why is no one covering this? it's effecting everyone. In March and April, mass hunger spawned violent rioting in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique, Senegal, and Haiti. Food inflation in the U.S. has reached a level not seen in decades, with food staples like milk rising 17 percent over the last year; rice, pasta, and bread rising over 12 percent; and eggs increasing by 25 percent.


As job losses mount in the current recession, an unprecedented 28 million Americans are expected to receive food stamps to survive this year.

6/23/2008 8:06:10 PM

because using up food on biofuels and thus saving the environment are more important than people in africa.

6/23/2008 8:18:20 PM

don't you see what's happening. people are fleeing Africa in the multitudes. Indonesian countries aren't eating. Westernized greed really has a lot to do with this. The planet is being assraped basically. unless we globalise we're fucked. we have to Unify the World into 1.

6/23/2008 8:23:15 PM

Because America's "farmers are a concentrated, highly organized and well-funded interest group" and the starving bottom billion, as well as the other 300 million American non-farmers, are too disorganized and disinterested to understand why this is happening to them.

6/23/2008 10:27:04 PM

Quote :

"unless we globalise we're fucked. we have to Unify the World into 1. "

Really? I would think that it would make it worse.

6/24/2008 12:18:44 AM

the gov-ment is subsidizing corn ethanol, thus raising food prices for no reason because corn ethanol is the most inefficient way to make bio fuel in the world

6/24/2008 1:58:14 AM

Well shit, poor 3rd-world farmers spent most of this decade bitching about artificially low food prices due to agribusiness subsidies in the US and EU. Now everybody else in the 3rd world is bitching about higher food prices.

Make up your minds, you stupid poor people.

6/24/2008 2:16:17 AM

Quote :

"the gov-ment is subsidizing corn ethanol, thus raising food prices for no reason because corn ethanol is the most inefficient way to make bio fuel in the world "

this is true. i'm not sure why Obama recently hinted towards its support.

6/24/2008 9:16:53 AM

instead of blaming ethanol, why don't we blame our linear diet. There is no reason for a corn product to be in every processed item we eat. We need to remove much of the corn from our diet and go back to a real diet.

6/24/2008 9:21:54 AM

yeah, ethanol isn't whats causing this (it may be a small percent, but this has been a problem in the making for a lot longer than ethanol has been the new thing)

6/24/2008 9:37:37 AM

bullshit ethanol has nothing to do with this...

World corn production - http://www.grains.org/page.ww?section=Barley%2C+Corn+%26+Sorghum&name=Corn
- The US produced 44% of the world's corn in 2005/6
- The US represented 68% of corn exports worldwide

(these numbers are a lot higher than I thought)

According to http://www.corn.org (probably owned and operated by the oil lobby


info from http://www.corn.org/foodseed.htm

In crop year 1996, we used (in millions of bushels of corn) the following:
High fructose corn syrup - 492, 28%
Glucose - 233, 19%
Starch - 238, 14%
Fuel - 429, 25%
Beverage - 130, 8%
Cereals - 172, 10%

In crop year 2006, we used (in millions of bushels of corn) the following:

High fructose corn syrup - 537, 15%
Glucose - 227, 6%
Starch - 285, 8%
Fuel Alochol - 2,150, 61%
Beverage Alcohol - 135, 4%
Cereals - 191, 5%

Between 1996 and 2006, total corn produce went up by 1,831,000,000 bushels, an increase of 35%

Between 1996 and 2006, the total share of corn to be used in fuel went up by 1,721,000,000 bushels, an increase of 429%

Essentially, in 10 years, while population has only gone up, we have produced no additional corn for food, thus creating a higher demand for corn, while taking all of the additional corn we are growing and converting it to fuel. If the stats were normalized and corn used in other areas had gone up by similar amounts, I'd say ethanol has nothing to do with this. But the stats tell otherwise.

Quote :

"yeah, ethanol isn't whats causing this (it may be a small percent, but this has been a problem in the making for a lot longer than ethanol has been the new thing"

By "small percent" I think he meant 429%

[Edited on June 24, 2008 at 9:48 AM. Reason : .]

6/24/2008 9:45:44 AM

you people allergic to stats or something?

6/24/2008 10:52:58 AM

Quote :

"Essentially, in 10 years, while population has only gone up, we have produced no additional corn for food, thus creating a higher demand for corn, while taking all of the additional corn we are growing and converting it to fuel. If the stats were normalized and corn used in other areas had gone up by similar amounts, I'd say ethanol has nothing to do with this. But the stats tell otherwise. "

you miss the point I am making. Corn should not be the base item in our diets. Ethanol has only exacerbated this problem.

6/24/2008 10:58:59 AM

why not? That's what it's for. Fuel is not.

[Edited on June 24, 2008 at 11:04 AM. Reason : .]

6/24/2008 11:04:42 AM

As the main component of the majority of our diet. No.

One bad year for corn equals massive wide scale food shortages.

For food safety concerns and health, it is necessary to have a wide food balance.

6/24/2008 11:14:52 AM

how is this a crisis...this is like the best thing that could happen for america all things considered

6/24/2008 11:18:00 AM

There is more to the world than just america. Also, what affects the world inevitably comes back and affects america.

