Hoarding Nations Driving Food Costs Even Higher

At least 29 countries have sharply curbed food exports in recent months, to ensure that their own people have enough to eat, at affordable prices.

When it comes to rice, India, Vietnam, China and 11 other countries have limited or banned exports. Fifteen countries, including Pakistan and Bolivia, have capped or halted wheat exports. More than a dozen have limited corn exports. Kazakhstan has restricted exports of sunflower seeds.

The restrictions are making it harder for impoverished importing countries to afford the food they need. The export limits are forcing some of the most vulnerable people, those who rely on relief agencies, to go hungry.

"It's obvious that these export restrictions fuel the fire of price increases," said Pascal Lamy, the director general of the World Trade Organization.

And by increasing perceptions of shortages, the restrictions have led to hoarding around the world, by farmers, traders and consumers.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[Erdgeist]

Paul A. Samuelson, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and professor emeritus at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology has reassessed the advantages of free-trade, namely, that globalization has its limits; that is simplistic to assume that it is win-win. At some point he pointed out that real losses from trade could exceed the benefits affecting, not just local industries but doing serious damage to the economy as a whole. And so here we are folks.

[Mike169]

Kazakhstan has restricted exports of sunflower seeds.

This will kill major league baseball!

[HotATL]

Everytime I look there seem to be bad news. Are we going into a depression? If we are, do our President know, do congress?

[Sundialsvc4]

Is it really that they are "hoarding food?"

Or could it be that they will not sell to the United States?

Let's cut to the chase here ... The United States of America has re-tooled itself into the most dangerous threat the rest of the world has ever known. They're violent, they're flat broke, and they've got thousands of nuclear weapons. And they're, of course, comparatively big.

Every scrap of the US's power rests upon the strange position of The Dollar, as "the only currency the rest of the world can buy or sell oil with." (How did that happen? Ask Henry Kissinger. He's still here.) That position is about to topple, and the US will unleash World War III to stop it. Yes, they will.

The world community is creating its counter-move... It's not a direct military response. There are no GPS coordinates to bomb.

[Blutus]

The United States of America has re-tooled itself into the most dangerous threat the rest of the world has ever known

Has 'ever' known? Read a lot of history do you?

[Sundialsvc4]

Oh, sure, Blutus, I know as well as you do that history is full of a pantheon of rather outrageous creeps.

But none of them had tens of thousands of nuclear weapons... and the sociopathic willingness to use them that would embody a radioactive version of Hannibal Lector. No, they didn't have that.

Furthermore, the bad rogues were exactly that: bad rogues. And they did not pretend to be otherwise. Emperor Caligula, for example.

They didn't represent countries that, a mere fifty years ago, executed Japanese colonels for the war-crime of "waterboarding," and forty-five years later waterboarded people in secret prisons ... while the Legislatures who knew of and authorized every bit of this treatment wrung their hands in "despair" and whined of their helplessness.

They were what they said they were: a**holes with swords.

Swords. Not nukes and "bad memories."

[VivaZapata]

We are suckers for the corporations. We buy all that useless junk. Our taxes provide scant services and huge amounts are used to support a misused military which functions as a police force to keep radicals away from the corporations dirty dealings in foreign lands. Screw them back by organizing consumer unions and create purchasing based on a combination of need and fair labor practices. watch them red bait just for the fun of it.

[dadw5boys]

The more Free Trade the fewer people eat !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Strange huh?

[thegreatgiginthesky]

Bring on the first global depression.

[axt113]

second, the great depression was WW as well

[RebelPatriot]

and engineered as well.

just like most of the wars.

by the elite.

[darthdarcy]

We are heading for a total collapse and world wide instability if these trends continue..that's what deregulation and so called free trade get us...wars, riots, financial collapse, energy shortages..a total mess..

[KillTheMessenger]

Wait, you mean OUR RICE is growing on THEIR SOIL? Is that similar to our oil is under their soil?

I don't get it. A free market means that other people do not have to sell their goods to us or anyone else at the price WE chose to pay. Isn't that a good thing? I mean isn't it a good thing for other countries to have the same freedoms we claim for ourselves?

[axt113]

Not from the neocon american point of view,