these shortages and price hikes? Expensive oil, for the most part. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) reported last week that, at nearly $100 a barrel, the price of oil has sent the cost of food imports skyrocketing this year. Add in escalating crop prices, the FAO warned, and a direct consequence could soon be an increase in global hunger — and, as a consequence, increased social unrest. Faced with internal rumblings, "politicians tend to act to protect their own nationals rather than for the good of all," says Ali Ghurkan, a Rome-based FAO analyst who co-authored the report. Because of the lack of international cooperation, he adds, "Worldwide markets get tighter and the pain only lasts longer." What's more, worldwide food reserves are at their lowest in 35 years, so prices are likely to stay high for the foreseeable future. "Past shocks have quickly dissipated, but that's not likely to be the case this time," says Ghurkan. "Supply and demand have become unbalanced, and... can't be fixed quickly." The world's food import bill will rise in 2007 to $745 billion, up 21% from last year, the FAO estimated in its biannual Food Outlook. In developing countries, costs will go up by a quarter to nearly $233 billion. The FAO says the price increases are a result of record oil prices, farmers switching out of cereals to grow biofuel crops, extreme weather and growing demand from countries like India and China. The year 2008 will likely offer no relief. "The situation could deteriorate further in the coming months," the FAO report cautioned, "leading to a reduction in imports and consumption in many low-income food-deficit countries." Hardest hit will likely be sub-Saharan Africa, where many of the world's poorest nations depend on both high-cost energy as well as food imports. Cash-poor governments will be forced to choose between the two, the FAO says, and the former has almost always won out in the past. That means more people will go malnourished. Further exacerbating the problem are the current record prices for freight shipping brought on by record fuel prices. An estimated 854 million people, or one in six in the world, already don't have enough to eat, according to the World Food Programme. Nearly every region of the world has experienced drastic food price inflation this year. Retail prices are up 18% in China, 17% in Sri Lanka and 10% or more throughout Latin America and Russia. Zimbabwe tops the chart with a more than a 25% increase. That inflation has been driven by double-digit price hikes for almost every basic foodstuff over the past 12 months. Dairy products are as much as 200% more expensive since last year in some countries. Maize prices hit a 10-year high in February. Wheat is up 50%, rice up 16% and poultry nearly 10%. On the demand side, one of the key issues is biofuels. Biofuels, made from food crops such as corn, sugar cane, and palm oil, are seen as easing the world's dependence on gasoline or diesel. But when crude oil is expensive, as it is now, these alternative energy sources can also be sold at market-competitive prices, rising steeply in relation to petroleum. With one-quarter of the U.S. corn harvest in 2007 diverted towards biofuel production, the attendant rise in cereal prices has already had an impact on the cost and availability of food. Critics worry that the gold rush toward biofuels is taking away food from the hungry. Jean Ziegler, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on The Right to Food, recently described it as a "crime against humanity" to convert food crops to fuel, calling for a five-year moratorium on biofuel production. Leaders in the biofuel industry respond that energy costs are more to blame for high food prices than biofuels. "Energy is the blood of the world, so if oil goes up then other commodities follow," Claus Sauter, CEO of German bioenergy firm Verbio said following Ziegler's comments. Others argue that cleaner-burning biofuels could help stem the effects of climate change, another factor identified by the FAO as causing food shortages. Ghurkan notes that scientists believe climate change could be behind recent extreme weather patterns, including catastrophic floods, heat waves and drought. All can diminish food harvests and stockpiles. But so can market forces.
25 Apr 2008, 0056 hrs IST 
The usual developing country woes from Asia, Africa, and Latin America?
Try again. These are stories from the United States and Japan, the world's most advanced nations that bespeak prosperity and plenitude. Astonishing accounts of panic buying and rationing are surfacing from Tokyo to New York as world leaders are breaking out in cold sweat over tightening food supply chain.
