UN and World Bank link skyrocketing food prices to eating meat!

[nugentjack@hotmail.com]

Source: Emirates Business

Rice futures in Chicago surged to a record on Thursday, following gains in wheat, corn, palm oil and soya beans, which have all risen to their highest yet this year.

The food crisis is of “emergency proportions”, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said last Monday. And The World Bank has forecast that 33 nations from Mexico to Yemen may face social unrest after food and energy costs increased for six straight years.

So, perhaps now is the time to ask the big question: Will changing our diet prevent the crisis?

Are we growing too little food to feed the world?

Bizarrely, no. There was a record global grain harvest last year. It topped 2.1 billion tonnes, up five per cent on the previous year. The problem is that a diminishing proportion of it is being turned into food.

There are two reasons why the record amount of grain is proving insufficient to feed the world. First, a large amount is being diverted to make biofuels.

But while 100 million tonnes of grain are being diverted to make fuel this year, over seven times as much (760 million tonnes) will be used to feed animals. The world’s passion for meat is a much bigger cause of global hunger than its passion for the car.

[Miso Vegan]

Reason: my perfect html code can't be read.

Perfect? Every forum has different code, even different web publishing programs use different codes - there is no "perfect."

Anyway, thanks for the link/article. I think this is the kind of info we (veg*ns) have known about for years but for the omnis it's suddenly "new" and shocking information.

[VegeTexan]

great article, thanks for posting, nugentjack. I'm filing this one for future ref.

[VegeTexan]

s true, miso....
I think that everytime the media announces the 'shocking news' that a new study has found that some meat or other is linked to cancer or heart disease or baldness.
or that the regular consumption of some vegetable or other prevents heart disease, cancer, dementia or chapped lips

"Wha? Really?"
they say, and then they go about their business, and never think about it again until they have their first heart attack and their doctor tells them to cut back on meat. As if cutting back could help.

Most people seem too self-centered to think about the ecological effects, and the kind of world we are leaving for future humans.

And when it comes to starving people in the world and the escalating cost of corn and other grains, they not only have no clue, they don't really care.

(end of misanthropic rant)

[KaliMama]

HTML is a standard, so there can in fact be perfect HTML code. BBCode, not so much.

In other news, the current trend of big corporations (oil, anyone?) and media using biofuels as a scapegoat on which to pin any and all hunger/food crises really pisses me off. Biofuels, done properly, can play a major role in solving a number of our environmental problems. The oil companies and their asspuppet GW don't want us to know that.

The article cited, for example, later states:

Should we be trying to cut out meat to help save the world’s poor from starvation?

<snip>

NO...

- It is not realistic to expect people to switch to a vegan diet of vegetables, pulses, fruit and nuts
<snip>
- An alternative way of tackling the food crisis would be to reverse the policy of diverting grain to make biofuels

Veganism is getting more press than usual lately. I think that's great. But the biofuel backlash is seriously troubling.

[VegeTexan]

Veganism is getting more press than usual lately. I think that's great. But the biofuel backlash is seriously troubling.

Perhaps we can follow our 'leader', Bush, and only allow global warming gasses to rise no more than 10 percent by 2025, and then somehow start a magical decline as he outlined in his recent Rose (colored-glasses) Garden speech in (what I guess was) a tribute to Earth Day (but more likely a lame attempt to support the next repulsive republican candyass candidate for resident of the off-white house.

[Provoked]

Great article - really brings to the table a choice consumers may have to make: cheap food or "cheap" fuel? cause we ain't gonna have both....

Can't recall where I got this info - that if all the government subsidies that went to the meat industries was eliminated - animal "food" would run somewhere around $50/a pound.... (?)

Certainly it was priceless to whom it was stolen from....

Who wants to make a bet - that "aid" going to any of the suffering countries will be in the way of meat? I've heard that dispite disapproval from the UN, that's what the US habitually does. Seems that even in times of global crisis, the meat industry still can make it's $$$.

Bread: the staff of life.....

[KaliMama]

Great article - really brings to the table a choice consumers may have to make: cheap food or "cheap" fuel? cause we ain't gonna have both....

I sure hope that you're wrong, because we CAN have both if we are smart instead of greedy.

[Provoked]

Your right KM.... I should have said: cheap "meat" food or cheap fuel -

..... I've never been "brooded" at before.....

[Provoked]

http://www.cattlenetwork.com/Content...ntentID=216015

Over the past seven months, U.S. pork producers have lost more than $2.1 billion. Due almost solely to a doubling of feed costs, producers now are losing $30-$50 on each hog marketed. Lenders are estimating that some producers could lose up to half or more of the equity in their operations by year-end.

Economists have estimated that the industry will need to reduce production by at least 10 percent – meaning a reduction of 600,000 sows – to restore profitability. But that cutback could be costly, with less-efficient packing plants closing; less manure for crop fertilizer and correspondingly a need for more man-made, foreign-produced fertilizer; a hike in pork retail prices because of a smaller supply; and lost pork industry jobs. Other industries that benefit from pork production, such as Main Street businesses, feed mills and trucking companies, also likely would see job losses. Additionally, there likely would be agricultural credit problems as some producers default on loans.

During discussions with Schafer – and in a letter presented to the secretary – NPPC President Bryan Black, a pork producer from Canal Winchester, Ohio, requested that USDA purchase an additional 50.5 million pounds of pork for various federal food programs

I really do wonder - what would these industries do without federal money bailing them out all the time????

[VegeTexan]

We need to spend bail-out money on the condition that they don't go back into meat production, but instead learn a new craft, perhaps organic vegetable farming.

[Bubbles]

Anyone know the original UN and World Bank sources for this data that the first post's article was about?

I hate how news-type articles never fully reference their sources (or reference them at all).