Hay Belly Nation

For some of you this will be an easier question to answer than for others simply because it wasn't that fucking long ago you experienced it.

Remember when you'd ask you mother if you could do this or that and she would tell you to ask your father who would tell you to ask your mother?

Same circular shit happens in the government.

Mum's the word among federal officials about the health benefits of eating organic foods. The Department of Health and Human Services defers questions about organic foods to the Food and Drug Administration. But the FDA has no policy on organics because it says they're the domain of the Department of Agriculture, which will admit to using the "o-word," but says its mandate is simply to regulate use of the certified organic label, not to judge the relative benefits of organic versus conventional foods.

Note: Headline links to source.

Eight 'clone farm' cows born in Britain; meat could be on sale in months

Hereford bull calf
Oopsie. It seems the UK has a loophole problem.

You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear (so they say), but you can make a calf out of a cow's ear. The fucking mind boggles.

Eight 'clone farm' cows have been born in the UK, the Daily Mail can reveal. Their mother is a clone - created in a U.S. laboratory with cells taken from the ear of a prize-winning animal. Meat or milk from the calves, flown into Britain as frozen embryos and implanted into a surrogate, could be on sale here within months. Though food from clones is barred from the food chain, there are no legal safeguards over their offspring.[emphasis mine]

FWIW, my take on this is suspicion. If cloning is exactly replicating an existent animal, I see no problem. But is it "exact"? Just asking.

Two addendum:

First all baby animals are fucking cute, but none so much as a goddamn Hereford calf.

That is until the one year old sumbitch starts trying to butt my mother. To say the least, she wasn't amused. I was.

Second in looking for graphics for this post I ran into many (and I mean many many) sites for miniature Herefords. Considering the object with Herefords is to raise them as food, why the hell does anyone want to miniaturize them and reduce the quantity of meat? Just asking.

Note: Headline links to source.

What does 'Certified Organic' really mean?

Free range chickens.
Sometimes these fucking posts practically write themselves.

Case in point.

Buying organic is becoming more and more popular as some worry about the health and safety of the foods they eat. But what does it mean for a food to be organic? According to the National Organic Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, organic meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products come from animals that are given no antibiotics or growth hormones. Organic food is produced without using most conventional pesticides, fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or sewer sludge, bioengineering or ionizing radiation.

Ipso facto, non-organic foods can have all that shit in them.



I'm pretty sure this sucker ain't free range.

In fact, he doesn't even seem to be vegetarian. He is funny as hell, though. I've seen him several times. He's simply "The Chicken".

Note: Headline links to source.

Leaders feast on Italian fare during hunger summit

Fresh cheese mousse with white chocolate
and sparkling wine sorbet.
Hypocrisy is exactly the word for this.

What in hell is wrong with a simple fucking plate of spaghetti? And, just to be decadent, a slice of cake for dessert? No one expects them to fast during these talks, but puff pastries with corn and mozzarella, pasta with pumpkin and shrimp, rolls of thinly sliced veal, cheese mousse, parmesan risotto, lemon mousse with raspberry sauce and a [special] chilled white wine? That's just obscene.

Maybe obscene is a better word than hypocrisy.

As for the starving &ndash let 'em eat cake.

For presidents and premiers at summits, delicacies washed down by fine wines are all part of the agenda.

But the puff pastries with corn and mozzarella, pasta with pumpkin and shrimp, and rolls of thinly sliced veal served up Tuesday at a U.N. conference on fighting hunger were a contrast to bleak accounts of starving people around the world.

The menu was in French but the fare was strictly Italian, served in a dining room at the headquarters of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

The repast was accompanied by a chilled white wine from Orvieto in the hills of Umbria north of Rome.

"It's pretty standard stuff," said FAO spokesman Nick Parsons, describing the meal as "pleasant, light and nutritious."

For decades, the FAO has striven for a sober culinary touch since an embarrassing moment during a similar summit called in 1974 amid a food crisis and oil shock.

The foreign minister of Bangladesh, which had suffered a severe famine, addressed a nearly deserted conference hall as most of the delegates nibbled on canapes at a nearby cocktail party.

Commentators howled hypocrisy.

But in Rome, one of Europe's premier gastronomic capitals, it's hard to deliver a spare meal - and while they are here delegates will be eating such specialties as cheese mousse, parmesan risotto and lemon mousse with raspberry sauce.

