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Arabica Robusta

The deadly scramble for the world's oil | SocialistWorker.org - 0 views

  • COULD YOU expand on the relationship between the rising price of oil and the rising price of food? THE PRICE of food and the price of oil are closely related. This is so because modern mechanized agriculture is heavily reliant on petroleum and petroleum-based products to generate the increased yields necessary to feed growing world populations and sustain the profits of giant agribusiness firms. Every piece of farm machinery is powered by gasoline or diesel, and most food crops are delivered many miles to market by oil-powered trucks, trains, planes or boats. Hence, when the price of oil rises, the cost of all these other activities rises as well. In addition, petroleum is the feedstock for many of the pesticides and herbicides and other products that are needed to produce modern "miracle" crops that possess little resistance to disease. These, too, have risen in price. On top of all this, croplands around the world have been turned over to production for ethanol for road transportation, reducing the crops grown for food and adding additional upward pressure on global food prices.
    • Arabica Robusta
       
      Oil and food.
Arabica Robusta

Palm oil shows need for socially aware research - SciDev.Net - 0 views

  • The question of exactly what kind of research is needed, and who should conduct it, was elegantly stated by Robert Guimaraes Vásquez, a leader of the Shipibo-Conibo indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon, who made an emotional statement calling European consumers to realise they are “drinking our blood” when they consume products derived from palm oil. 
  • His lament was that governments currently rely on data from palm oil companies to decide which parts of a forest to give to which firms, but this data is tinged with bias. 
The Spicy Blog

What You Need to Know about Pure Capsaicin Oil - 0 views

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    Pure capsaicin oil should be used externally only. It is not meant to be taken orally. It should also not come in contact with your eyes, lips, open wounds, cracked skin or open lesions. It should be applied direct to the skin in small quantities, and then rubbed in.
Arabica Robusta

What's the new global source for fresh, shiny produce? Famine-ridden Ethiopia - 0 views

  • Every day, a workforce of 1,000 locals pick, pack and load hundreds of tons of fresh produce onto waiting trucks, including 30 tons of tomatoes alone. After reaching the capital, Addis Ababa, the produce is flown to a handful of Middle Eastern cities, entirely bypassing Ethiopia, one of the hungriest places on the planet. The trip from vine to store shelf takes less than 24 hours. It’s the latest project by Saudi oil and mining billionaire, Sheikh Mohammed Al Amoudi. And it may be the future of farming.
  • The controversial trend has been dubbed “outsourcing’s third wave”—following manufacturing and information technology (IT) in the ’80s and ’90s. The high cost of installing irrigation systems, and importing fertilizers, combines and tractors is no deterrent. Defenders of the new projects say they’re bringing desperately needed new technologies, seeds and investment to Africa. But opponents see the trend as a “land grab” that is forcing poor farmers off their land, and benefiting only the governments inking the deals.
  • The new scramble for Africa was triggered by a convergence of events: surging demand for biofuels, rising consumption patterns in China and India and the 2008 global food crisis, when the price of corn and wheat tripled, almost overnight. Responding to sudden hyperinflation, rioting and panic buying, at least 30 countries, including Argentina, Vietnam, Brazil, Cambodia and India, banned or sharply reduced food exports. In short order, Japan and South Korea, who import 70 per cent of their grains, joined a parade of countries turning to Africa to lock in means of production beyond their borders.
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  • When it emerged that Daewoo, the South Korean giant, had signed a 99-year lease granting it close to half of Madagascar’s arable land, protests broke out in Antananarivo, the country’s capital, eventually sinking both the deal, and the president.
  • as Heilberg told the German magazine Der Spiegel after closing the deal in Darfur, “When food becomes scarce, the investor needs a weak state that does not force him to abide by any rules.” Sudan, a dictatorship ranked among the five most corrupt countries on the planet, certainly qualifies. Heilberg’s deal was approved by the deputy commander of Sudan’s People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), the official army of semi-autonomous southern Sudan. “This is Africa,” he recently told Rolling Stone. “The whole place is like one big mafia. I’m like a mafia head. That’s the way it works.”
  • Some African intellectuals bridle at Western criticism of the play on Africa. “They’re here because we want them here,” says Teshome Gabre-Mariam, one of Ethiopia’s top lawyers. “We can’t ignore the development potential of this venture. We have everything to gain, nothing to lose.”
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    Every day, a workforce of 1,000 locals pick, pack and load hundreds of tons of fresh produce onto waiting trucks, including 30 tons of tomatoes alone. After reaching the capital, Addis Ababa, the produce is flown to a handful of Middle Eastern cities, entirely bypassing Ethiopia, one of the hungriest places on the planet. The trip from vine to store shelf takes less than 24 hours. It's the latest project by Saudi oil and mining billionaire, Sheikh Mohammed Al Amoudi. And it may be the future of farming.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Oil-dependency and food: Livelihoods at risk - 0 views

