Category: Sustainable Settlement and Agriculture

US warns of food vs fuel wars

admin /27 February, 2008

From the Financial Times  

When William Lapp, of US-based consultancy Advanced Economic Solutions, took the podium at the annual US Department of Agriculture conference, the sentiment was already bullish for agricultural commodities boosted by demand from the biofuels industry and emerging countries.

He added a twist – that rising agricultural raw material prices would translate this year into sharply higher food inflation.

“I hope you enjoy your meal,” Mr Lapp told delegates during a luncheon. “It is the cheapest one you are going to have at this forum for a while.”

His warning that a strong wave of food inflation is heading towards the world economy was met by nods from agriculture traders, food industry executives and western’s government officials at the USDA’s annual Agricultural Outlook Forum.

UN rations food aid

admin /27 February, 2008

The United Nation’s agency responsible for relieving hunger is drawing up plans to ration food aid in response to the spiralling cost of agricultural commodities.

The World Food Programme is holding crisis talks to decide what aid to halt if new donations do not arrive in the short term.

Josette Sheeran, WFP executive director, told the Financial Times that the agency would look at “cutting the food rations or even the number or people reached” if donors did not provide more money.

“Our ability to reach people is going down just as the needs go up,” she said.

Organic farmers welcome bio degradable packaging

admin /19 January, 2008

As global and domestic concern over landfill and waste management increases, Australian organic retailers and producers lead the charge in exploring innovative new methods of packaging, according to Australian biodegradable packaging suppliers.

Richard Fine is the CEO of BioPak, a company that sells biodegradable film for the storage of fast-moving-consumer-goods.

Packaging is primarily derived from natural corn or potato starch and allows for immediate breakdown when treated in a composting system.

Mr. Fine says interest in biodegradable products has increased due to burgeoning environmental awareness from consumers, and a rise in the cost of crude oil in petrochemical-based plastics, but that interest from some conventional business has lagged.

“The market wants to protect the environment, but not at any cost,” says Mr. Fine.

Chinese farmers fight officials for fossils

admin /9 November, 2007

BEIJING – Seven farmers from central China face trial for fighting officials who tried to take control of a lucrative lode of dinosaur fossils, state media reported on Wednesday.

The seven were accused of mobilizing residents of Shaping Village in Henan province to trash a police vehicle and fight officials after authorities tried to seize the fossils, the official China court news Web site reported.

After the big dinosaur bones were discovered in March 2006, the government told the farmers to hand over any rare and valuable fossils they had already hidden away.

Food prices soaring on international markets

admin /19 October, 2007

Official September quarter inflation figures were expected to show a spike in food prices, with the drought squeezing supply and farmers facing rising water, energy and labour costs, wrote Adrian Rollins, an economics correspondent, in The Australian Financial Review (19/10/2007, p. 18).

Should get used to paying more for food: The fall in food production was expected to fuel a sharp rise in food prices, with an 18 per cent jump in the cost of fruit and vegetables and a more modest 2 per cent increase in bread and cereal prices. And, according to research by the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, consumers should get used to paying more for their food, even when the drought eventually broke.

Factory Farms poison our diets

admin /13 October, 2007

Public and environmental health is being severely threatened through the institution of animal factory farming, which pollutes our water, air, soil and even our bodies with harmful chemicals and pollutants. Corporations now have taken over the practice of family farming and have developed cost-saving mass-production strategies that are not only dangerous to public health, but are also cruel to the animals being processed.

Animal factories, also known as large confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), go against traditional farming practices by treating the animal simply as a machine or production unit. These farms are more like an assembly line system of animal harvesting than anything resembling a genuine farm or ranch.

"Factory farming has taken the joy out of the lives of millions of calves and pigs, and billions of hens; it has driven countless family farmers off the land; it has polluted streams and rivers; it has injected massive amounts of antibiotics and other drugs into the public food supply resulting in serious health risks. It has lowered food quality," says Christine Stevens, author of the book Factory Farming, The Experiment That Failed.