The following related pieces have been taken from various sources – all of which have been named.
Many will see it as a very negative perspective. But worth consideration,
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Agricultural Apocalypse 2010 ?
http://imva.info/index.php/2010/01/agricultural-apocalypse-2010/
When a large segment of the population is facing a drastic cut in income in the face of escalating food prices we have a catastrophic problem in the making. Today we have the simultaneous events of income deflation and food inflation; two high-speed express trains coming down that tracks at each other, a financial crisis colliding with staggering crop losses, which are cutting deeply into available planetary food reserves.
Prices of food are beginning to sore again just as millions are losing the ability to afford a reasonable diet though little of this is being observed or reported but soon even the blind will see. From corn to crude, prices for a wide range of commodities are on the rise across the globe. In recent months, global food prices have been growing at a rate that rivals some of the wildest months of 2008, when food riots erupted across the developing world. - January 9th Wall Street Journal
(…) Very few people in the US have given any serious consideration to the question of food security.
This essay should convince people that its time to start. For the most part, we’re not aware of the problem but if we look hard at the ‘hidden’ news we see that the handwriting is on the wall for an unimaginable crisis that will come on us as early as this year.
More than 2.1 million hectares of grain have been destroyed by drought in 2009 in Russia, Agriculture Minister Yelena Skrynnik said. A total of 616,000 hectares have been destroyed in the region, or 70% of the total amount planted. “The world is blissful unaware that the greatest economic, financial and political crisis ever is a few months away.
It takes only the tiniest bit of research to realize something is going critically wrong in agricultural market. All someone needs to do to know the world is headed is for food crisis is to stop reading USDA’s crop reports predicting a record soybean and corn harvests and listen to what else the USDA saying.Specifically, the USDA has declared half the counties in the Midwest to be primary disaster areas, including 274 counties in the last 30 days alone. These designations are based on the criteria of a minimum of 30 percent loss in the value of at least one crop in the county,” continues de Carbonnel.
(…) With a suddenness that will take us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food will draw to a close. We will begin to learn the real meaning of the word scarcity and it will be a long hard lesson for humanity. I am afraid that rocketing food prices and hundreds of millions more starving people will be part of humanity’s grim future.
The number of hungry people already passed 1 billion in 2009 for the first time, the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) said, adding that it is facing a serious budget shortfall. To date the WFP has confirmed $2.6 billion in funding for its 2009 budget of $6.7 billion. “This comes at a time of great vulnerability for the hungry,” the WFP said in a statement. “Millions have been buffeted by the global financial down turn, their ability to buy food is limited by stubbornly high prices.
In addition, unpredictable weather patterns are causing more weather-related hunger,” the WFP said.
According to Lester Brown, “The number of hungry people, which was declining for several decades, bottomed out in the mid-1990s at 825 million. In 2009 it jumped to over one billion.
With world food prices projected to continue rising, so too will the number of hungry people. We know from studying earlier civilisations such as the Sumerians, Mayans, and many others, that more often than not it was food shortages that led to their demise. It now appears that food may be the weak link in our early twenty-first century civilisation as well.” The news of continued global cooling is combining with drought conditions, water shortages, credit problems, reductions in fertilizer purchases and the use of food for energy to threaten us with dramatic food shortages. CLIP
PS Note from Jean: Here is what I wrote to the subscriber who recommended this article above to my attention:
“In the next 3 years the wheat will be separated from the shaft. Those who will not think of themselves first but will strive to help others amidst the growing calamities are those who will have the best chance to make the vibrational cut into higher dimensional ground past 2012.
It will sure be a most extraordinary global learning experience for every soul. The pangs of birth into the promised Land of a planetary Golden Age are the only way to expurgate from this world the dross of crude selfishness, willful ignorance of our Oneness and all dogmatic falsities that keep souls entrapped into a delusionary sense of being apart from everything else.
WORTHY OF YOUR ATTENTION – Joanna Macy
Joanna Macy’s address at the 2009 Bioneers conference (4 part video – the 4th part isn’t online yet)
http://www.youtube.com/bioneers#p/u/2/M_uKajuIKIE
One of our most popular addresses at Bioneers last year came from Joanna Macy, a renowned Buddhist teacher, eco-philosopher, systems theorist, scholar, and longtime activist in the peace, justice, and ecology movements. She speaks of a great turning in human consciousness and invites us to examine our relationships to nature and future generations. Recommended by Al Farthing (alfarthing@ns.sympatico.ca) who wrote: “The speech by Joanna Macy is a powerful statement of what we need to do for planetary well being — indeed for planetary survival.”
FROM: Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/
U.S. households struggle to afford food: survey – January 26, 2010, Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60P65N20100126
Nearly one in five U.S. households ran out of money to buy enough food at least once during 2009, said an antihunger group … urging more federal action to help Americans get enough to eat. “There are no hunger-free areas of America,” said Jim Weill of the Food Research and Action Center. Nationwide polling found 18.2 percent of households reported “food hardship” — lacking money to buy enough food — in 2009, according to the group. That is higher than the government’s “food insecurity” rating of 14.6 percent of households, or 49 million people, for 2008.
Households with children had a “food hardship” rate of 24.1 percent for 2009 compared with 14.9 percent among households without children. Twenty states had rates of 20 percent or higher. Seven Southern states led the list. The figures were based on responses to the question, “Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy the food that you or your family needed?” The question is similar to one asked by the Census Bureau in collecting data for the annual food-insecurity report.
Note: For much more from reliable sources on growing income inequality, click here. For more on the impacts of the financial crisis and its economic impacts leading to the Great Recession.
One quarter of US grain crops fed to cars – not people, new figures show
January 22, 2010, The Guardian (UK’s leading newspaper)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/22/quarter-us-grain-biofuels-food
One-quarter of all the maize and other grain crops grown in the US now ends up as biofuel in cars rather than being used to feed people, according to new analysis which suggests that the biofuel revolution launched by former President George Bush in 2007 is impacting on world food supplies.
The 2009 figures from the US Department of Agriculture shows ethanol production rising to record levels driven by farm subsidies and laws which require vehicles to use increasing amounts of biofuels. “The grain grown to produce fuel in the US [in 2009] was enough to feed 330 million people for one year at average world consumption levels,” said Lester Brown, the director of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington Thinktank that conducted the analysis.
According to Brown, the growing demand for US ethanol derived from grains helped to push world grain prices to record highs between late 2006 and 2008. In 2008, the Guardian revealed a secret World Bank report that concluded that the drive for biofuels by American and European governments had pushed up food prices by 75%, in stark contrast to US claims that prices had risen only 2-3% as a result. Since then, the number of hungry people in the world has increased to over 1 billion people, according to the UN’s World Food programme.