The top delegates - heads of state and government - were invited to the luncheon in a special dining room. Everyone else ate in the cafeteria.

"Leaders can eat what they want as long as they take decisive action to deliver the policies and the aid in agriculture that is needed to ensure that poor people who are suffering from high food prices are helped," said Alexander Woollcombe, a spokesman for the British aid group Oxfam.

Of the foods mentioned in this post, how many of you have had any of them in the past month? Just asking.

An earlier post of mine indicated many are living on SPAM®, not veal and their "pasta " most likely consists of Ramen noodles with bits of meat so small they lodge between one's teeth.

This whole story was patently offensive from "Its pretty standard stuff..." to...its hard to deliver a spare meal..." to "Leaders can eat what they want..."

Note: Headline links to source.

'World will need 50% more food', says UN chief

UN chief Ban Ki-moon

The world needs to produce 50% more food by 2030 to meet increasing demand, UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned today.

Let me see if I have this right. Not to be too snarky, but I can't help it.

The world needs more food and the solution is... to produce more food.

With all due respect, sir, but the demand is already here or you wouldn't be holding a fucking summit on the "world food crisis". Am I right?

Got it. I'm ready for my assignment at the UN.

Note: Headline links to source.

Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World's Food System

Between this blue fin tuna boat and your store shelves usually there's a cannery.

I'd say that's a given for Kansas.


In one of those rare instances where I decided to eat healthier, which usually lasts about three trips to the store, I decided to cut down on sodium.

Its nearly impossible. I thought perhaps canned tuna would work. Nope. Salt's been added to what is usually a healthy fish (except for some high levels of mercury).

All pre-packaged or processed foods have tons of sodium. Unless you can find a market where you can buy organically grown foods directly from the farmer or fresh fish straight off the boat, you're gonna get additives you probably don't want.

Hell, you probably won't even know some of them and most likely can't pronounce them.

But they're fucking good for you. Just ask the corporations supplying your market.

The following is an excerpt from Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System by Raj Patel, published with permission from Melville House Publishing.

Today, when we produce more food than ever before, more than one in ten people on Earth are hungry. The hunger of 800 million happens at the same time as another historical first: that they are outnumbered by the one billion people on this planet who are overweight.

Global hunger and obesity are symptoms of the same problem and, what's more, the route to eradicating world hunger is also the way to prevent global epidemics of diabetes and heart disease, and to address a host of environmental and social ills. Overweight and hungry people are linked through the chains of production that bring food from fields to our plate.

Guided by the profit motive, the corporations that sell our food shape and constrain how we eat, and how we think about food. The limitations are clearest at the fast food outlet, where the spectrum of choice runs from McMuffin to McNugget. But there are hidden and systemic constraints even when we feel we're beyond the purview of Ronald McDonald. Even when we want to buy something healthy, something to keep the doctor away, we're trapped in the very same system that has created our Fast Food Nations?

Try, for example, shopping for apples. At supermarkets in North America and Europe, the choice is restricted to half a dozen varieties: Fuji, Braeburn, Granny Smith, Golden Delicious and perhaps a couple of others. Why these? Because they're pretty: we like the polished and unblemished skin. Because their taste is one that's largely unobjectionable to the majority. But also because they can stand transportation over long distances. Their skin won't tear or blemish if they're knocked about in the miles from orchard to aisle. They take well to the waxing technologies and compounds that make this transportation possible and keep the apples pretty on the shelves. They are easy to harvest. They respond well to pesticides and industrial production. These are reasons why we won't find Calville Blanc, Black Oxford, Zabergau Reinette, Kandil Sinap or the ancient and venerable Rambo on the shelves.

Our choices are not entirely our own because, even in a supermarket, the menu is crafted not by our choices, nor by the seasons, nor where we find ourselves, nor by the full range of apples available, nor by the full spectrum of available nutrition and tastes, but by the power of food corporations.

Note: Headline links to source.

Really fresh pineapples on sale

No, I did not write that ad copy, but it does have a certain je ne sai quoi that fits my style.

Note: Headline links to source.

Hungry?

Well I'm certainly not now!

Note: Headline links to source.

Grain profits soar as food crisis worsens

In the following the emphasis is mine alone because the sources would never emphasize such shit.

At a time when parts of the world are facing food riots, Big Agriculture is dealing with a different sort of challenge: huge profits.