  • Food sovereignty, the political project put forward by the international peasant movement Via Campesina, offers a promising road map.
  • Industrial agriculture may be more ‘efficient’ in terms of labour (output per worker), but its productivity is achieved through massive applications of fossil fuel-based inputs such as tractor fuel and agrochemicals. Small organic farms, however, are generally more efficient in terms of land (output per acre), since they grow a variety of plants and animals, taking full advantage of each ecological niche.
Arabica Robusta

Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis | Environment | The Guardian - 0 views

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    Supporters of biofuels argue that they are a greener alternative to relying on oil and other fossil fuels, but even that claim has been disputed by some experts, who argue that it does not apply to US production of ethanol from plants. "It is clear that some biofuels have huge impacts on food prices," said Dr David King, the government's former chief scientific adviser, last night. "All we are doing by supporting these is subsidising higher food prices, while doing nothing to tackle climate change."
Arabica Robusta

Gambling with the futures | SocialistWorker.org - 0 views

  • HISTORICALLY, FUTURES contracts were traded primarily between producers of commodities and consumers of commodities at large, regulated commodities exchanges. Most futures contracts eventually resulted in the actual delivery of a commodity on a set date. That's all changed in recent years. Now, the bulk of firms trading on futures exchanges are speculators with no intention of ever receiving delivery of the commodities they are trading.
  • All other things being equal, the prices of expiring futures contracts should converge with the pricing on spot markets on the date of expiration--that is, the price of oil in June should be pretty close to the price of oil futures contracts trading today that expire in June. But there are huge divergences developing. Why? Because there are too many investors chasing too few futures contracts, and this is creating demand for the underlying commodity that drives up the price of the commodity to be delivered in the future.
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    HISTORICALLY, FUTURES contracts were traded primarily between producers of commodities and consumers of commodities at large, regulated commodities exchanges. Most futures contracts eventually resulted in the actual delivery of a commodity on a set date. That's all changed in recent years. Now, the bulk of firms trading on futures exchanges are speculators with no intention of ever receiving delivery of the commodities they are trading.
Arabica Robusta

May 6 2008 - Agrofuels on Stolen Lands Continue to Threaten Colombian Rainforests and C... - 0 views

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    If agrofuels -- growing food for fuel -- continue to expand in Colombia, food prices are bound to rise and the nation's food security erode as is happening around the world. Decisive government action is needed to guarantee the lives and the safety of community members and to ensure reparation for environmental destruction and the human rights abuses. The exiled community leader Ligia Maria Cheverra has summed up the situation: "Our territory is being given to the palm oil producers. We need to stop every monoculture and the projects that are targeting our Colombia. This will affect the whole continent. Everything will be lost: the land, the water, the air, the animals, the people. What belongs to us is being destroyed. In Colombia those who speak out with a loud voice are being killed. Here only the ones who sell themselves are rewarded, and those who don't are called guerrilleros."
Arabica Robusta

Multinationals make billions in profit out of growing global food crisis - Green Living... - 0 views

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    Cargill says that its results "reflect the cumulative effect of having invested more than $18bn in fixed and working capital over the past seven years to expand our physical facilities, service capabilities, and knowledge around the world". The revelations are bound to increase outrage over multinational companies following last week's disclosure that Shell and BP between them recorded profits of £14bn in the first three months of the year - or £3m an hour - on the back of rising oil prices. Shell promptly attracted even greater condemnation by announcing that it was pulling out of plans to build the world's biggest wind farm off the Kent coast. World leaders are to meet next month at a special summit on the food crisis, and it will be high on the agenda of the G8 summit of the world's richest countries in Hokkaido, Japan, in July.
Arabica Robusta

IPS - Angola Slow on Drought Response as People Die of Hunger | Inter Press Service - 0 views

