Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Agribusiness Is Getting Fat Off Starvation

A dear friend send me this piece that lays out a very familiar tale for George Bush's America. I.e., corporations raking in obscene profits to the cost and on the backs of millions of regular people. This, my friends, is what you get from letting the market adjust things. Monsanto, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland . . . all those big boys are making record profits. They think market forces are just ducky.

Now, the food crisis is the result of many things: increased demand for meat (read more feed grains for cattle) in China and India, a drought in Australia, record low world food stocks, the siphoning off of huge supplies of corn--up to a third of the U.S. crop--and grain for biofuels [and part of the reason for the obscene profits is government subsidies both in the US and Europe to the producers], and export bans have all contributed. But there's also been a five-fold increase in the past year in investment in grain and meat index funds. So food speculators have helped push the price up, too. Congressional hearings are going to be held, as if those milquetoasts are going to do anything about this.

Food riots are breaking out everywhere: Haiti, Yemen, Egypt, Somalia and other African countries, and other places. Know what I think? I think we ain't seen nothing yet.

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