Making a killing from the food crisis

More at http://therealnews.com/c.php?c=080501YT
Devlin Kuyek: "Right now Cargill is making approximately $471 000 an hour in profits."

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• therealnews
• world
• food
• crisis
• shortage
• corporation
• profits
• cargill
• globalisation

[chrismac3740]

Thank Al Gore for the increase in food prices.

[mwspruvn]

Start your back yard Garden today

[oolong2]

@TheKingIsHereable

Captalism works best when you have lots of small operations instead of a few big ones. Those countries with healthier populations than us generally focus more on food freshness and small markets (France, Japan, etc)

Keep in mind that those outbreaks (samonella, mad cow, etc) come from factory farms and if you saw the conditions of those places you would uinderstand why. Small local sustainable farms are isolated from those mass outbreaks that spread across the country.

[TheKingIsHereable]

@oolong2 But If we were to go back to agriculture in the masses, we wouldn't be honoring the Rostovian development stage where agriculture was the primary employment in the 1st stage, then getting less and less in each stage, America is in the depths of stage 5- mass consumption, and the majority of consumers don't care where their food comes from. What if you had an outbreak of a bacteria or virus in a certain part of the country, how would sustainability handle that situation?

[oolong2]

@TheKingIsHereable

IMy understanding is that most food related problems today are economic. North/South Korea are perfect examples of that.

Food used to be our primary activity. Most of our time was spent hunting, gathering, growing, and preparing food. Now that activity has been replaced by other jobs. People leave rural areas for cities and producing food becomes less and less economical.

Things could be very different If those forces were put towards sustainability instead of scale.

[TheKingIsHereable]

@oolong2 I have also seen farmers markets pop up in my area, and I'm a cook, so this is extremely important to have the freshest ingrediants, but let us look at the world stage, lets say the people in North/South Korea (The most unbearable weather changes on the face of the earth) How would they be able to deal with flucuating tempatures in just a few days with the monsoons. I do believe also that factory farming is bad, but the time and money you need to get product to the consumer demand?

[oolong2]

@TheKingIsHereable

Water is problem, but to me it's a separate issue.

Factory farming wastes LOTS of resources and some crops use much more water than others. Yet farmers force themselves into one crop (like citrus) that use lots of water despite being in a desert.

If you look at population using non-sustainable methods you will get non-sustainable results.

Capitalism also plays it's part. In the past 3 years since that comment I've seen an explosion in locally grown produce/products.

[TheKingIsHereable]

@oolong2 this is a possibility, but what is the real sustainability of having all local food? In an area I am right now (Texas) we having been facing severe drought for 5 months in out most major food producer for the state. How would you solve that problem? And what of the demand for food and the growing population, do we have 50 years to build the industries in other countries so they can start becoming self-dependent? You have to be a realist.

[130starfish]

i agree, with your assessment, i think that the current model in its drive for profits and efficiency does not make allowances for the benefits of an inefficient but independent model. I think that there is some medium value that allows for SOME imports and profits and self sufficiency. Its an error, a calculation error, and greed plays a big part too. I dont have the solution for this but i am working on what i call "fuzzy" efficient yet self sustaining models.

[ourearthhome]

Industrialized agriculture would be put out of business where in fact it is not truly efficient if there were to be a significant property tax on land values. It turns out that the medium sized family farm is more efficient than the large industrialized farms in the US and if they had to go head to head after paying the real value of the land the family farms would win. It is totally irresponsible to ignore this issue but ignored it is. Wait until China/Saudi Arabia etc. buy up our farm land.

[dreamerpulse]

if the gov't buys grain and gives it for free to nations that are in need, thus depressing prices for farmers globally providing incentive to plant less because the prices aren't economically sustainable for the business.

the more aid thats given the less farmers produce until the moment when their production can no longer be given for free. farmers in southern russia were going broke two years ago because prices were so low that some fields were left to rot with grain unharvested.