6/24/2008 11:26:11 AM

Quote :

"For food safety concerns and health, it is necessary to have a wide food balance."

preferable, not necessary.

However, methinks that significant crop diversification won't scale well, and would likely make the cost of food go up even more than it is now.

For food safety concerns and health, it is necessary to use arable land for contributing to the food supply, not the fuel supply.

6/24/2008 11:47:20 AM

^ couldn't have been said better.


We really need to look into what the Brazilians are doing if we are to go the way of biofuels.

6/24/2008 1:26:12 PM

Corn as the major staple for everything we eat is a newer invention of the past 20 or so years. Before that the feedstock for livestock was not solely corn based and the filler items in food was not corn.

We only have ourselves to blame for becoming so reliant upon one commodity.

6/24/2008 1:54:06 PM

Feed the kids the corn and rice, B

I dont need food I just need that primo quality VAG

6/24/2008 2:00:45 PM

.

[Edited on June 24, 2008 at 3:41 PM. Reason : aha, nm, wans't A718]

6/24/2008 3:39:29 PM

We only have ourselves to blame for becoming so reliant upon one commodity. God damn fat!

6/24/2008 4:20:46 PM

Quote :

"By "small percent" I think he meant 429%"

i didn't realize that ethanol was such a large percentage of corn, but ethanol is not whats causing the price of rice and flour to rise

6/24/2008 4:23:32 PM

Quote :

"We really need to look into what the Brazilians are doing if we are to go the way of biofuels. "

just getting rid of the tariff on sugar cane would go a long way.

Quote :

"but ethanol is not whats causing the price of rice and flour to rise"

the fact that many farmers in the US are switching from whatever they grew before to corn is a big part of overall increases.

6/24/2008 4:30:28 PM

Quote :

"the fact that many farmers in the US are switching from whatever they grew before to corn is a big part of overall increases. "

corn and rice are grown in completely different types of land. Also, the reason for the cost in flour is not the increase in corn production, but the increase in cost of transportation.

6/24/2008 4:38:39 PM

^I realize that (in the specific case of rice/corn), but the rush to grow corn b/c of the artifically inflated prices is increasing prices of other US grown products.

Quote :

"driving up the cost of producing dairy products and meat, and causing farmers to plant so much corn as to crowd out other crops. The results are working their way through the marketplace, in this view, with overall consumer grocery costs up roughly 5 percent in a year and feed costs up more than 20 percent. "

Quote :

"the cost of barley malt has soared 88 percent this year."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/business/18food.html

[Edited on June 24, 2008 at 4:57 PM. Reason : .]

6/24/2008 4:57:40 PM

I know my parent's farm has recently come out of farm bank and they have leased it off for production of crops.

A lot of farmers are shifting their unused lands into usage; because the cost of all comodities is up now, not just corn.

6/24/2008 5:02:57 PM

Part of the reason we see corn-based sweeteners (high-fructose corn syrup) in most everything nowadays is due to the relative price of sugar, which is artificially high thanks to strict import quotas. While the aim of the quotas was to "protect" our sugar industry, quotas have had the ill side effect of leading less-healthful sugar substitutes to be used in place of sugar. All such trade barriers have huge adverse side-effects that are far too often ignored by politicians and the voting public.

[Edited on June 24, 2008 at 8:00 PM. Reason : .]

6/24/2008 7:59:17 PM

^ exactly. Free trade... the market will solve a lot of our problems.

6/24/2008 9:42:47 PM

People have gotten used to cheap food partially because nobody was really making money on grain. For a long time corn around here was almost a break-even crop used in a rotation. Corn as a carbohydrate source and soybean meal as a protein source have been the basis of commercial livestock feed in the US for a very long time, and as developing countries eat more meat and switch to better feeds, it has driven up the demand for corn and soybeans in other countries. Fuel is up, fertilizer is ridiculous, so commodity prices are too. Maybe someone here has, but I haven't gotten a clear answer as to why fertilizer has risen so drastically, aside from the fact that a lot of it is petroleum based. Chicken feed has shot up in the past few months, and fertilizer for my corn and tobacco was very expensive this year. I'm using the corn for silage to feed my cows with the excess to be snapped for deer corn to sell, but if the price keeps going up I'll be tempted to sell it for grain and buy hay with the money. High egg prices have helped my pullet sales, though. It is becoming more cost effective to keep your own chickens now, especially if you can let them forage and don't have to use a lot of feed.

6/24/2008 10:25:56 PM

all i know is dow just upped their prices another 25 percent according to something i read the other day

6/24/2008 10:39:02 PM

1. fuck their "food crisis." these countries have governments, let their own government take care of them. And most of these governments have plenty of money to help their own citizens. The U.S. should stay out of their business.

2.) I don't want to hear a damn thing about unemployment, etc in the U.S. Thousands of illegal immigrants have come and will enter this country and find jobs, and earn enough money to support themselves, a family, and still send some back to Mexico. So fuck those in "unemployment" programs (Except for legitimate situations), there's plenty of jobs out there. If there weren't jobs, then why in the hell do we have an influx of illegals each year?

6/25/2008 6:15:48 AM