There is no doubt whatsoever that rising food costs are hurting people all over the world. More than half of the world's population spends 50% of their income or more on food, and the massive rise in staple prices threatens to increase famine rates drastically. It is also undoubtedly true that rising food prices are digging into the budgets of average people. For the 40-plus million Americans who are food insecure (that is, they may or may not go hungry in any given month, but they aren't sure there's going to be food) are increasingly stretched. Everyone is finding that food and energy inflation are cutting into their budget substantially.
The long hours required by industrial society also have the further "benefit" of ensuring that it is extremely difficult for those embedded in it to meet their needs outside the money economy. It is difficult (not impossible, just difficult) to feed yourself from a garden when economic policies supporting urbanization create incentives to build on every piece of land, and when one works long hours, or multiple jobs. As we see now, it is difficult even to feed your family a home cooked meal, much less grow one.
For example, in "1066: The Year of the Conquest" historian David Howarth notes that the average 11th century British serf worked one day a week to pay for his house, the land that he fed himself off of, his access to his lord's woodlot for heating fuel, and a host of other provisions, including a barrel of beer for him and his neighbor on each Saints day (and there were a lot of him). How many of us can earn our mortgage payment, our heat, and our beer on a single day's work?
As George Kent exhaustively documents in "The Political Economy of Hunger", the main beneficiaries of the Green Revolution were not, in fact, the world's poor, the supposed recipients of our help, but the food buying members of the urbanized rich world, who got increasing quantities of cheap meat and food products. This study was backed up by a 1986 World Bank study that concluded that increased food production in itself does not reduce hunger, and that the gains of the Green Revolution went overwhelming to the Global North. What these increases in product do, however, is reduce food prices paid to farmers, thus meaning fewer people can make their living successfully in agriculture. It does create surpluses to dump on markets, thus increasing market volatility, and it does create incentives to turn farmland into urban land, and to increase the size of cities and their suburbs.
Mark Rosegrant, a senior researcher at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and co-author of the study, said the impact of eating more meat was felt on the cost of maize, which was used as livestock feed, rather than on the prices of wheat and rice, the main staples in most developing countries. But in Sub-Saharan countries, where maize is a staple, lower meat consumption could reduce the number of malnourished children younger than five by a million by 2030. In countries outside of Africa, the effect on the number of hungry children was not as great, said Rosegrant.
Authors, Delia Grace and John McDermott, warned that the intensification of livestock production in many developing countries was focused on increasing food production and making more money, with little regard for the potential effects on human health. Animals transmit about 61 percent of all human pathogens and 75 percent of new human pathogens, according to the ILRI. The resulting illnesses are called zoonotic diseases, such as avian influenza and the Nipah virus infection, which causes inflammation of the brain and respiratory ailments. Livestock diseases could not only endanger food security in poor countries, where some 700 million people keep farm animals and up to 40 percent of household income depends on them, but also threaten human health when viruses spread from their animal hosts to human beings. “I am not suggesting people in developing countries should give up on meat - I am all for balanced diets and sourcing minerals, such as zinc, from meat naturally,” said McDermott. “What we want to highlight is the need to manage the risks.”
Rather than focusing on reducing meat consumption, the IFPRI paper suggested that developing countries ensure good economic growth. This would provide incomes that allowed their people to access food and invest in agricultural and infrastructure development, such as irrigation, domestic water supply, good roads, communications, and effective markets, resulting in improved food security. Eating less meat could help, Rosegrant said, and diversifying diets to include vegetables and fruits would have additional health benefits.
Producing food and energy side-by-side may offer one of the best formulas for boosting countries' food and energy security. The study, "Making Integrated Food-Energy Systems (IFES) Work for People and Climate - An Overview", draws on specific examples from Africa, Asia and Latin America as well as from some developed countries to show how constraints to successfully integrating production of food and energy crops can be overcome. "For example, poor farmers can use leftovers from rice crops to produce bioenergy, or in an agroforestry system can use debris of trees used to grow crops like fruits, coconuts or coffee beans for cooking," he explained, noting that other types of food and energy systems use by-products from livestock for biogas production.
If we truly consider world hunger to be an abomination, and not merely an investment opportunity, big changes need to be made and that means the establishment of socialism.
Showing posts with label food prices. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food prices. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Saturday, July 19, 2008
The crazy market system
Wheat , maize and rice prices rocket and people go hungry but in the Indian state of West Bengal farmers have been dumping their potato crop on roads in protest against poor prices.
Farmers say they are selling at a loss because a bumper crop and lack of storage facilities has led to a dramatic fall in prices.They say a bumper potato crop has led to a huge surplus of more than 15,000 metric tones and there's not enough cold storage facilities in the state to preserve it for off-season sale when prices are better.
