The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World) Archived

shortonoil · **Posted:** Sat May 03, 2008 7:10 pm

eastbay said:

Quote:

I've been telling people the $10.00 loaf of wheat bread is coming soon. And not too much afterwards we'll be wishing for a $10.00 loaf.

Like the depleted uranium dust from the Iraq war that is blowing across the Western Hemisphere, the spores of Ug99 have already arrived. It won’t be long before it shows its ugly effects.

Revi · **Posted:** Sat May 03, 2008 7:42 pm

I just looked up UG99 and got some scary results. I don't usually worry about things like this, but this has the potential to get really serious:

http://www.thought-criminal.org/article/node/1466

I don't think it could spread that quickly to Kansas. I would imagine it would be hitting India or some place closer to where it originated.

shortonoil · **Posted:** Sat May 03, 2008 8:20 pm

Revi said:

Quote:

I don't think it could spread that quickly to Kansas. I would imagine it would be hitting India or some place closer to where it originated.

Quote:

Richard Brettell, director of the Biodiversity and Integrated Gene Management Programme at ICARDA, told IRIN on 26 March that halting the spread of the stem rust spores is difficult since they are dispersed by the wind.

Quote:

Oil prices are expected to decline from the record levels at the beginning of 2008 as the industrial economies slow, led by the United States.

fabiusmaximus

Oil prices will not decline to help us with skyrocketing food prices. The falling Available Energy contribution of oil insures it. Increased demand by the energy producers themselves will keep supplies tight - indifinitely.AvailableEnergy

Quote:

Hurricanes aren't the only thing that barrel across the Atlantic toward Florida. Giant dust storms rising out of the Saharan desert blow an estimated billion tons of dust out of Africa each year; about half of that eventually reaches the Caribbean and Florida, at times, invading every state east of the Rockies.

Quote:

Of the 65 live microbes Griffin was able to identify, 25% were known to cause plant diseases and about 10% were opportunistic human pathogens. Besides impacts to marine life and human health, agricultural crops also may be affected by spores and other organisms riding transcontinental winds.

baysoundings

The Trade Winds delivered Ug99 here three days after it left Africa. The spores are just waiting for the right conditions to present themselves, and then they will mature and start propagating!

Revi · **Posted:** Sat May 03, 2008 8:44 pm

Thanks, Shortonoil. I feel a lot better now. I know that the hammatan winds deliver red dust to the Caribbean from the Sahara. If the dust gets here the rust could be here by now. Great... I was hoping that things wouldn't get so bad so quickly.

shortonoil · **Posted:** Sat May 03, 2008 8:53 pm

Revi said:

Quote:

Great... I was hoping that things wouldn't get so bad so quickly

.

Some botanist think it may take up to five years to take hold. Some Ug99 resistant strains may be available by then, but we are punching a tight clock.

yesplease · **Joined:** Tue Oct 03, 2006 12:00 am **Posts:** 3654

shortonoil wrote:

Oil prices will not decline to help us with skyrocketing food prices. The falling Available Energy contribution of oil insures it. Increased demand by the energy producers themselves will keep supplies tight - indifinitely.

What do you mean by indifinitely/indefinitely(?)?

wisconsin_cur · **Joined:** Thu May 10, 2007 12:00 am **Posts:** 4616

Asian Bank to Provide Food Aid

Quote:

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has announced emergency funding to help poor countries struggling with rising food costs.

The bank said at its annual meeting in Madrid, the Spanish capital, on Sunday that food prices could keep rising and stifle economic growth in the region.

Haruhiko Kuroda, the bank’s president, said: "The cheap food era may be over."

The ADB said new aid will come in the form of soft loans for the governments of countries hardest hit by the global food crisis, such as Bangladesh.

He also said the bank does not like Thailand's idea of creating a rice-exporting cartel along the lines of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), saying it is better to let market forces operate freely.

wisconsin_cur · **Joined:** Thu May 10, 2007 12:00 am **Posts:** 4616

I guess we are saved. Bill Gates is joining the fight against black stem rust.

Link

Quote:

The battle against the wheat disease Ug99 just got more serious.

On Wednesday, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced it would give $26.8 million over the next three years for research to breed new wheat strains that resist the fungus.

At the same time, though, the US government looks likely to withhold a grant to the crop breeding institutes leading the battle worth double that.

