The world food crisis for dummies: food as a weapon

there really isn't any mystery to the rapidly-escalating global food crisis... just like endless war, it's all part of the plan of the global elites to make sure that they, and only they, remain in charge... since they have all the money imaginable, augmented by immense power, they will never have to worry about where their next meal will come from, and then, when all the great unwashed finally kill each other off over a cup of rice or die from starvation, the world will be an ever-so-much-nicer place for them to live...

amy goodman interviewing raj patel...

[I]f you imagine a sort of hourglass, at the top there are the millions of farmers who grow the food that we eat, and at the bottom there are billions of us consumers, and in the middle there are just a handful of corporations that mediate between the people who grow our food and us. And those corporations, in many cases -- it's usually four corporations controlling more than 50 percent of the market. I mean, in tea, for example, one company, Unilever, controls 90 percent of the market.

Now, when you're in that position of market power, you're able to do a great deal. First, you're able to drive prices down for farmers. And of course the irony there is that farmers and farm workers are the poorest people on the planet. So you're paying the poorest people on the planet the least. And then you're processing the food so that what we end up with is food that is rich in salts and fats and sugars, food that tends to make us want to buy more, food that makes us obese. And that's why you're having a situation where there are six billion people in the world, a billion of whom are now overweight.

[I]n the past, it used to be that the people who were overweight were rich ... and the people who were hungry were poor. Today, hunger and obesity are both signs that people are unable to control their diets. They're unable to control, not in a sort of willpower way, but unable to control in terms of being able to access fresh fruits and vegetables, access food that is healthy. I mean, in the United States, for example, it's much harder for communities of poor people and people of color, in particular, to access fresh fruits and vegetables. In West Oakland, for example, near where I live, you have a situation where there's just one supermarket in West Oakland and dozens and dozens of liquor stores where there are no fresh fruits and vegetables, but there are these highly processed industrial foods. Now, that's a sign that in fact -- I mean, it would be wonderful for all of us to be able to access these fresh fruits and vegetables, but at the moment, particularly for people on low incomes, that's pretty tough to do. And so, the environments in which poor people find themselves and which are being built around poor people are more conducive to being overweight and to be unhealthy in the cities, and for poor people in the fields, those kinds of prices that come from the industrial food system are driving them out of business.

if that doesn't put it all in perspective for you, then try this...

Using food as a weapon is as old as the siege but today’s barbarians have upped the anté by several orders of magnitude.

“…There are only two possible ways in which a world of 10 billion people can be averted. Either the current birth rates must come down more quickly. Or the current death rates must go up. There is no other way. There are, of course, many ways in which the death rates can go up. In a thermonuclear age, war can accomplish it very quickly and decisively. Famine and disease are nature’s ancient checks on population growth, and neither one has disappeared from the scene … To put it simply: Excessive population growth is the greatest single obstacle to the economic and social advancement of most of the societies in the developing world.” — Speech to the Club of Rome by Robert McNamara, Oct. 2, 1979

“Overpopulation and rapid demographic growth of Mexico is already today one of the major threats to the national security of the United States. Unless the U.S.-Mexico border is sealed, we will be up to our necks in Mexicans for whom we cannot find jobs.” —Robert McNamara, then World Bank president, March 19, 1982

McNamara’s thinly veiled genocidal utterances took place over thirty years ago, echoing the wealthy and the privileged’s fear of the ’great unwashed’ when ‘over-population’ was the buzzword. So not much has changed has it, we’re hearing the same, tired old messages being rolled out once again by the ruling elites and their spin doctors. McNamara’s cries of fear about being up to his neck in Mexicans is exactly same as the current bogey doing the rounds in Europe, only now they’re Africans.

[...]

[I]t’s the economic and political policies of our governments in cahoots with Big Business that created the crisis in the first place (as it has all previous crises).

The ‘credit-crunch’ /is merely symptomatic of a sick system that needs to be replaced poste haste.

The issue is really quite simple, as long as we have ruling elites joined at the hip to Big Capital, running the show, they will never, not in a million years entertain the idea of doing away with the present economic system—which is the cause of all our miseries—and replacing it with a saner and more modest way of earning a buck, there’s too much at stake and for so few, dammit! Only we, the so-called people can do that, they won’t even begin to change things unless we either force them to or failing that, get rid of them.

didja get all that...? good...!

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