The price of potatoes has fallen across West Bengal this month by almost half - to around four to five rupees (12 US cents) a kilogram.The farmers say they get only half that much - the rest is pocketed by middlemen who the government has so far failed to control .With such low income, the farmers cannot even hope to recover their costs.
People go hungry in Capitalism when food is available .
Saturday, July 05, 2008
feeding the world
President Bush in an interactive business session had argued that while prosperity in countries like India is good, it triggers increased demand for better nutrition, which in turn leads to higher food prices.The comments came 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 is among the causes of the current global food crisis.
The Truth
Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank reportThe figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil. Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush. The report confirms a British finding that t the rush to develop biofuels has played a "significant" role in the dramatic rise in global food prices. And an estimates their impact as 20-30% rise .
"Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises," said Robert Bailey, policy adviser at Oxfam.Production of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.
"It is clear that some biofuels have huge impacts on food prices," said Dr David King, the government's former chief scientific adviser.
However , the Indian apologists for capitalism should not feel too smug .
More than 1,300,000 tonnes of food grain rotted in storage stock-piles over the last decade in India according to a recent report .
"This amount of food grain could have fed over 10 million people in a year," said activist Dev Ashish Bhattacharya.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
The REAL price of food
About 450,000 Cambodian students will become the latest victims of soaring global food prices. But by the end of the month, they will no longer get free breakfast from the U.N. World Food Program. Five local suppliers have defaulted on contracts to provide rice because they can get a higher price elsewhere, program officials say.
In Burundi, Kenya and Zambia, hundreds of thousands of people face cuts in food rations after June.
In Iraq, 500,000 recipients will likely lose food aid.
In Yemen, it's 320,000 households, including children and the sick.
Mercy Corps will likely distribute 20 percent less food to Iraqi refugees in Syria and serve 12 percent fewer Colombian families fleeing violence in the countryside.
World Vision may stop helping 1.5 million people — nearly a quarter of the number it serves — because of rising food prices . At least a third are children.
In Burundi, Kenya and Zambia, hundreds of thousands of people face cuts in food rations after June.
In Iraq, 500,000 recipients will likely lose food aid.
In Yemen, it's 320,000 households, including children and the sick.
Mercy Corps will likely distribute 20 percent less food to Iraqi refugees in Syria and serve 12 percent fewer Colombian families fleeing violence in the countryside.
World Vision may stop helping 1.5 million people — nearly a quarter of the number it serves — because of rising food prices . At least a third are children.
Monday, May 19, 2008
1st World Wealth , 3rd World Lifestyle
Here in Kerala , South India , i read in the Times
"Soaring food prices have led to a growing number of middle-class New Yorkers joining an unusual organisation that “dumpster dives” in rubbish bins for food.
The trash tours form part of a growing movement called “Freegans”, which is rapidly increasing in popularity as New Yorkers find it harder and harder to make ends meet.
Freegans – a name derived from the words “free” and “vegan” – sift through garbage cans and bin bags in the evenings looking to find edible food and discarded items such as shelving or kitchen appliances that can be reused. ..
..."Harvard University estimated last year that Middle America was suffering its worst financial hardship since the 1950s as families were forced to struggle with rising food and fuel costs, tightening credit conditions, sliding residential property prices and soaring healthcare premiums. "
"Soaring food prices have led to a growing number of middle-class New Yorkers joining an unusual organisation that “dumpster dives” in rubbish bins for food.
The trash tours form part of a growing movement called “Freegans”, which is rapidly increasing in popularity as New Yorkers find it harder and harder to make ends meet.
Freegans – a name derived from the words “free” and “vegan” – sift through garbage cans and bin bags in the evenings looking to find edible food and discarded items such as shelving or kitchen appliances that can be reused. ..
..."Harvard University estimated last year that Middle America was suffering its worst financial hardship since the 1950s as families were forced to struggle with rising food and fuel costs, tightening credit conditions, sliding residential property prices and soaring healthcare premiums. "
Monday, April 28, 2008
can't pay , can't eat
GRAIN , an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people's control over genetic resources and local knowledge reports on the food price crisis .
Farmers across the world produced a record 2.3 billion tons of grain in 2007, up 4% on the previous year. Since 1961 the world’s cereal output has tripled, while the population has doubled. Stocks are at their lowest level in 30 years, it’s true,but the bottom line is that there is enough food produced in the world to feed the population. The problem is that it doesn’t get to all of those who need it. Less than half of the world’s grain production is directly eaten by people. Most goes into animal feed and, increasingly, biofuels – massive inflexible industrial chains.
