Good heavens. It's all linked to oil -- now all the food is being diverted to the biofuels "industry" so now we can't eat it, we drive it. I read (and now I am not saying it is true, just what I read) that ONE tankful of ethanol in an SUV is the equivalent of an African's maize supply for a year. Considering that they are starving over there, it might not be a meaningful statement. But still. Does ANYONE ANYONE ANYONE in this pathetic body of "leaders" we have ever put two and two together?
Or have they. And two plus two plus two plus two plus two (to infinity and beyond) makes a lot of money.
And haven't I heard that ethanol is horrible for engines?
Do I honestly have time to research an upcoming food shortage/crisis? I guess, to be honest, I have been thinking about it, because of my belief that the food is poison. I would be more than happy to live on whatever I could find locally -- in fact, it would be a great incentive to do so if supermarkets were no longer stocked with ... food! But the world is not comprised of just me (really, I do know that) and while I'm not big on listening to the media, the word shortage always puts me on high alert.
According to a United Nations report, there has been a 60 percent increase in the price of corn and feedstock over the past two years -- which can be directly traced to the increased demand on corn and soybeans made by the biofuels industry. The U.S. has diverted millions of pounds of corn and soybean crops to the industry, creating a market that makes fuel crops more profitable than food crops. (Hey, hey, we're the Red White and Blue, give us a reason so we can screw you.)
Because of the competition between the agriculture and the new biofuels industries, costs have been driven up by double digits, generating food riots around the world.
Rice farmers in Thailand are staying awake in shifts at night to guard their fields from thieves. In Peru, shortages of wheat flour are prompting the military to make bread with potato flour, a native crop.
The U.S. produces 45% of the world biofuels (Brazil is a close second at 42%). As a world leader in food exports, grain in particular, the U.S. has altered world grain markets by diverting grain into fuel production -- creating a shortage, generating price increases and making food staples too expensive for much of the world's poor to afford.
FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.
So far, Americans are mostly bystanders in this game, content to grumble at the gas pump and complain in the grocery aisles. But ... like the rest of our woes, this situation is not sustainable, and according to a lot of what I've been reading, we are a lot more vulnerable than we think.
Living in the "breadbasket of the world" makes it hard to imagine that food could ever become scarce in this country. But food security has been pushed aside by the War On TERROR, and continues to lag behind our awareness, despite their being linked together.
Remember the "freegans?" We throw out SO much food as a country. How many farmers have been paid over the decades to NOT farm? NOT milk their cows? The government has always kept a steady hand in controlling our food sources and it's really not a big surprise they're screwing it up.
The surge in food prices has ended 30 years in which food was cheap (and crap) farming was subsidized in rich countries and international food markets were wildly distorted.
So now, the era of cheap food is over. For me personally, it's been over for a long time. (Just ask my husband about our astronomical food bills!) But as I've told him time and again -- we may be paying a lot for healthy food, but we're not paying a penny on healthcare bills or medicines to keep us "healthy."
It's just a sign of the times ... those times being a world in major crisis already with most people in denial (myself included, though I try not to be.) And maybe it's not so much denial as just not realizing what is going on.
Really, all of the issues we have laying on the table today are a direct result of corporate greed and a government comprised of corporate greedsters. What would seem so simple as if more food needs to be grown, then the farmers should grow it. But ... Monsanto -- the producer of genetically modified seeds has infiltrated the industry and plundered it with lawsuits and "seed police."
There is really only one bottom line -- one I've known for some time. We need to feed ourselves. We need to find a way to provide our families with pure, healthy food and it's really the opposite of what America has become today: Which is addicted to convenience so we can do more ... more whatever, but NOT cooking and shopping. Which are no fun, I am with you there, but it's necessary.
And you have to even be leery of food you buy at health food markets that have been purchased by corporations and marked organic. Because I bit into a piece of "organic" celery the other day and it was disgusting. If you want to know what pesticides taste like, then eat organic for a few years, for when you bite into a clearly non-organic vegetable it is awful.
I was on a big boat in Greece, going from Mykonos to Santorini. The seas were rough and so my friend Leslie and I decided to sit out in the seats on the bow of the boat to get the fresh air. It was cold and we were huddled up next to each other, the sea spray all around us, when all of a sudden I looked up and saw a wave coming over the front of the boat. It was a wall of water, probably 20 feet above us, and it was coming. I remember holding up my hand as though I could stop it, and then seeing Leslie's face as it registered what I was doing.
And then it hit us. Cold, cold, cold, hard, brutally hard, a slap to the face, an insult to our persons, leaving us cold, wet and bedraggled.
The silent tsunami.
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