Ug99 is a strain of black stem rust, a lethal fungal disease of wheat, first detected in Uganda in 1999. Virtually none of the commercial wheat now grown worldwide has any resistance to it.

The fungus recently invaded Iran faster than predicted and could cause mass starvation if it hits India before new resistant strains are ready.

mos6507 · **Posted:** Sun May 04, 2008 1:03 am

eastbay wrote:

I've been telling people the $10.00 loaf of wheat bread is coming soon. And not too much afterwards we'll be wishing for a $10.00 loaf.

I understand the long-term implications, but I just bought a loaf of wheat bread for $1.79 at Ralphs. We've got a long way to go before people can't afford bread.

wisconsin_cur · **Joined:** Thu May 10, 2007 12:00 am **Posts:** 4616

Just in case anyone was worried about how agribusiness is doing you can rest easy,

Multi-nationals Making Billions out of Food Crisis

Quote:

Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry.

The prices of wheat, corn and rice have soared over the past year driving the world's poor – who already spend about 80 per cent of their income on food – into hunger and destitution.

The World Bank says that 100 million more people are facing severe hunger. Yet some of the world's richest food companies are making record profits. Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543m (£275m) to $1.12bn. Its profits increased from $1.44bn to $2.22bn.

Cargill's net earnings soared by 86 per cent from $553m to $1.030bn over the same three months. And Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world's largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42 per cent in the first three months of this year from $363m to $517m. The operating profit of its grains merchandising and handling operations jumped 16-fold from $21m to $341m.

To the economists, this just means that we will make more food right? Or perhaps new companies will enter the market and provide food at a cheaper price to undercut the prices of the established corporations?

cube · **Joined:** Sat Mar 12, 2005 1:00 am **Posts:** 3955

mos6507 wrote:

eastbay wrote:

I've been telling people the $10.00 loaf of wheat bread is coming soon. And not too much afterwards we'll be wishing for a $10.00 loaf.

I understand the long-term implications, but I just bought a loaf of wheat bread for $1.79 at Ralphs. We've got a long way to go before people can't afford bread.

Of the 3 major grains: rice, corn, and wheat....I think rice is the most critical.

1) most of the corn isn't even consumed by humans, it's given to cows or cars!
2) wheat - there are "value added" costs like baking the bread.
3) rice - there is practically no "value added" to rice therefore the retail cost is probably almost identical to the commodity price + distribution costs.

If the commodity price of rice doubles then expect things to get expensive at the grocery store.
However it would probably take a doubling of the commodity price of wheat to equal a 20% increase at the retail level. *rough estimate*

wisconsin_cur · **Joined:** Thu May 10, 2007 12:00 am **Posts:** 4616

mos6507 wrote:

eastbay wrote:

I've been telling people the $10.00 loaf of wheat bread is coming soon. And not too much afterwards we'll be wishing for a $10.00 loaf.

I understand the long-term implications, but I just bought a loaf of wheat bread for $1.79 at Ralphs. We've got a long way to go before people can't afford bread.

Do you mean long time before the richest 5 billion cannot afford a loaf of bread?

Ferretlover · **Posted:** Sun May 04, 2008 5:50 am

Yesterday, I made a sandwich for lunch.
What did I discover?
The bread is not only more expensive, it has gotten smaller! By one half an inch vertically And horizonally!

FoolYap · **Posted:** Sun May 04, 2008 6:48 am

Ferretlover wrote:

Yesterday, I made a sandwich for lunch.
What did I discover?
The bread is not only more expensive, it has gotten smaller! By one half an inch vertically And horizonally!

Portions are shrinking everywhere.

Yogurt has shrunk from 8 to 6 ounce cartons.

A "half gallon" of ice cream is now at most 1.75 quarts, and I've just seen one brand switch to 1.5 quarts.

I buy Lavash (flat) bread and use it for low-carb pizza crusts. I use the same brand of bread, and make the pizza in the same rectangular pan for this. Last year the bread always hung over the edges of the pan. Now it fits handily inside the pan.

It's stealth food price inflation.

--Steve

mos6507 · **Posted:** Sun May 04, 2008 10:44 am

FoolYap wrote:

It's stealth food price inflation.

Or they are trying to tackle the obesity problem.

The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World) Archived

Who is online