The price of wheat has gone up by 130% over the last year. Rice has doubled in price in Asia in the first three months of 2008 alone,and just last week it hit record highs on the Chicago futures market.For most of 2007 the spiralling cost of cooking oil, fruit and vegetables, as well as of dairy and meat, led to a fall in the consumption of these items.The UN World Food Programme estimates that recent price hikes have meant that an additional 100 million people can no longer afford to eat adequately
We have allowed food to be transformed from something that nourishes people and provides them with secure livelihoods into a commodity for speculation and bargaining. The perverse logic of this system has come to a head. Today it is staring us in the face that this system puts the profits of investors before the food needs of people.
With wheat, export bans or restrictions in Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and Argentina mean that a third of the global market has now been closed off. The situation with rice is even worse: China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, India and Cambodia have banned or severely restricted exports, leaving just a few sources of export supply, mainly Thailand and the US. Countries like Bangladesh can’t buy the rice they need now because the prices are so high. For years the World Bank and the IMF have told countries that a liberalised market would provide the most efficient system for producing and distributing food, yet today the world’s poorest countries are forced into an intense bidding war against speculators and traders, who are having a field day. Hedge funds and other sources of hot money are pouring billions of dollars into commodities to escape sliding stock markets and the credit crunch, putting food stocks further out of poor people’s reach. According to some estimates, investment funds now control 50–60% of the wheat traded on the world’s biggest commodity markets. One firm calculates that the amount of speculative money in commodities futures – markets where investors do not buy or sell a physical commodity, like rice or wheat, but merely bet on price movements – has ballooned from US$5 billion in 2000 to US$175 billion to 2007.
The truth about who profits and who loses from our global food system has never been more obvious. Take the most basic element of food production: soil. The industrial food system is a chemical-fertiliser junkie. It needs more and more of the stuff just to keep alive, eroding soils and their potential to support crop yields in the process. In the current context of tight food supplies, the small clique of corporations that control the world’s fertiliser market can charge what they want – and that’s exactly what they are doing. Profits at Cargill’s Mosaic Corporation, which controls much of the world’s potash and phosphate supply, more than doubled last year. The world’s largest potash producer, Canada’s Potash Corp, made more than US$1 billion in profit, up more than 70% from 2006. Panicking now about future supplies, governments are becoming desperate to boost their harvests, giving these corporations additional leverage. In April 2008, the joint offshore trading arm for Mosaic and Potash hiked the price of its potash by 40% for buyers from Southeast Asia and by 85% for those from Latin American. India had to pay 130% more than last year, and China 227% more.
While big money is being made from fertilisers, it is just a sideline for Cargill. Its biggest profits come from global trading in agricultural commodities, which, together with a few other big traders, it pretty much monopolises. On 14 April 2008, Cargill announced that its profits from commodity trading for the first quarter of 2008 were 86% higher than the same period in 2007. “Demand for food in developing economies and for energy worldwide is boosting demand for agricultural goods, at the same time that investment monies have streamed into commodity markets,” said Greg Page, Cargill’s chairman and chief executive officer. “Prices are setting new highs and markets are extraordinarily volatile. In this environment, Cargill’s team has done an exceptional job measuring and assessing price risk, and managing the large volume of grains, oilseeds and other commodities moving through our supply chains for customers globally.”
Indeed, all of the big grain traders are making record profits. Bunge, another big food trader, saw its profits of the last fiscal quarter of 2007 increase by US$245 million, or 77%, compared with the same period of the previous year. The 2007 profits registered by ADM, the second largest grain trader in the world, rose by 65% to a record US$2.2 billion. Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand Foods, a major player in Asia, is forecasting revenue growth of 237% this year.
The world’s big food processors, some of which are commodity traders themselves, are also cashing in. Nestlé’s global sales grew 7% last year. “We saw this coming, so we hedged by forward-buying raw materials”, says François-Xavier Perroud, Nestlé’s spokesman. UK supermarket Tesco reports profits up 12.3% from last year, a record rise. Other major retailers, such as France’s Carrefour and the US’s Wal-Mart, say that food sales are the main factor sustaining their profit increases. Wal-Mart’s Mexican division, Wal-Mex, which handles a third of overall food sales in Mexico, reported an 11% increase in profits for the first quarter of 2008.(At the same time Mexicans are demonstrating in the streets because they can no longer afford to make tortillas)
It seems that nearly every corporate player in the global food chain is making a killing from the food crisis. The seed and agrochemical companies are doing well too. Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, reported a 44% increase in overall profits in 2007. DuPont, the second-largest, said that its 2007 profits from seeds increased by 19%, while Syngenta, the top pesticide manufacturer and third-largest company for seeds, saw profits rise 28% in the first quarter of 2008.