On Tuesday, grain-processing giant Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. said its fiscal third-quarter profits jumped 42 percent, including a sevenfold increase in net income in its unit that stores, transports and trades grains such as wheat, corn and soybeans.

Monsanto Co., maker of seeds and herbicides, Deere & Co., which builds tractors, combines and sprayers, and fertilizer maker Mosaic Co. all reported similar windfalls in their latest quarters.

The robust profits are emerging against the backdrop of a food crisis some experts say is the worst in three decades. The secretary-general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, on Tuesday called for the creation of a high-level global task force to deal with the cascading impact of high grain prices and oil prices. He said that countries must do more to avert "social unrest on an unprecedented scale" and should contribute money to make up for the $755 million shortfall in funding for the World Food Program, which feeds the world's hungry.

President Bush told reporters Tuesday that he's "deeply concerned about people who don't have food abroad," and all three presidential contenders have recently cited high food and energy prices as causes for concern. Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate, has said he favors scrapping the 51-cent per gallon ethanol tax credit and a 54-cent per gallon tariff imposed on most imported ethanol, ideas abhorred by farmers and many politicians.

The crisis stems from a combination of heightened demand for food from fast-growing developing countries like China and India, low grain stockpiles caused by bad weather, rising fuel prices and the increasing amount of land used to grow crops for ethanol and other biofuels rather than food.

Food companies say they're not to blame for the soaring prices and are committed to working toward a solution. They say bigger profits can be used to develop new technologies that will ultimately help farmers improve productivity. Monsanto says it's designing improved genetically modified seeds that can squeeze even more yield from each acre of planted grain*, while ADM says it's investing in tools that can mitigate supply disruptions. "Maybe the question should be not, "Are you making money?' but, 'What are you doing with the money that you make?'" says Victoria Podesta, vice president for corporate communications at ADM.

I especially like the fucking "Are you making money?' but, 'What are you doing with the money that you make?' That bit is so damn kewl.

They are pocketing the goddamn money, idiot. Case closed.

Are these altruists who want to really help anyone who doesn't hold stock in their companies? Silly rabbit.

The best you can do is invest in a supply of Wicked® Slick™ because they are fucking you any way they can.

BTW, I take no credit for the strange quotation marks. They were part of the original.

* Oh yeah? Liars.

Note: Headline links to source.

Jolly gene giant

We were warned but no one (I know of) was at all concerned.

A review of Claire Hope Cummings' Uncertain Peril

In October 1996, a spokesman for Monsanto told Farm Journal why his company was buying up seed companies left and right: "What you're seeing is not just a consolidation of seed companies, it's really a consolidation of the entire food chain."

Today, Monsanto is the world's largest seed company -- and makes more money selling seeds than chemicals. The company's biotech seeds and traits accounted for 88 percent of the worldwide area devoted to genetically modified seeds in 2006 -- and Monsanto earns royalties on every single one. No one needed to tell Monsanto: Whoever controls the first link in the food chain -- the seeds -- controls the food supply.

What better way to understand the perilous state of industrial food and farming than by starting with the seed? Claire Hope Cummings' new book, Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds is a sharp and elegant analysis of the biotech seed debate.

Beginning with the tragic story of how the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq led to the destruction of Iraq's seed bank, and the subsequent dependence of Iraqi farmers on U.S. aid and multinational agribusiness, Cummings explains what's at stake when farming communities lose the crop diversity that they've nurtured and managed for thousands of years.

Note: Headline links to source.

Exposed: the great GM crops myth

Many people aren't nuts about GM (genetically modified) food if not down right frightened by them. They don't like scientists fucking with nature and some are very suspicious about what GM foods might do to humans.

But there's another reason to be anti-GM food. They don't produce the same yield as do non-GM varieties.

Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.

The study – carried out over the past three years at the University of Kansas in the US grain belt – has found that GM soya produces about 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting assertions by advocates of the technology that it increases yields.

Professor Barney Gordon, of the university's department of agronomy, said he started the research – reported in the journal Better Crops – because many farmers who had changed over to the GM crop had "noticed that yields are not as high as expected even under optimal conditions". He added: "People were asking the question 'how come I don't get as high a yield as I used to?'"

He grew a Monsanto GM soybean and an almost identical conventional variety in the same field. The modified crop produced only 70 bushels of grain per acre, compared with 77 bushels from the non-GM one.

