U.N. Issues Warning on Food Crisis

Freedumb, Freedumb, Read All About It! In a world of exploding human population, with its myriad needs, wants and desires, the economy keeps falling, with more and more working people around the world, poorer, lacking basic needs and going hungry. Freakohnomics: The new 21st Century Supply & Demand Economics - absolute greed, absolute power brings on absolute madness - Turns into Freakohnomics gone berserk. Or mafia economics by deliberate Design - the greater the need, the higher the price of all commodities required to sustain Life. The Outcome, economic strangulation and workaholic enslavement of a people was not designed by the lord thy God, nor is it Nature's Law, nor a scientific law

The Deadly Dangers of a Mis-informed, Dis-informed & Un-informed Population, Ultimately to Itself, History Provides Ample Evidence.

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil

Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization." when lacking a Bill of Rights for Human Life

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down along with their retirement savings in equity & stocks, while their taxes, gas, energy and food costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms and many continue to lose their homes and go hungry; as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans).

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.



June 4, 2008

U.N. Issues Warning on Food Crisis

UN Says Solving Food Crisis Could Cost $30 Billion

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL and ANDREW MARTIN
ROME — Resolving the global food crisis could cost as much as $30 billion a year and wealthier nations are doing little to help the developing world face the problem, United Nations officials said Tuesday.
At a U.N. food summit attended by dozens of world leaders, Jacques Diouf, head of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, opened the meeting by sharply criticizing wealthy nations who he said were cutting back on agriculture programs for the world’s poor and ignoring deforestation — while spending billions on carbon markets, subsidies for farmers and biofuel production.
“The developing countries did in fact forge policies, strategies and programs that — if they had received appropriate funding — would have given us world food security,” Mr. Diouf, said, adding that international community finally began to mobilize to help after images of food riots and starvation emerged in the media. He said there had been plenty of meetings on the need for anti-hunger programs and agricultural development in poor nations in the last decade but not enough money to make them a reality.
Another major debate that emerged at the conference was the role of biofuels in producing food shortages. The U.S. delegation here maintains that only 2 to 3 percent of food price rises were attributable to the biofuel boom. The U.N., however, said the impact was much greater. Biofuel production affects food prices because farmers in many countries have switched from growing crops for food to growing crops for fuel.
Mr. Diouf criticized policies like those in the United States that subsidize growing crops for energy.
“Nobody understands how $11 to $12 billion a year subsidies in 2006 and protective tariff policies have the effect of diverting 100 million tons of cereals from human consumption, mostly to satisfy the thirst for fuel for vehicles,” Mr. Diouf said.
But Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the president of Brazil, pointed out that some biofuels could provide a solution to world hunger if properly deployed. In Brazil, where biofuel is made from sugar cane, the industry has provided jobs for poor people as well as sustainable fuel, he said.
The idea that biofuels have cause the world hunger crisis was “an oversimplification” and “an affront that does not stand up to serious discussion,” Mr. da Silva said.
He instead blamed the high cost of food on high fuel prices: “It offends me to see fingers pointed at biofuels, when the fingers are coated in oil and coal.”
There was little disagreement about how to resolve the spiraling costs of food and its impact on the world’s poor: more food aid to feed the world’s hungry, additional seeds and fertilizer for poor farmers, fewer export bans and tariffs that restrict the flow of trade, and more research to improve crop yields. The problem now is convincing wealthy nations to pay for it, estimated to cost as much as $30 billion a year.
Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, appealed for financial support from wealthy nations to immediately provide more food aid and to help poor countries grow more food. He noted that several governments and global institutions have already pledged additional financial support to deal with the food crisis.
In addition, the United States and some other countries have suggested that genetically modified crops could play a key role in helping poor nations to grow more food, a position that some governments and non-profit groups strongly oppose. The United States is by far the world’s leading producer of genetically modified crops and seeds.
At the Circus Maximus, across from the conference site, ActionAid, an international anti-poverty group, unfurled a banner saying “Stop Profiting from Hunger — Right to Food Now.”