Friday, June 18, 2010

Price increases fuel fears of food ‘crises’

Store food now while you can. And buy seeds. This isn't a joke, this isn't a conspiracy theory, this isn't some far-fetched possibility you probably don't need to worry about. This will happen; this is happening.

What is not mentioned is the fact that, not only are more and more crops being diverted into bio-fuels, which damage your engine and actually use up more energy to produce than they actually save, but farmers, under Codex, will be paid to re-forest their fields - ie, they will plant trees instead of crops. And then when the crisis deepens, and hundreds of millions, rather than tens of millions, of people are starving to death, they'll feign confusion, or blame it on energy prices and population growth.

    Financial Times -

    Food commodity prices will increase more than previously expected in the next decade because of rising energy prices and developing countries’ rapid growth, two leading organisations said on Tuesday, worsening the outlook for global food security.

    “A return to higher global economic growth . . .  together with continuing population gains, are expected to increase demand and trade and underpin prices,” the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said in their annual agricultural outlook.

    Higher crude oil prices would add force to rising agricultural commodities prices, particularly in those regions – including Europe and the US – where energy inputs such as fertilisers were used intensively, said the report.

    For the next 10 years the FAO and OECD forecast that significant food prices, with the exception of pork, would remain above the 1996-2007 average, in both nominal and real terms – adjusted for inflation. Although prices were unlikely to surge back to the record levels of early 2008, they warned that “if history is any guide, further episodes of strong price fluctuations . . . cannot be ruled out, nor can future short-lived crises”

Read it all.

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