The GM crop – engineered to resist Monsanto's own weedkiller, Roundup – recovered only when he added extra manganese, leading to suggestions that the modification hindered the crop's take-up of the essential element from the soil. Even with the addition it brought the GM soya's yield to equal that of the conventional one, rather than surpassing it.

The new study confirms earlier research at the University of Nebraska, which found that another Monsanto GM soya produced 6 per cent less than its closest conventional relative, and 11 per cent less than the best non-GM soya available.

Note: Headline links to source.

The biofuels boom

Now if this isn't the precursor to food riots I don't know what is.

Barbed wire? Hell, it can't even contain cattle in some cases and cattle are stupid.

Wait. People can be pretty stupid animals too.

A growing global food crisis has not curbed the appetite of Canada's newest biofuel plant, which is busy stockpiling a mountain of wheat near this town west of Regina. Huge trucks loaded with grain roll into the $130-million plant, weigh in, then swing round and add to the growing pile of wheat behind a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.

Note: Headline links to source.

Global Famine: The Lords of Capital Decree Mass Death by Starvation

Politicians who have some vested interest in biofuels can spin and lie about ethanol and biodiesel, but the fact remains large corporations are literally taking food out of people's mouths and driving up the cost of the food that remains.

Having crushed the planet's peasants and converted food into just another commodity for global manipulation, the Lord's of Capital have unleashed upon humanity the threat - no, certainty - of mass starvation. The criminal mega-enterprise is centered in the United States, the former "breadbasket of the planet" whose massive conversion to biofuels has caused staple crop prices to skyrocket beyond the reach of hundreds of millions of the world's poor. The death of millions translates into profits in the trillions for the Lords of Capital, killers on a mass scale whose only talents lie in "the production of overlapping calamities, each more lethal than the last."

"No amount of emergency aid is sufficient to make up for the wild price rises that have already occurred." [formatting in original]

Note: Headline links to source.

Condoleezza Rice admits biofuel production contributing to food shortages

Ya think?

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has admitted that the decision to set aside American farmland for the production of corn for biofuels may in part be driving up world food prices.

"There has been apparently some effect, unintended consequence from the alternative fuels effort," Rice told a gathering of the Peace Corps in Washington, D.C.

...

Nearly one-third of the US corn harvest is currently being funnelled [sic] into biofuel production.

She goes on to say she doesn't believe it is the dominate factor, but one of many causing an increase in world food prices. One can't argue with that, but...

Let me get this straight. Diverting food crops for biofuels only marginally affects world food prices? Doesn't she understand any fucking thing about supply and demand? Just asking.

Note: Headline links to source.

Global famine? Blame the Fed

One way or another the US is going to bring the whole world down. It doesn't just require bombs.

At least that's the contention of Mike Whitney writing in the Online Journal.

The stakes couldn't be higher for Ben Bernanke. If the Fed chief decides to lower rates at the end of April, he could be condemning millions of people to a death by starvation.

The situation is that serious. Food riots have broken out across the globe destabilizing large parts of the developing world. China is experiencing double-digit inflation. Indonesia, Vietnam and India have imposed controls over rice exports. Wheat, corn and soya are at record highs and threatening to go higher still. Commodities are up across the board. The World Food Program is warning of widespread famine if the West doesn't provide emergency humanitarian relief.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said it best: "It is a massacre of the world's poor. The problem is not the production of food. It is the economic, social and political model of the world. The capitalist model is in crisis."

Right on, Hugo. There is no shortage of food; it's just the prices that are making food unaffordable. Bernanke's "weak dollar" policy has ignited a wave of speculation in commodities which is pushing prices into the stratosphere. The UN is calling the global food crisis a "silent tsunami," but its more like a flood; the world is awash in increasingly worthless dollars that are making food and raw materials more expensive. Foreign central banks and investors presently hold $6 trillion in dollars and dollar-backed assets, so when the dollar starts to slide, the pain radiates through entire economies. This is especially true in countries where the currency is pegged to the dollar. That's why most of the Gulf States are experiencing runaway inflation. This doesn't mean that oil depletion, biofuel production, over-population, and giant agribusinesses don't add to the problem. They do. But the catalyst is the Fed's monetary policies; that's the domino that puts the others in motion.

