PolitiCook.net

Monsanto to Re-brand as Climate Change Savior!

As John McSame clumsily attempts to re-brand himself as an economist,

From ETC Group [link and blockquote added by biscuit]:

the world’s largest seed and agrochemical corporations are stockpiling hundreds of monopoly patents on genes in plants that the companies will market as crops genetically engineered to withstand environmental stresses such as drought, heat, cold, floods, saline soils etc… BASF, Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta, Dupont and biotech partners have filed 532 patent documents (a total of 55 patent families) on so-called “climate ready” genes at patent offices around the world. In the face of climate chaos and a deepening world food crisis, the Gene mongers are gearing up for a PR offensive to re-brand themselves as climate saviors, pushing genetically engineered crops as a silver bullet solution to climate change.

According to a new report,

patented techno-fix seeds will not provide the adaptation strategies that small farmers need to cope with climate change. These proprietary technologies will ultimately concentrate corporate power, drive up costs, inhibit independent research, and further undermine the rights of farmers to save and exchange seeds.

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Stark Numbers: Food Solutions, not Promises

Here are the stark numbers today:

Global food prices force about 100 million people into hunger.

High food prices are pushing 30 million Africans into poverty.

About 850 million people are suffering from chronic hunger worldwide.

Food prices have hit the highest levels in real terms in 30 years.

Price of rice has gone up by 75% globally.

Global food prices rose by 43% in 2007 alone.

The US has diverted about 40 million tons of maize to produce ethanol.

An acre of maize produces only 50 gallons of gasoline.

EU plans to get 10% of auto fuel from Bio-energy by 2020.

Food riots and food wars are not just taking place in the streets of Egypt and in Mexico, they are taking place in the corridors of the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) Read more »

Wastrels

In today’s world, where so many wake up in poverty and go to sleep hungry, each of us should ask: “how can I change this?” It is a sin to waste food while others do not have enough to eat. Every year the food waste in America alone can feed over 50 million people per year. Another example: if a farmer grows 100,000 pounds of tomatoes, usually about half of them (50,000 lbs) must be thrown away. This is because if a tomato is slightly misshapen, discolored, too small (or too big), or blemished in any way, it will not meet the consumer demand for a “perfect” tomato and will therefore be rejected.

This is true for many fruit and vegetable crops. To prevent trucks of produce from being rejected, crops are “culled” (hand sorted) after they are picked. About half goes into the truck on its way to the store. The other half goes into the truck going to the dump, or destined to be plowed under and sprayed with insecticide. The food being thrown away is not rotten or bad in any way.

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Cargill: A Corporate Threat to Food and Farming

International giant Cargill is one of a relatively small number of powerful corporations that control the global agricultural system (Monsanto, anyone?) Cargill, among those with the widest and deepest influence, describes itself as an “international provider of food, agricultural and risk management products and services. With 158,000 employees in 66 countries, the company is committed to using its knowledge and experience to collaborate with customers to help them succeed.”

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Food News Roundup

I’ve been addicted to comestibles and their “relatives” since childhood. That’s the price I was glad to pay being from a family of hoteliers and restaurateurs. At the tender age of seven I was taught how to differentiate a Burgundy from a Claret, and all my spare time was spent in the hotel kitchens, spying on the chefs, pestering all and sundry with endless questioning, poking my nose into this and that, checking out all the incoming supplies. My hard copy files, collected over the last thirty years or so, run into thousands of pages, and since the advent of the “internets”, I have now several hundreds of thousands more, being subscribed to email alerts from all kinds of sites that are connected to food & beverages producers and odds and sods.

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GM Sugar: Another Threat from Monsanto

Look out for genetically modified sugar in a shopping aisle near you by next Fall! American Crystal, a large Wyoming-based sugar company, has announced it will be sourcing its sugar from genetically engineered sugar beets.

However, the increasing presence of GM crops in the US food chain has led to a growing resistance movement. Several activists groups have filed lawsuits in California calling for the USDA to review its approval of the GM sugar beet, while planting of Monsanto’s alfalfa, also genetically modified to resist Roundup, has been delayed after a major campaign against the crop in 2006 calling for a federal environmental review.

GMO sugar beet seeds, supplied by Monsanto, have an inserted gene to make the plant resistant to the company’s Roundup herbicide. Monsanto already once postponed intro of the sugar beet (ready since 2004) when candy makers and other companies fretted - rightly so - that consumers would reject products with sugar from the beets. Read more »

UK could become too hot to produce wine!

For all those global warming deniers out there, read this: climate change could mean some parts of southern England will be too hot to for wine-making by 2080, according to a UK professor. Why? Rising summer temperatures have already started to evolve the UK’s wine profile, with some French grape varieties being successfully introduced there in the past 20 years (I’m salivating at the prospects of planting my own little vineyards here in Eire, someday).

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Something’s Rotten

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Food Outlook report published a couple of days ago confirms that wheat prices should decline in the new season. I thought to myself: Wow! That’s great news! I promptly logged onto the FAO site (I’m a regular there) and I got this: International prices of most agricultural commodities have started to decline, but they are unlikely to return to the low price levels of previous years, Food Outlook reports. The FAO food price index has remained stable since February 2008, but the average of the first four months of 2008 is still 53 percent higher when compared to the same period a year ago. And this: Increased hunger likely in some poor countries.

I smell a rat! Some financial entities (read speculators), like the oil producers, are making a killing. Somewhere. Read more »

Foraging: Living Off the Fat of the Land

Noun 1. foraging - the act of searching for food and provisions.

The prices of staple foods such as rice could stay high for the next three years, hindering the battle against poverty, a top World Bank official said Tuesday. I personally think this may be the understatement of the year. With oil prices to hit $200, widely predicted by our own Jérome a Paris and others, I doubt very much staple food will come down as the price to fill a gas tank could, more or less, double within the next five years. Foodstuffs need reasonably priced transportation and it looks as though it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

Welcome to world of foraging, a lost art for most as more and more convenient stores and supermarket chains crop up in neighborhoods with dizzying regularity. Try this for a change: take your family to the nearest forest, gather wild produce and see if you can bring home the bacon, so to speak. Read more »

Water News May 08 Roundup

People use lots of water for drinking, cooking and washing, but even more for producing things such as food, paper, cotton clothes, etc. The water footprint of an individual, business or nation is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual, business or nation. Now you too can figure out your water footprint using the calculator at waterfootprint.org. Additionally, they have a gallery of commonly consumed products and how much water it takes to produce them and case studies of water footprints of specific countries like China and Israel.

Remember, water conservation is essential.

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