On Wednesday, two of America's largest warehouse chains -- Wal-Mart's Sam's Club and rival Costco --imposed limits on purchase of rice, citing panic buying amid tightening supplies and rising prices.
Some Indian and Asian grocery stores also reported a run on rice as the perceived worldwide food shortage continued to make headlines, fed by the 24-hour news cycle.
Meanwhile, Japan, one of the world largest food importers, announced that it had exhausted its annual grain budget with two months remaining even as the country ran out of butter -- both as a consequence of rising prices and shortage of supply from countries such as Kazakhstan and Australia.
Assurances by US producers and grain analysts that there was enough cereal in the pipeline did little to arrest the panic in a country where forecast of a few inches of snow is enough to clear out the supermarket shelves. The tabloid New York Post story on the subject was headlined: Pain, No Grain.
Ironically, amid all this vexation, it was news from India that calmed the markets a bit.
The announcement from New Delhi that India would produce a bounteous harvest of wheat (and rice) this coming summer beat back wheat prices to a six-month low in the US market. With the US acreage under wheat also improving under good weather conditions, the International Grains Council has forecast a seven per cent increase in global wheat production.
India is now the world's second largest producer of both wheat and rice, and but for its appalling storage and distribution systems that wastes more than ten per cent of its harvest, it is in a position not only to feed itself but also help other countries.
In an interview to the Times of India earlier this week, Nobel laureate Dr Normal Borlaug, father of India's Green revolution, said there was still plenty of upside to food production in India and there was no need for panic.
"The only thing that has held back higher grain production is complacency. New techniques and technology is available to increase food production," Dr Borlaug said.
But that will take some time to kick in. For now though, it is panic stations from Tokyo to San Francisco, not to speak of Philippines to Haiti, where there have been reports of foot riots going beyond hoarding and rationing.
In fact, it is India's restriction on export of all rice, except for basmati, that is being blamed in part for the rice stampede. Other major rice producing countries such as China, Thailand, and Vietnam have also banned exports as they seek to first meet local demand. Similar action has followed among major wheat producing nations such as Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
The consequences of the developing world's mantra of feed-your-own-first has not been happy for the US, which has diverted some of its grain to bio-fuels, and Japan, which is the world's biggest net food importer. On Wednesday, Tokyo announced that it will ask the World Trade Organization as early as next week to introduce rules to prevent countries from restricting exports of wheat, rice and other grains.
Whether the move is a recipe for a new food fight in the international arena amid what appears to be needless panic is something that will unravel over the next few weeks.
Asian bank in food crisis warning
Raids on hoarders, aerial planting and other snapshots from around the world
Explore the facts and figures behind the rising price of food across the globe
UN expert: food crisis is a human rights emergency
07:01 PM CDT on Friday, May 2, 2008
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/050308dnint.2b964f9.html
After the Oil Crisis, a Food Crisis?
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Food crisis still playing out on world trade - U.S.
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By Ed Davies
NUSA DUA, Indonesia (Reuters) - Soaring food prices could encourage nations to remove barriers on food imports, but there is also a risk panic over food could hurt global trade, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab told Reuters on Sunday.
Progress has been made in talks over a long-delayed global trade deal, although a renewed push was needed in some areas to meet a goal of passing the Doha round this year, she said.
Schwab, who was attending a Southeast Asian trade meeting on the Indonesian resort of Bali, said it was only just becoming clear what impact the food crisis was having on world trade.
"It seems to be sort of a push me, pull you kind of impact," she said, noting that Doha could get impetus from countries bringing down barriers on food imports, but adding that new trade distortions could also emerge from worries over access to food.
"Which really would hurt the Doha round, because it flies in the face of what you should really be doing, which is really eliminating as many distortions as you can so you have a free flow of food," she said.
Countries including India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Brazil have imposed curbs on food exports in a bid to secure domestic supplies and limit inflation, spooking big food importers.
In Asia, in particular, concern over rice prices is growing after several countries imposed export restrictions.
