The bold headline on the front page of the Financial Times some two weeks ago, "US Drought Triggers World Food Crisis Alert," reported that the worst U.S. drought in fifty years was pushing agricultural commodities to record prices. The situation has only become aggravated over the past two critical weeks.
Accentuating the growing emergency, the Wall Street Journal was to inform us on August 2nd that "Drought Dries Up Cattle Market," explaining that faced with seared grazing pastures ranchers across the U.S. who can't afford to provide food and water to feed steers and heifers and are rushing to sell them while feedlots are holding back purchases because of the escalating price of feed corn.
Clearly, a disaster in the making. A disaster not only for food prices in the American market, but portending a food crisis worldwide. It is an act of nature that has unsheathed a fact of fundamental significance, but barely touched upon in either political nor civil discourse. That the United States, with its vast expanse of fertile plains reaching from sea, past the Rockies, to sea, with its efficient inland waterways transport system, with its competent and professional farming community, has become, as the world's largest grower and exporter of corn, the largest exporter of wheat and the second largest exporter of soybeans, in other words, the world's food basket. It is a realization that will vest the nation with future choices of vast import and profoundly touch upon its character.
As if to underline the dimensions of responsibility that will be vested in the U.S. in this rapidly technologically flattening world, with its burgeoning population necessitating the doubling of food production by 2050, an event took place in Cambodia that may well set the parameters of future discourse on this vital issue.
Just last month Cambodia announced it would push for the formation of a Milled Rice Exporting Association together with Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar. Cambodia's Minister of Commerce Cham Prasdih was quoted, "The five countries will be the world's food supplier -- what we could call the food basket of the world." Cambodia's Prime Minister Hu Sen would chime in, "when we form the association we would have enough power to negotiate with OPEC."
Well, clearly what is good enough for a helping of Goose and rice should be good enough for a helping of Gander and corn, or soybeans, or wheat, or meatballs. Inevitably this is the direction we are veering as the world's population grows and a planetary crisis in food
looms ahead. Not only will billions of dollars be at stake, but the very lives of millions of the planet's inhabitants.
How will we engage this responsibility? Will we join forces with other major grain producers such as Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Ukraine to form a Grain Growers Export Association (let's call it the GGEA) and pervert the market as OPEC has done with oil, whereby we would play the role that Saudi Arabia plays in OPEC, as the major and indispensable contributor to the cartel.
Will we permit the continuation of unbridled commodity speculation on our poorly supervised commodity exchanges to traders/speculators/gamblers who are free to hype the pricing of foodstuffs to levels grossly out of reach of the everyday consumer, let alone the offshore markets that have become dependent on America's harvest bounty. Just days ago the FT reported that "Trading Houses Bet Corn Price to Soar," "that traders and hedge funds are betting that corn prices will soar to never before seen levels as the worst US drought in half a century decimates the global corn crop... The number of call options that would give traders the right to buy corn at prices between $9 and $10 has risen thirteen fold in the past month."
Can we, in the future, permit the trading houses, the Bank Holding Company trading desks, and the vast plurality of gambling profiteers playing the grain markets who are neither farmers nor commercial consumers, to push prices ever higher to their own profit and benefit at the cost of consumers worldwide thereby becoming the arbiters of those who have access to food and those who do not?
These are serious issues of economic resonance, morality, and national conduct with worldwide implications. Given the devastation that this year's drought has brought about, this is a wake-up call that needs be addressed.
Follow Raymond J. Learsy on Twitter: www.twitter.com/raymondLearsy
#1: Drain out your home pool....permanently.
#2: Put water cut-offs timed and locked for 5 minute water flow in all city showers...better still, get a 20 Liter bucket
#3: Covert all front lawns to gardens or desert landscapes (Cacti etc)
#4: Make rainwater harvesting systems mandatory for ALL homes AND commercial buildings (Use siphonic drainage systems for commercial spaces etc)
#5: Convert storm drainage systems to Groundwater recharging systems
#6: Encourage and give away free slots for public pools.....and build a few inside abandoned Big Box stores like closed Circuit City and Linens and Things stores.
