World food stocks dwindling

World food stocks dwindling rapidly, UN warns

By Elisabeth Rosenthal Published: December 17, 2007

ROME: In an "unforeseen and unprecedented" shift, the world food supply is dwindling rapidly and food prices are soaring to historic levels, the top food and agriculture official of the United Nations warned Monday.

Diouf blamed a confluence of recent supply and demand factors for the crisis, and he predicted that those factors were here to stay. On the supply side, these include the early effects of global warming, which has decreased crop yields in some crucial places, and a shift away from farming for human consumption toward crops for biofuels and cattle feed.

I've been grinding this axe for over a year. Ethanol from food crops is insane. I also think the linkage to global warming is gratuitous at best. Linkage to flood, drought, etc. is obvious, but I challenge anyone to prove the floods or droughts responsible were caused by AGW.

To me the most unsettling part of the article is the talk about how many weeks of grain reserves are stockpiled.

I think most people would be shocked to learn how precarious the balance is between supply and demand for perishible foods.

Modern civilization is unbeliveable complicated and inter-dependent. I'd be much more worried about a breakdown of our current array of technologies that allow us to keep this system in balance, than I would about melting glaciers and more frequent/intense hurricanes, etc.

Complete article from International Herald Tribune

[edit on 12/18/2007 by darkbluesky]

[edit on 12/18/2007 by darkbluesky]

The result of another short-sighted feel good measure that accomplishes far more pain and death than good.

What did they think would happen when gas stations and grocery stores compete for corn? Then ranchers can't afford corn feed so they have to move to wheat feed. Then every farmer wants a piece of the corn/ethanol sales so they don't grow as much other crops. Have you priced hay lately? It's up a couple hundred dollars a ton. That's crazy for simple hay.

Then there's the tortilla shortage. What happens when the primary food of a group of people becomes unfordable and scarce? Those people either die or cease to exist as they have always existed.

The best thing about it is GW may not even exist as so many pushing these immediate, not well thought out, feel good solutions see it.

So, in effort to slightly hinder a problem that may not even be we get to starve millions, displace millions more, wipe out entire sectors of the economies of nations....

Good stuff.

And what the hell is the UN warning about? Isn't this all their fault anyway?
Maybe they should go back to focusing their energy on killing more African children with vaccines, mandated formula and pesticide restrictions rather than the world's food supply.

Here's a related story....

Wheat Rises in Chicago on Supply Concerns; Corn, Soybeans Fall

By Feiwen Rong

Dec. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Wheat futures gained in Chicago on expectations demand is increasing at a time of shrinking global stockpiles. Corn and soybeans declined as recent advances may have been overdone.

We can only hope that corn and soy stabilize.

Full Article

I've seen record drought this year and chemtrails all summer long. Something I haven't seen before in my forty years.

Something stands out in this article:
www.rense.com...

The people who are controlling the weather are more interested in destroying crops for geopolitical purposes (weaponized weather modification) and for economic purposes than for "benefiting farmers." If you buy agricultural commodities futures (rights to buy farm products in the future at a given price) and then destroy this crop around the world using CWM to raise the price (supply and demand) you really "make a killing" in every sense of the word.

the.honoluluadvertiser.com...
Wheat futures contracts for March delivery surged above $10.09 per bushel in trading in Chicago, before closing at $9.66 — about double the price of a year ago.

Add it all up. Somebody is making a killing off of chemtrails at our expense.

reply to post by darkbluesky


spot on, it's Global Warming, don't look at soil depletion from decades of overfertilisation, ignore monoculture and industrialised agricultural practice, once universally hailed as progress, forget about their mistakes in the past and embrace solutions they cooked up a long time ago, read to increase suffering and misery at a moment's notice, if political will and economic interests demand it. there's a profit to make, after all, from biofuel, from increased food prices, from the air tax (aka. Kyoto...) and last but not least, from cleaning up all the mess when it's done.

see also: www.abovetopsecret.com...

not to mention that the problems are far more subtle than a simple shortage, essential mineral content has declined all over the board, because of ignorance and overproduction, Nitorgen, Phosphorus and potassium (K) are replaced, the rest is ignored, because people simply don't think along these lines.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

last but not least, fertiliser is derived mostly from fossil fuels, which is continuously being overlooked by GW'ers.

www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html

(please copy and paste, i don't want to burn the link)

Corn is certainly a staple, but it's in literally everything because the US has subsidized it for so long. High fructose corn syrup, etc. It's even used to raise cattle, so in an indirect way, it's even in our meat! Monocropping is a dangerous game, because when we rely so heavily on a single crop, it's easy to get into a lot of trouble. A bad season or an infection can really hurt a lot of people. Monocropping = bad!

Additionally, we rely heavily on petroleum to harvest our crops. As petroleum goes up, so must the cost of the corn because the farmers have to at least make a marginal profit. It's costing more to produce!

In all honesty, I think the problem has less to do with ethanol production than you think. Brazil makes their ethanol out of sugar cane, so there are alternatives to using corn if we find that ethanol production is causing hunger. However, we have such vast corn surpluses it's disgusting.

In all honesty, I think the problem has less to do with ethanol production than you think. Brazil makes their ethanol out of sugar cane, so there are alternatives to using corn if we find that ethanol production is causing hunger. However, we have such vast corn surpluses it's disgusting.

different crops are not the issue, it's land use. more profitable crops will always displace the rest, thereby leading to shortages among food crops and feedstock, which is what we are currently seeing.

GW's 'solutions' bring on the problems, leading to a need for more ' solutions'. let's hope this vicious circle will be broken soon enough to avoid widespread famine.

[edit on 19.12.2007 by Long Lance]

I definitely agree that we are running out of space to make food. It makes one wonder how close we are getting, with 6 billion people, to reaching the carrying capacity of our planet.