I don't know if I'm convinced the "weak dollar", though exacerbating this and other world problems, is the tail wagging the dog. Its a factor of course, but taking food stocks and arid lands to produce biofuels quickly and directly affects food costs.

The headline links to the source.

B'desh raises storm alert, urges swift rice harvest

I keep watching out for some good news on the increasing food shortages, but I only find stories like this.

Bangladesh on Tuesday asked farmers to speed up their rice harvest as the country braces for a powerful cyclone likely to hit in two or three days.

Cyclone Nargis is about 1,200 km (750 miles) southwest of Bangladesh's Chittagong coast and likely to gain strength in the Bay of Bengal as it nears the coast.

British-based storm tracking service Tropical Storm Risk (http://tsr.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/) rated Nargis as a category 2 storm on Tuesday and it was expected to reach category 4 strength in 36 hours. Category 5 is the maximum category for tropical cyclones.

The Bangladesh government issued a local number 2 storm warning at Chittagong and other ports and urged residents along the coast to be ready for quick evacuation.

Bangladesh has been facing serious food shortages after last year's floods and a cyclone, which together damaged nearly 3 million tonnes of rice, the country's main staple.

The headline links to the source.

Rice Rationing Hits UK

This on top of Costco and Sam's Club rationing rice in the US.

Fortunately I was able to stockpile tons of rice before the hoarders got hold of it. Muhahaha!

Rice is being rationed in Britain as shopkeepers limit supplies to their customers to prevent hoarding. Restrictions on sales in Asian neighbourhoods are reported as emergency measures are taken by governments worldwide to combat the soaring cost of rice and prevent outbreaks of food rioting.

Now to get fucking serious. There are people who spend almost every goddamn cent of their income to feed themselves and can't survive on rice prices which are double normal. Its no fucking joke and many will die or turn to crime to keep food on the table.

There is enough food on this planet to feed everyone. It just isn't distributed equitably. And, yes, I do what I can to feed those who need it. I'm not being hypocritical here. My cost for food is roughly five times what it would be if my wife and I didn't feed so many others.

Yeah, don't mention it. I'm a goddamn saint.

Via The Signs.

Afghan farmers turn away from opium

Sometimes unintended (unanticipated?) consequences aren't so bad.

Better the cost of illegal drugs rise rather than that of food.

Afghanistan's opium harvest could fall by up to half this year after 2007's record levels, as evidence emerges that some poppy farmers are switching to legal crops because of rising food prices.

Via Financial Times.

Global food security plummets

Two subjects I've visited in the past. Dwindling food and water supplies. Emphasis mine.

WORLD food security has slumped to its lowest since records began in 1960, with a marked decline in grain stocks.

Julian Cribb, from Sydney's University of Technology, said the oil and credit crises rattling world economies were nothing compared to the threat from emerging global food shortages.

Food prices have risen steeply over the past two years and farmers last week warned the cost of basic items such as bread, milk and meat would jump again this year, mainly due to soaring commodity prices. "Year on year, humanity now eats more than it produces," he said.

...

"Cities are now taking much of the water that was used to grow food, while ground water levels are falling in every country where it is used for food," he said.

And just wait until all the affects of biofuels kick in when grains being grown will be diverted to biofuels and won't be available as food.

There is hope, however, food is one thing, but just wait until brew masters can't get enough grains and water to brew beer. Then there will be a resounding outcry.

BTW, yes workers do tramp around in their dirty shoes on the grain that will eventually end up in your loaf of bread. Muahahaha.

Via The Signs.

SWAZILAND: Food or biofuel seems to be the question

I'm not gonna bother linking internally. I've posted so many times about:

1. Biofuels are not the answer to energy problems. They aren't "clean" either.
2. Biofuels remove land from food production. And the poor suffer for it.
3. Water is going to be the next oil. People will wage wars over it.

The government of Swaziland announced this week that it would be allocating thousands of hectares [2.471 acres] to a private company to cultivate cassava for biofuel. About 40 percent of the country's one million people are facing acute food and water shortages.

It seems obvious the Swaziland government is more concerned with money rolling in than feeding its people. Greed raises its ugly head again.

IRIN has more stories on this.

Google™ searches on the right side of my page for biofuel or bio-fuel (I'm not consistent) or water will link to my earlier posts.

Via IRIN.

H/T AlertNet.