Such record profits have nothing to do with any new value that these corporations are producing and they are not one-off windfalls from a sudden shift in supply and demand. Instead, they are a reflection of the extreme power that these middlemen have accrued through the globalisation of the food system. Intimately involved with the shaping of the trade rules that govern today’s food system and tightly in control of markets and the ever more complex financial systems through which global trade operates, these companies are in perfect position to turn food scarcity into immense profits. People have to eat, whatever the cost.
Farmers across the world produced a record 2.3 billion tons of grain in 2007, up 4% on the previous year. Since 1961 the world’s cereal output has tripled, while the population has doubled. Stocks are at their lowest level in 30 years, it’s true,but the bottom line is that there is enough food produced in the world to feed the population. The problem is that it doesn’t get to all of those who need it. Less than half of the world’s grain production is directly eaten by people. Most goes into animal feed and, increasingly, biofuels – massive inflexible industrial chains.
The price of wheat has gone up by 130% over the last year. Rice has doubled in price in Asia in the first three months of 2008 alone,and just last week it hit record highs on the Chicago futures market.For most of 2007 the spiralling cost of cooking oil, fruit and vegetables, as well as of dairy and meat, led to a fall in the consumption of these items.The UN World Food Programme estimates that recent price hikes have meant that an additional 100 million people can no longer afford to eat adequately
We have allowed food to be transformed from something that nourishes people and provides them with secure livelihoods into a commodity for speculation and bargaining. The perverse logic of this system has come to a head. Today it is staring us in the face that this system puts the profits of investors before the food needs of people.
With wheat, export bans or restrictions in Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and Argentina mean that a third of the global market has now been closed off. The situation with rice is even worse: China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, India and Cambodia have banned or severely restricted exports, leaving just a few sources of export supply, mainly Thailand and the US. Countries like Bangladesh can’t buy the rice they need now because the prices are so high. For years the World Bank and the IMF have told countries that a liberalised market would provide the most efficient system for producing and distributing food, yet today the world’s poorest countries are forced into an intense bidding war against speculators and traders, who are having a field day. Hedge funds and other sources of hot money are pouring billions of dollars into commodities to escape sliding stock markets and the credit crunch, putting food stocks further out of poor people’s reach. According to some estimates, investment funds now control 50–60% of the wheat traded on the world’s biggest commodity markets. One firm calculates that the amount of speculative money in commodities futures – markets where investors do not buy or sell a physical commodity, like rice or wheat, but merely bet on price movements – has ballooned from US$5 billion in 2000 to US$175 billion to 2007.
The truth about who profits and who loses from our global food system has never been more obvious. Take the most basic element of food production: soil. The industrial food system is a chemical-fertiliser junkie. It needs more and more of the stuff just to keep alive, eroding soils and their potential to support crop yields in the process. In the current context of tight food supplies, the small clique of corporations that control the world’s fertiliser market can charge what they want – and that’s exactly what they are doing. Profits at Cargill’s Mosaic Corporation, which controls much of the world’s potash and phosphate supply, more than doubled last year. The world’s largest potash producer, Canada’s Potash Corp, made more than US$1 billion in profit, up more than 70% from 2006. Panicking now about future supplies, governments are becoming desperate to boost their harvests, giving these corporations additional leverage. In April 2008, the joint offshore trading arm for Mosaic and Potash hiked the price of its potash by 40% for buyers from Southeast Asia and by 85% for those from Latin American. India had to pay 130% more than last year, and China 227% more.
While big money is being made from fertilisers, it is just a sideline for Cargill. Its biggest profits come from global trading in agricultural commodities, which, together with a few other big traders, it pretty much monopolises. On 14 April 2008, Cargill announced that its profits from commodity trading for the first quarter of 2008 were 86% higher than the same period in 2007. “Demand for food in developing economies and for energy worldwide is boosting demand for agricultural goods, at the same time that investment monies have streamed into commodity markets,” said Greg Page, Cargill’s chairman and chief executive officer. “Prices are setting new highs and markets are extraordinarily volatile. In this environment, Cargill’s team has done an exceptional job measuring and assessing price risk, and managing the large volume of grains, oilseeds and other commodities moving through our supply chains for customers globally.”
Indeed, all of the big grain traders are making record profits. Bunge, another big food trader, saw its profits of the last fiscal quarter of 2007 increase by US$245 million, or 77%, compared with the same period of the previous year. The 2007 profits registered by ADM, the second largest grain trader in the world, rose by 65% to a record US$2.2 billion. Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand Foods, a major player in Asia, is forecasting revenue growth of 237% this year.
