Earth Policy Institute

In Corrupt Global Food System, Farmland Is the New Gold and Africans the New Share-croppers

Stephen 1 Must Read, Africa, Agriculture/Food, CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, economics, Food, Global Issues and Perspectives, global warming, Health, Indigenous People, News, sustainability , , , , , , ,

$ Billions Made Speculating on Food

“Africans have become share-croppers, exporting coffee, cotton, flowers and now food while going hungry”

By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jan 13, 2011 (IPS)

Famine-hollowed farmers watch trucks loaded with grain grown on their ancestral lands heading for the nearest port, destined to fill richer bellies in foreign lands. This scene has become all too common since the 2008 food crisis.

[This is the first of a multi-part series investigating what is driving food prices higher]

Food prices are even higher now in many countries, sparking another cycle of hunger riots in the Middle East and South Asia last weekend. While bad weather gets the blame for rising prices, the instant price hikes of recent times are largely due to market speculation in a corrupt global food system.

The 2008 food crisis awoke much of the world’s investment community to the profitable reality that hungry people will do almost anything, even sell their own children, in order to eat. And with the global financial crisis, food and farmland became the “new gold” for some of the biggest investors, experts agree.

In 2010, wheat futures rose 47 percent, U.S. corn was up more than 50 percent, and soybeans rose 34 percent.

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On Wednesday, U.S.-based Cargill, the world’s largest agricultural commodities trader, announced a tripling of profits. The firm generated 1.49 billion dollars in three months between September and November 2010.

Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Bills pay a return of less than one percent. Continue reading →

Carbon Emissions Can Be Reduced 80% by 2020 – Lester Brown has a plan and he’s not crazy

Stephen CLIMATE CHANGE/GLOBAL WARMING, ECOLOGY, Energy, Food, News, sustainability , , ,

LesterBrown smlStephen Leahy interviews LESTER BROWN, founder of the Earth Policy Institute

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Oct 7 2009 (IPS)

Lester Brown says his views sometimes appear extreme – because the mainstream media largely doesn’t understand the urgency and challenges in avoiding catastrophic climate change.

The founder and president of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, he is also considered by many to be one of the world’s most influential thinkers.

“It looks like I’m a radical because the mainstream media aren’t reflecting the reality of our situation,” Brown says.

A farmer from the eastern U.S. state of New Jersey, Brown entered the U.S. Civil Service in the 1960s, becoming an expert on foreign agricultural policy before leaving to found the Worldwatch Institute in 1974.

The winner of many awards and honourary degrees, Brown is the author of 50 books. In 2001, he founded the Earth Policy Institute to provide a roadmap for achieving an environmentally sustainable economy.

His most recent book is “Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization”, the fourth and perhaps most urgent version of the Plan B series, available for download at the institutes’s website. In Plan 4.0, Brown calls for carbon emissions cuts of 80 percent by 2020.

“We cannot afford to let the planet get much hotter,” he explains simply. Continue reading →