  • Although agriculture only accounts for a tiny part of oil-rich Angola’s GDP, it is the main source of employment in the country where millions live hand-to-mouth on rain-dependent subsistence farming. This is the second consecutive year that Angola has been affected by drought after several seasons of heavy rainfall and flooding.
  • Opposition parties have also been critical of the government’s response, claiming that communities who support the ruling Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) were receiving priority treatment and that local party branches and officials were promoting themselves through aid distribution.
  • Francisco Filomeno Vieira Lopes, secretary general of Bloco Democrático, a small party that has no seats in parliament but is vocal on social issues, told IPS that the government was too preoccupied with attacking those who were trying to publicise the problem, rather than actually helping those in need.
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  • Agriculture Minister Afonso Pedro Canga travelled to FAO headquarters in Rome earlier this month to collect the award for Angola meeting the Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people suffering from hunger and malnutrition.
Jenny jenny

Carrot Onion Tomato Soup - 0 views

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    Healthy eating and diet are because of varieties in food but also due to the yummy flavour being added... http://bit.ly/1k24ZdP #soup #food #chinesefood
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    Cooking recipes become interesting about food and eating when it has oomph into it while cooking... http://bit.ly/1k24ZdP #cooking #takeaways #delivery #food
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    Healthy eating and diet are because of varieties in food but also due to the yummy flavour being added... http://bit.ly/1k24ZdP
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    Put oil in pressure cooker under medium heat. Add chopped onions and cook, stirring, until... http://bit.ly/1k24ZdP #recipes #soup
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Biofuels and world hunger - 0 views

  • Biofuels are conservatively estimated to have been responsible for at least 30 per cent of the global food price spike in 2008 that pushed 100 million people into poverty and drove some 30 million more into hunger, according to the report, Meals per gallon, released by the UK charity ActionAid in February 2010 [1]. The number of chronically hungry people now exceeds one billion.
  • If all global biofuels targets are to be met, food prices could rise by up to an additional 76 per cent by 2020 and starve an extra 600 million people.
  • While driving up food prices can create hunger, driving people off the land that they have traditionally cultivated deprives them of the last resort of growing their own food. This is happening all over the developing world. In Mozambique, farms are destroyed for industrial biofuels. Elisa Alimone Mongue, mother and farmer said: ‘I don't have a farm, I don't have a garden … the only land I have has been destroyed. We are just suffering with hunger … even if I go to look for another farm, they will just destroy it again.’
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  • Julio Ngoene is fighting to save his community and its way of life. He is the village chief of approximately 100 households of more than 1,000 people. A biofuel company is setting up a project near his village and has taken over 80 per cent of the village farmland without permission, and destroyed the crops. At the beginning of the project, the company promised to resettle the village, but two years later, Julio and the villagers have still heard nothing, and no one in the village has received compensation.
  • There have been warnings against jatropha biodiesel going back several years [3] (Jatropha Biodiesel Fever in India, SiS 36). Jatropha has been hyped as a miracle non-food biofuel crop that would simply grow in marginal areas not suitable for food crops. But there was clear evidence that it would only deliver anywhere near the promised 1,300 litres of oil per ha when grown in fertile land with plenty of water, and that's what companies have set their eyes on.
  • But this year I could not get much because of the trees that have been cut. Now they have destroyed the trees so we have lost a good source of income forever, yet we have not been paid anything in compensation. That is why I confronted the white man at the meeting.’
  • Brazil is the largest industrial biofuel producer in the developing world, where the sugar cane (ethanol) plantation industry is well established. However, working conditions are often poor. Of the one million cane workers, about half are employed as cutters, mostly done by hand, in intense heat for long hours; and a number of deaths have been reported.
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    Biofuels are conservatively estimated to have been responsible for at least 30 per cent of the global food price spike in 2008 that pushed 100 million people into poverty and drove some 30 million more into hunger, according to the report, Meals per gallon, released by the UK charity ActionAid in February 2010 [1]. The number of chronically hungry people now exceeds one billion.
Arabica Robusta

UPDATE 3-Biofuels major driver of food price rise-World Bank | Markets | Reuters - 0 views

  • World Bank economist Don Mitchell concluded that biofuels and related low grain inventories, speculative activity, and food export bans pushed prices up by 70 percent to 75 percent.
  • "The large increases in biofuels production in the U.S. and EU were supported by subsidies, mandates and tariffs on imports," Mitchell said in the research, which looks at rapid rises in food prices since 2002. "Without these policies, biofuels production would have been lower and food commodity price increases would have been smaller."
  • Bob Dineen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association, said the report showed a bias by the author against biofuels and underestimates the impact of higher energy prices and a weak dollar on higher food costs. "Such a simplistic approach fails to accurately and honestly account for the myriad of factors driving food costs higher," Dineen said. "I encourage the author and the World Bank to revisit the issue without bias, taking into account the increasingly significant role biofuels are playing in reducing global oil demand."
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka News - 0 views