The world’s big food processors, some of which are commodity traders themselves, are also cashing in. Nestlé’s global sales grew 7% last year. “We saw this coming, so we hedged by forward-buying raw materials”, says François-Xavier Perroud, Nestlé’s spokesman. UK supermarket Tesco reports profits up 12.3% from last year, a record rise. Other major retailers, such as France’s Carrefour and the US’s Wal-Mart, say that food sales are the main factor sustaining their profit increases. Wal-Mart’s Mexican division, Wal-Mex, which handles a third of overall food sales in Mexico, reported an 11% increase in profits for the first quarter of 2008.(At the same time Mexicans are demonstrating in the streets because they can no longer afford to make tortillas)
It seems that nearly every corporate player in the global food chain is making a killing from the food crisis. The seed and agrochemical companies are doing well too. Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, reported a 44% increase in overall profits in 2007. DuPont, the second-largest, said that its 2007 profits from seeds increased by 19%, while Syngenta, the top pesticide manufacturer and third-largest company for seeds, saw profits rise 28% in the first quarter of 2008.
Such record profits have nothing to do with any new value that these corporations are producing and they are not one-off windfalls from a sudden shift in supply and demand. Instead, they are a reflection of the extreme power that these middlemen have accrued through the globalisation of the food system. Intimately involved with the shaping of the trade rules that govern today’s food system and tightly in control of markets and the ever more complex financial systems through which global trade operates, these companies are in perfect position to turn food scarcity into immense profits. People have to eat, whatever the cost.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
"Business as usual is no longer a viable option,"
Yet another report concerning the growing world-wide food crisis.
A UN World Food Program report says the world produces enough food for every one, yet over 800 million people go hungry. Its authors say food is cheaper and diets are better than 40 years ago, but malnutrition and food insecurity threatens millions nonetheless.
"The unequal distribution of food and conflict over control of the world's dwindling natural resources presents a major political and social challenge to governments," said the report's authors.
Robert Watson, the former head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and chief economist at Britain's Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, said the global production of food has increased, "but not every one has benefited." Watson blamed governments and private businesses for paying more attention to growth in production than natural resources or food security.
"Continuing with current trends means the Earth's haves and have-nots splitting further apart," he said. "It would leave us facing a world nobody wants to inhabit. We have to make food more available and nutritious without degrading the land."
I think Watson really means growth of profit margins and growth of investment returns more than peoples needs concern governments and businesses .
Supachai Panitchpakdi , the head of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development said speculators on commodities futures markets were worsening the problem of high food prices, and he hoped the April 20-25 UNCTAD meeting in Ghana would address this.
"I hope that one of our sessions ... would handle this issue, how to look into the activities of commodities futures in a way that the futures market would help solve the food issue, not aggravate it," he said.
How sad it remains that the so - called experts are still totally naive about the motivation of the capitalist class that they see them as a solution and not the real problem
A UN World Food Program report says the world produces enough food for every one, yet over 800 million people go hungry. Its authors say food is cheaper and diets are better than 40 years ago, but malnutrition and food insecurity threatens millions nonetheless.
"The unequal distribution of food and conflict over control of the world's dwindling natural resources presents a major political and social challenge to governments," said the report's authors.
Robert Watson, the former head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and chief economist at Britain's Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, said the global production of food has increased, "but not every one has benefited." Watson blamed governments and private businesses for paying more attention to growth in production than natural resources or food security.
"Continuing with current trends means the Earth's haves and have-nots splitting further apart," he said. "It would leave us facing a world nobody wants to inhabit. We have to make food more available and nutritious without degrading the land."
I think Watson really means growth of profit margins and growth of investment returns more than peoples needs concern governments and businesses .
Supachai Panitchpakdi , the head of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development said speculators on commodities futures markets were worsening the problem of high food prices, and he hoped the April 20-25 UNCTAD meeting in Ghana would address this.
"I hope that one of our sessions ... would handle this issue, how to look into the activities of commodities futures in a way that the futures market would help solve the food issue, not aggravate it," he said.
How sad it remains that the so - called experts are still totally naive about the motivation of the capitalist class that they see them as a solution and not the real problem
Monday, April 07, 2008
Food - A few quotes
A new face of hunger is emerging: even where food is available on the shelves, there are now more and more people who simply cannot afford it,” said WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran.
“Resource scarcity is a long-term problem, and is likely to get worse with climate change - which will see reduced productivity, especially in countries where resources such as land, food, income, are ‘captured’ by an elite, and/or where inequalities are particularly bad,” according to social historian Diana Cammack, with the UK Overseas Development Institute.