# Introduce "Time of Year" billing for water, just like electricity.
# CONSERVE. CONSERVE. CONSERVE
increase efficiency to account for the 10% of ethanol used in gas and the issue is solved. oh wait we are americans . its always someone else's problem. not mine
Bike riders in Houston only have a stripe of paint between them and motorized vehicles.
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2012/03/top-romney-adviser-wants-200-plus-hike.html
EconomicPolicyJournal.com: Top Romney Adviser Wants $2.00 Plus Hike in Gas Tax
"As the price of gasoline soars, top Mitt Romney adviser, Harvard economist Greg Mankiw sticks to his guns and calls for a hike in gasoline taxes. In a recent blog post, Mankiw points to a WaPo column which states:
N. Gregory Mankiw, former top economic adviser to President George W. Bush and current adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, also backs a stiff gas tax increase... In a New York Times column this year, Mr. Mankiw offered a tax overhaul that might include a gas tax “exceeding” $2 per gallon.
A significant portion of such a tax ultimately may land on oil producers, which means it cuts back on supply and exploration and, in a feedback loop, smacks the consumer right in the wallet."
We got smart, figured out how to get rid of our surpluses. Never, ever did any of our city cousins give our plight a second thought as long as food was cheap. Too bad for everyone now some smart person didn't figure out a way for us to keep a little extra food around and not drive the price into the pooper, if we had a little of that extra grain, milk,cheese, etc. stockpiled like we did in the 1980s, this drought might not cause such a drastic rise in food prices.
right?
Right!?
RIGHT?
but you may be missing some favorite foods unless you are well off - or have a way to grow your own...........but I really like the idea of being prepared!
We'll address the issue presently.
When it gets bad enough.
In time?
Who knows?
In hindsight humans will see how they have fiddled while the planet burned.
What will happen if the farmland in Mexico becomes pretty much useless, as a result of global warming. Where to you expect those people to head for a living? Food? Do you think we will welcome them with open arms?
Maybe Canada can feed us.
Maybe not.
Then what?
1. This was not a natural disaster but one we partially caused ourselves do to global warming.
2. The farming in the Midwest is not competent it is disastrously incompetent. The farming practices are causing the loss of top soil, polluting lakes and rivers with chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. These practices are unleashing gmo monster weeds and the food grown on the large industrial farms is unhealthy for human and animal consumption.
Modern agriculture is data and science based. We can prove our methods YOUR agriculture is all politics, emotion and ideology.
We (I am a farmer) have done a great deal to go in the right direction. Give us some credit rather than giving us obnoxious rants
besides which, doesn't seem like that drought tolerant corn they hyped is working out so well, now does it?
and you could attempt to prove YOUR methods but unsurprisingly you don't. monsanto just produces limited, non independent reviewed studies that they skew and make false claims.
the truth is organic/permaculture methods of agriculture produce soil that is alive and it holds more moisture. organic farmers aren't having near the troubles that farmers who use industrial, chemical techniques are suffering.
and last, it is industrial agriculture that has made this a political issue. look at the money they throw at gov't. look at how they have their lawyers write bills, get those same people appointed to positions within gov't and then pass bills they created. clarence thomas or michael taylor ring a bell?
what kind of a farmer? critters- corn-wheat- fruits and veggies or a combination of products?
http://paepard.blogspot.com/2011/06/decade-of-eu-funded-gmo-research-2001.html
Their conclusion: GMOs are as safe as nonGMO.
Let's see YOUR science (oh please link Jeffrey Smith. please please please)
Thank Monsanto for your paycheck and then live your life knowing you are part of the problem.
Good luck.
See? Mother Earth knows how to take care of herself!
Would that we did.
Oh, and the US quotas for ethanol use keep going up every year, even while gasoline use is going down thanks to the economy and fuel prices.
The US could do a lot to bring down domestic food prices if we just did away with the unthinking refining quotas for ethanol. It would also free up a lot of water for parched crops (probably too late for this year, but in the future). Further still, research - sponsored by environmentalists - suggests that ethanol production doesn't offset any carbon because it ends up driving the need for more arable land (i.e., more deforestation).
http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/monroe42.html