World food prices reached their highest level ever recorded in January and are set to keep rising for months, the UN food agency said on Thursday, warning that the hardest-hit countries could face turmoil.
Rising food prices have been cited among the driving forces behind recent popular revolts in north Africa, including the uprising in Egypt and the toppling of Tunisia’s long-time president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
No mention of the push for ”sustainable” crops in places like Africa.
Boy!
Nothing pushes up prices faster and more than that!
Look at what it did to the price and availability of cocoa, and chocolate.
Also no mention of the fact that China is being invited into African dictatorships to take over crop lands and take the harvests home!
That’s got to cause pressure on the indigenous folks who work the land but don’t get the food.
Then Muslim kleptocrats like to live very large.
They have traditionally gotten away with enriching themselves while blaming Israel/the USA for all their people’s problems.
That bird has flown.
The internet and social networks prove how they live off the people’s sweat and toil.
Yet, as prices go up, these ”leaders” don’t want to spend a larger share of their wealth simply to feed their filthy masses.
They depended on their scapegoats (Israel/USA) to always be the people’s targets.
Funny how commie leaders used to say that the only reason some of their people were starving was that their various countries’ were not practicing communism properly.
I just saw that imam O’Reilley had on yesterday saying the exact same thing about Sharia!
If only HE were in charge!
Yeah, right.
That would fix everything.
Not.
Nan, for decades Castro’s regime blamed America and it’s embargo for his people living in abject poverty. Come to find out Castro had numerous front companies around the world where he hid the billions stolen from his people.
China’s insatiable demand for…everything is puting a strain on the entire world. China has driven up the cost of oil, concrete, metal, and other materials used for homebuilding and construction. Now they are going after the food supply. I tell people this and they give me a blank stare. It’s as if they have no idea China even exists.
China secured the right to grow palm oil for biofuel on 2.8million hectares of Congo, which would be the world’s largest palm-oil plantation.
It is negotiating to grow biofuels on 2million hectares in Zambia, a country where Chinese farms are said to produce a quarter of the eggs sold in the capital, Lusaka.
According to one estimate, 1million Chinese farm labourers will be working in Africa this year, a number one African leader called “catastrophic”.
………
China has set up 11 research stations in Africa to boost yields of staple crops. That is needed: sub-Saharan Africa spends much less than India on agricultural R&D. Even without new seed varieties or fancy drip-feed irrigation, investment should help farmers. One of the biggest constraints on African farming is the inability to borrow money for fertilisers. If new landlords just helped farmers get credit, it would make a big difference.
Yet a certain wariness ought to be maintained. Farming in Africa is hard. It breaks backs and the naive ambitions of outsiders. To judge by the scale of projects so far, the new investors seem to be pinning their hopes on creating technologically sophisticated large farms.
In Zambia, the main opposition leader has come out against China’s proposed 2m-hectare biofuels project—and China has threatened to pull out of Zambia if he ever came to power.
The head of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, dubs some projects “neocolonialist”. Bowing before the wind, a Chinese agriculture-ministry official insists his country is not seeking to buy land abroad, though he adds that “if there are requests, we would like to assist.” (On one estimate, China has signed 30 agricultural co-operation deals covering over 2m hectares since 2007.)
Water shortages have provided the hidden impulse behind many land deals. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, the chairman of Nestlé, claims: “The purchases weren’t about land, but water. For with the land comes the right to withdraw the water linked to it, in most countries essentially a freebie that increasingly could be the most valuable part of the deal.” He calls it “the great water grab”.
More here:
http://www.economist.com/node/13692889
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/07/food-water-africa-land-grab
The above Guardian article points out how 100,000 Africans will lose water rights so one foreign-owned farm can be a success.
wow! it will be interesting to see how this all pans out. i wonder how this is going to affect the average african person? will china use their own people or will the africans be hired on?