  • there are five basic guidelines, or principles, that must form the basis of any food policy.
  • The Principle of food sovereignty.
  • The Principle of priority of food over export crops produced by small farms sustained by state provision of the necessary infrastructure of financial credit, water, energy, extension service, transport, storage, marketing, and insurance against crop failures due to climate changes or other unforeseen circumstances.
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  • The Principle of self-reliance and national ownership and control over the main resources for food production.
  • The Principle of food safety reserves.
  • The Principle of a fair and equitable distribution of “reserve foods” among the population during emergencies.
  • the above quite commonsensical and, we believe, reasonable principles have not been followed by many governments in the South. They have been grossly violated through five main reasons,
  • Distorted state policies on production and trade (e.g. removal of tariffs that made local producers vulnerable to imported food
  • and grab by the rich commercial farmers
  • Effective loss of control over resources of food production,
  • Donor aid dependence
  • Disruption of the infrastructure of food production (as described above) that came as a consequence of the above four factors.
  • Just 10 corporations, including Aventis, Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta, control one third of the $23 billion commercial seed market and 80% of the $28 billion global pesticide market.
  • In an increasingly liberalizing (globalizing) world, Transnational Corporations (TNCs) have increased their control over the supply of water, especially in the South. In many cases, private sector participation in water services has been one of the “aid conditionalities” of the so-called “donor assistance” (ODAs) from donor countries and the IMF and the World Bank. Just three companies, Veolia Environnement (formerly Vivendi Environnement), Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux and Bechtel (USA), control a majority of private water concessions globally..
  • The Social Enterprise Development (SEND) Foundation in Ghana have criticised multi-national companies that are trying, using the “opportunity” of “food crisis”, to capture African agriculture through the so-called “Green Revolution” for Africa. FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN) said that peasants have been evicted in several African countries so that palm oil can be produced from forests.
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    there are five basic guidelines, or principles, that must form the basis of any food policy.
Arabica Robusta

Asia Times Online :: Asian news and current affairs - 0 views

  • The global food crisis is a monetary phenomenon, an unintended consequence of America's attempt to inflate its way out of a market failure. There are long-term reasons for food prices to rise, but the unprecedented spike in grain prices during the past year stems from the weakness of the American dollar. Washington's economic misery now threatens to become a geopolitical catastrophe.
    • Arabica Robusta
       
      . . . but are not U.S. subsidized food crops made cheaper by the weaker dollar? Certainly the biofuels demand affects this, but the argument is more complex than just this opinion. On the other hand, a simplistic statement seems rational: "when old food (oil) becomes scarce, people need to burn new food (grain, etc)."
Arabica Robusta

"The oil we eat: Following the food chain back to Iraq" by Richard Manning (Harper's Ma... - 0 views

  • “In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.”“The day is not far off,” Kennan concluded, “when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts.”
  • As Kennan recognized, however, the maintenance of such a concentration of wealth often requires violent action. Agriculture is a recent human experiment. For most of human history, we lived by gathering or killing a broad variety of nature's offerings. Why humans might have traded this approach for the complexities of agriculture is an interesting and long-debated question, especially because the skeletal evidence clearly indicates that early farmers were more poorly nourished, more disease-ridden and deformed, than their hunter-gatherer contemporaries. Farming did not improve most lives. The evidence that best points to the answer, I think, lies in the difference between early agricultural villages and their pre-agricultural counterparts—the presence not just of grain but of granaries and, more tellingly, of just a few houses significantly larger and more ornate than all the others attached to those granaries. Agriculture was not so much about food as it was about the accumulation of wealth. It benefited some humans, and those people have been in charge ever since.
Jenny jenny

Different Flavours of Food - 0 views

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    Flavour is the sensory impression of a food. Foods may contain... #food, #delivery http://bit.ly/1gzUjx7
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    Flavouring preparations form materials, which have a flavouring effect. Essential oils and fruit juices...http://bit.ly/1gzUjx7 #food #fooddelivery #homedelivery
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    Flavour is the sensory impression of a food . Foods may contain more than thousand chemical compounds that contribute to their flavour. Flavouring is used in food products at low concentration and is made up of mixture of substances which provide food a flavour of suitable strength which is used in the food production process.
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    Flavour is the sensory impression of a food. Foods may contain more than thousand chemical compounds that contribute to their flavour. Flavouring is used in food products at low concentration and is made up of mixture of substances which provide food a flavour of suitable strength which is used in the food production process.
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