The riots are about access to food, she points out, “where the poor have a reduced chance compared to the rich of getting to the food that is in the country … famines are often linked not simply to scarcity but to the cost of food and thus access to it”.
"Governments don't generally worry overmuch for the fate of poor people most affected by dearth - until the protests mount," said John Walton, who teaches sociology at the University of California, and is co-author of Free Trade and Food Riots.
Marc Cohen, research fellow at the US-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). “Governments have tended to provide them [urban residents] with subsidies to prevent them from becoming discontent.” Subsidies are not a sustainable solution, according to Cohen. “A case in point is the urban population in Egypt, which has enjoyed subsidies for many decades. Should subsidies be removed, things can get very violent - but subsidies are increasingly unaffordable.”
Matein Khalid, an analyst, wrote in the Dubai-based newspaper, Khaleej Times, that bread has been subsidised by the rulers of Egypt since Pharaonic times. “… food price surges are more of a threat to regime stability than Dr Zawahiri’s Al Qaeda terrorists. Bread queues turn violent, a recurrent theme in Egyptian history …”
Now we read of clashes breaking out between police and protesters in the Nile Delta textile town of Mahalla el-Kubra for the second straight day on Monday and the protesters set fire to several shops .Clashes started on Sunday when the day shift ended at a giant textile mill where the workers had planned to go on strike for higher wages and protest against high prices.
In Haiti deaths of four people in two days of rioting last week over rising food prices.
In addition to Haiti and Egypt, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Indonesia, Cote d’Ivoire, Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal have also experienced unrest in recent weeks related to soaring food and fuel prices.
Some 20 countries -- including Russia, Kazakhstan, and China -- have introduced price controls on staple items such as bread, milk, and cooking oil, while many countries have introduced export curbs.
"There has never been an acute shortage of food in India, not even during the infamous famine in Bengal in 1943 in which more than 1.5 million people are estimated to have died of starvation. The problem then - and now - is entitlement or access to food at affordable prices. " explains Paranjoy Guha Thakurta Indian economy analyst
“Resource scarcity is a long-term problem, and is likely to get worse with climate change - which will see reduced productivity, especially in countries where resources such as land, food, income, are ‘captured’ by an elite, and/or where inequalities are particularly bad,” according to social historian Diana Cammack, with the UK Overseas Development Institute.
The riots are about access to food, she points out, “where the poor have a reduced chance compared to the rich of getting to the food that is in the country … famines are often linked not simply to scarcity but to the cost of food and thus access to it”.
"Governments don't generally worry overmuch for the fate of poor people most affected by dearth - until the protests mount," said John Walton, who teaches sociology at the University of California, and is co-author of Free Trade and Food Riots.
Marc Cohen, research fellow at the US-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). “Governments have tended to provide them [urban residents] with subsidies to prevent them from becoming discontent.” Subsidies are not a sustainable solution, according to Cohen. “A case in point is the urban population in Egypt, which has enjoyed subsidies for many decades. Should subsidies be removed, things can get very violent - but subsidies are increasingly unaffordable.”
Matein Khalid, an analyst, wrote in the Dubai-based newspaper, Khaleej Times, that bread has been subsidised by the rulers of Egypt since Pharaonic times. “… food price surges are more of a threat to regime stability than Dr Zawahiri’s Al Qaeda terrorists. Bread queues turn violent, a recurrent theme in Egyptian history …”
Now we read of clashes breaking out between police and protesters in the Nile Delta textile town of Mahalla el-Kubra for the second straight day on Monday and the protesters set fire to several shops .Clashes started on Sunday when the day shift ended at a giant textile mill where the workers had planned to go on strike for higher wages and protest against high prices.
In Haiti deaths of four people in two days of rioting last week over rising food prices.
In addition to Haiti and Egypt, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Indonesia, Cote d’Ivoire, Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal have also experienced unrest in recent weeks related to soaring food and fuel prices.
Some 20 countries -- including Russia, Kazakhstan, and China -- have introduced price controls on staple items such as bread, milk, and cooking oil, while many countries have introduced export curbs.
"There has never been an acute shortage of food in India, not even during the infamous famine in Bengal in 1943 in which more than 1.5 million people are estimated to have died of starvation. The problem then - and now - is entitlement or access to food at affordable prices. " explains Paranjoy Guha Thakurta Indian economy analyst
Monday, March 31, 2008
Poor America on Stamps
The number of Americans receiving food stamps is projected to reach 28 million in the coming year, the highest level since the aid program began in the 1960s. The number of recipients, who must have near-poverty incomes to qualify for benefits averaging $100 a month per family member, has fluctuated over the years along with economic conditions, eligibility rules, enlistment drives and natural disasters but recent rises in many states appear to be resulting mainly from the economic slowdown, as well as inflation in prices of basic goods that leave more families feeling pinched , the NYT reports .