Schwab said soaring rice prices was a big topic at the Bali meeting. Continued...
| Asean to unite on rice shortage |
 FOOD CRISIS |
| Southeast Asian nations meeting in Bali have agreed to co-operate over the rice market, but stopped short of concrete measures to deal with rocketing prices of the region's staple in most meals.... |
Food crisis is silent tsunami - UN envoy
Saturday, 3 May 2008 15:14The new United Nations Food envoy, Olivier De Schutter, has described food shortages affecting 100m people as a 'silent tsunami'.
Protests, strikes and riots have erupted in developing countries around the world after big rises in the prices of wheat, rice, corn, oils and other essential foods that have made it difficult for poor people to make ends meet.
Mr De Schutter criticised the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few large multinational companies that provide seeds and fertiliser, process food and distribute it.
He said he wanted curbs on investors speculating on raw materials and said it was time for a radical re-think on biofuels.
'If we had 100m persons arrested in a dictatorial regime, if we had 100m persons beaten up by police, of course we'd be marching in the streets and we'd be convening special sessions,' Mr De Schutter said.
He said he wanted the Geneva-based Human Rights Council to hold a special session later this month to complement efforts by other international agencies to tackle the crisis and to establish it as a human rights issue.
One third of the 47 members of the council, or 16 countries, would need to request a special session.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon announced earlier this week that he was launching a task force to ensure a solid, coordinated international response to the food crisis.
Economists have linked food supply strains to factors including high fuel and fertiliser costs, the use of crops for biofuels and market speculation.
'This is not a natural disaster, it's not an earthquake, it's a crisis that is man-made,' said Mr De Schutter.
He called for urgent action in several areas, including a freeze on new investment in biofuels and for US and European Union targets for biofuel use to be abandoned.
The previous rapporteur, Jean Ziegler, said last year that the conversion of food crops to ethanol production was a 'crime against humanity'.
Mr De Schutter said he was aware that his predecessor had been seen as divisive and said he did not want to politicise the issue of food.
He urged greater investment in agriculture in developing countries where he said the proportion of overseas aid and World Bank lending for farming had fallen for 25 years.
He also said states should regulate companies better.
Finally, he said the rise in commodity prices had been fueled by speculation on the part of investment funds and he wanted to consult with experts on ways 'to limit the impact of speculative investors' on food prices.
| Food crisis increasing poverty Story by JEFF OTIENO Publication Date: 5/4/2008 | ||||
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| Global food crisis: US feels the pinch | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Saturday, May 3, 2008 (New York) Though US President George W Bush offered $770 million as international food aid for countries struggling with food riots, the problem of high food prices is not just in countries miles away. Even in America, high food and petrol prices are squeezing poor families across the United States. The shock that Americans were getting at the gas pump is now being felt at the supermarkets too. According to a report by the US Labour Department, food inflation is up more than five per cent over the last three months of 2008. And that's up from 4.9 per cent as reported in 2007. The staples of an American diet are costlier today. The cost of bread is up 16 per cent. Milk, bananas and peanut butter up by over 10 per cent. Eggs are up by 30 per cent and meat about 5 per cent. For the first time since the Second World War, when items like petrol, light bulbs and stockings were rationed, US wholesale stores like Costco have rationed bulk sales of rice. ''I am afraid that prices are going to go up further so I am buying more now. I used to buy one pack of rice now I am buying three,'' says a customer Elizabeth Railatu. To get food to the market, you need trucks and trains, which run on oil and gasoline, whose price has soared nearly 70 per cent in the past three years. In a bid to reduce dependence on foreign oil, the Bush administration has promoted the use of food-based biofuels such as ethanol as alternative energy sources. With oil on the boil, the use of biofuels and domestic and global economic growth increasing, in the US, the impact of the global food crisis is being felt at the gas pump and in the grocery. For the fist time in decades, Americans are learning to budget for food. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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