“People sign up for food stamps when they lose their jobs, or their wages go down because their hours are cut,” said director of food stamp policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who noted that 14 states saw their rolls reach record numbers by last December.
In Michigan, one in eight residents now receives food stamps. “Our caseload has more than doubled since 2000, and we’re at an all-time record level,” said spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Human Services.
From December 2006 to December 2007, more than 40 states saw recipient numbers rise, and in several — Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Nevada, North Dakota and Rhode Island — the one-year growth was 10 percent or more. In Rhode Island, the number of recipients climbed by 18 percent over the last two years, to more than 84,000 as of February, or about 8.4 percent of the population. New York - one in ten New Yorkers, 1.86 million, now receives food stamps.
The cost of feeding a family of four on a low-income budget has jumped nearly 6 percent since February 2007, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department.
"We're just going to see the purchasing power for food stamps continuing to erode, and it doesn't do anything to get commodities up on the shelves in the food banks," said Ellen Vollinger of the Food Research and Action Center
"A lot of the staple items - bread, dairy products in particular - have had a sharp increase (in price)," said Dayna Ballantyne, the Johnson County Crisis Center food bank director. "Across the board, our clients are finding they just aren't able to purchase food like they used to."
The amount of food stamp benefits a family is allowed goes up each fall based on inflation. But that increase is based on an estimate of food costs the previous June, and since last June, food costs have risen 5.2 percent, according to USDA."For our clients that do receive food stamps, the amount of food stamps allocated per household hasn't gone up with the food costs. The food stamps they receive haven't gone as far as they used to," Ballantyne said.
Low-income Oklahomans are harmed more by the nation's declining dollar as food stamps are stretched to cover increasing food prices, the state Human Services Commission was told . "Low-income families paying $4 for a gallon of milk and $2 or $3 for a loaf of bread means those food stamp benefits aren't going as far," Hendrick said. More than one of every three Oklahoma kids received food stamps for at least one month last year. More than 417,600 Oklahomans received food stamps in February , up 21 percent compared with six years ago.
About one in every six West Virginians gets food stamps, the highest level of participation in at least 30 years. 274,487 state residents received food stamps. That's up from 246,890 just five years ago, according to here . But while the number of people on the program has jumped sharply, the federal government has raised the average per-person monthly benefits over that time by just $12 to $85.Meanwhile, the cost of food is expected to jump by up to 4 percent this year,Food costs have been increasing by at least 2.4 percent each year since 2004.Added to that budget strain are record gasoline prices.
Sarah Young, a policy specialist with the Department of Health and Human Resources, says the agency is seeing more of the state's working poor applying for food stamps in order to make ends meet."Even those eligible for lower amounts are coming back onto the program because they have less to spend on food," Young said. "These are historically higher rates. I think even nationwide, we're at our highest rates."
Increased demand on food pantries and soup kitchens seem to indicate that poor families are running out of resources to buy food earlier and earlier each month
New Jersey ranks as the nation's second wealthiest state, but 20 percent of its working families -- the equivalent of 750,000 men, women and children -- don't have enough income to support themselves, according to this report . The number of low-income families in the state has climbed to 200,000, up 16 percent since 2000 .
The report describes as "low income" a family of four that earned less than $39,942 in 2005 . The Economic Policy Institute has calculated the actual cost of living in New Jersey and concluded a family of four requires an income ranging from $49,572 to $57,144 to be self-sufficient
"One in five households may have a livelihood but it is not sufficient to give them a happy and healthy life," The Rev. Bruce Davidson, director of the Lutheran Office of Governmental Ministry said
In its 2007 Nashville Living Wage Estimate, Middle Tennessee Jobs with Justice found a family of two working adults and two children needs to earn a gross minimum of $43,076 to provide for its basic needs. That figure, which amounts to two adults earning about $10.35 an hour, isn't what at least 575,000 of the 1.6 million Tennesseans employed in 2007 were able to find.
As Marxists know "In a marketplace economy, the market sets wages…," said David Penn, director of Middle Tennessee State University's Center for Business and Economic Research.
"One of the most famous phrases in the movement is a job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it," said Melissa Snarr, co-author of the study and an assistant professor of ethics and society at Vanderbilt University's divinity school."Really, what we are talking about here is whether we want work to include justice … or for lots of people who work to have to get by with something like food stamps."
Naivity at its best , really . Wages are set to ENSURE you don't have enough so that you return each week to labour once more - the reason it is described as wage-SLAVERY .
“People sign up for food stamps when they lose their jobs, or their wages go down because their hours are cut,” said director of food stamp policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who noted that 14 states saw their rolls reach record numbers by last December.
In Michigan, one in eight residents now receives food stamps. “Our caseload has more than doubled since 2000, and we’re at an all-time record level,” said spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Human Services.
From December 2006 to December 2007, more than 40 states saw recipient numbers rise, and in several — Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Nevada, North Dakota and Rhode Island — the one-year growth was 10 percent or more. In Rhode Island, the number of recipients climbed by 18 percent over the last two years, to more than 84,000 as of February, or about 8.4 percent of the population. New York - one in ten New Yorkers, 1.86 million, now receives food stamps.
The cost of feeding a family of four on a low-income budget has jumped nearly 6 percent since February 2007, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department.
"We're just going to see the purchasing power for food stamps continuing to erode, and it doesn't do anything to get commodities up on the shelves in the food banks," said Ellen Vollinger of the Food Research and Action Center
"A lot of the staple items - bread, dairy products in particular - have had a sharp increase (in price)," said Dayna Ballantyne, the Johnson County Crisis Center food bank director. "Across the board, our clients are finding they just aren't able to purchase food like they used to."
The amount of food stamp benefits a family is allowed goes up each fall based on inflation. But that increase is based on an estimate of food costs the previous June, and since last June, food costs have risen 5.2 percent, according to USDA."For our clients that do receive food stamps, the amount of food stamps allocated per household hasn't gone up with the food costs. The food stamps they receive haven't gone as far as they used to," Ballantyne said.
Low-income Oklahomans are harmed more by the nation's declining dollar as food stamps are stretched to cover increasing food prices, the state Human Services Commission was told . "Low-income families paying $4 for a gallon of milk and $2 or $3 for a loaf of bread means those food stamp benefits aren't going as far," Hendrick said. More than one of every three Oklahoma kids received food stamps for at least one month last year. More than 417,600 Oklahomans received food stamps in February , up 21 percent compared with six years ago.
About one in every six West Virginians gets food stamps, the highest level of participation in at least 30 years. 274,487 state residents received food stamps. That's up from 246,890 just five years ago, according to here . But while the number of people on the program has jumped sharply, the federal government has raised the average per-person monthly benefits over that time by just $12 to $85.Meanwhile, the cost of food is expected to jump by up to 4 percent this year,Food costs have been increasing by at least 2.4 percent each year since 2004.Added to that budget strain are record gasoline prices.
Sarah Young, a policy specialist with the Department of Health and Human Resources, says the agency is seeing more of the state's working poor applying for food stamps in order to make ends meet."Even those eligible for lower amounts are coming back onto the program because they have less to spend on food," Young said. "These are historically higher rates. I think even nationwide, we're at our highest rates."
Increased demand on food pantries and soup kitchens seem to indicate that poor families are running out of resources to buy food earlier and earlier each month
New Jersey ranks as the nation's second wealthiest state, but 20 percent of its working families -- the equivalent of 750,000 men, women and children -- don't have enough income to support themselves, according to this report . The number of low-income families in the state has climbed to 200,000, up 16 percent since 2000 .
The report describes as "low income" a family of four that earned less than $39,942 in 2005 . The Economic Policy Institute has calculated the actual cost of living in New Jersey and concluded a family of four requires an income ranging from $49,572 to $57,144 to be self-sufficient
"One in five households may have a livelihood but it is not sufficient to give them a happy and healthy life," The Rev. Bruce Davidson, director of the Lutheran Office of Governmental Ministry said
In its 2007 Nashville Living Wage Estimate, Middle Tennessee Jobs with Justice found a family of two working adults and two children needs to earn a gross minimum of $43,076 to provide for its basic needs. That figure, which amounts to two adults earning about $10.35 an hour, isn't what at least 575,000 of the 1.6 million Tennesseans employed in 2007 were able to find.
As Marxists know "In a marketplace economy, the market sets wages…," said David Penn, director of Middle Tennessee State University's Center for Business and Economic Research.
"One of the most famous phrases in the movement is a job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it," said Melissa Snarr, co-author of the study and an assistant professor of ethics and society at Vanderbilt University's divinity school."Really, what we are talking about here is whether we want work to include justice … or for lots of people who work to have to get by with something like food stamps."
Naivity at its best , really . Wages are set to ENSURE you don't have enough so that you return each week to labour once more - the reason it is described as wage-SLAVERY .
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