primitive alleges food fight in the offing

[franksolich]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=268x2181

Oh my.

The things the primitives get wrought about.

SpiralHawk  (1000+ posts)     Mon Nov-24-08 04:26 PM
Original message
 
Food wars ramping up

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/22/food-...

Rich countries launch land grab to safeguard food supply

Rich governments and corporations are triggering alarm for the poor as they buy up the rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in developing countries in an effort to secure their own long-term food supplies.

The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, has warned that the controversial rise in land deals could create a form of "neo-colonialism", with poor states producing food for the rich at the expense of their own hungry people.

Rising food prices have already set off a second "scramble for Africa". This week, the South Korean firm Daewoo Logistics announced plans to buy a 99-year lease on a million hectares in Madagascar. Its aim is to grow 5m tonnes of corn a year by 2023, and produce palm oil from a further lease of 120,000 hectares (296,000 acres), relying on a largely South African workforce. Production would be mainly earmarked for South Korea, which wants to lessen dependence on imports.

"These deals can be purely commercial ventures on one level, but sitting behind it is often a food security imperative backed by a government," said Carl Atkin, a consultant at Bidwells Agribusiness, a Cambridge firm helping to arrange some of the big international land deals.

(snip)

louis-t (1000+ posts)        Mon Nov-24-08 04:43 PM
Response to Original message
 
1. Palm oil as a food source?

One of the worst things you can put in your body. Figures. Someone else will become rich forcing poison on people who have no choice.

TheWraith  (1000+ posts)      Mon Nov-24-08 05:21 PM
Response to Reply #1
 
2. Actually I suspect that they mean that for use as biofuel.

Palm oil is one of the better crops for it. The only thing that produces a much higher yield than palm oil is algae.

[BlueStateSaint]

Ya know what I can't figure out, Coach?  Just who the **** do they think will be working those "neo-colonist" food plantations, anyway?  And won't they be paid in something that they can use to buy food for themselves?

Brother . . . nah, I can't say that.  My brother, for all of the sibling shit I've given him over the years, is a pretty good conservative (except for the fact that he hated Sarah Palin).  I won't insult my brother by saying "brother" when describing exasperation at the primitives.

The level of stupidity at the DUmp just keeps going lower and lower.  But, I knew that that would happen. 

[DumbAss Tanker]

If it got to that point, the crops would never leave the country of origin on those terms, regardless of who was the technical owner of the land.  Stupid hypothesis.

[comradebillyboy]

The level of stupidity at the DUmp just keeps going lower and lower.  But, I knew that that would happen. 

That's because those of us who weren't  quite as dumb as the majority of the herd over there left when the stupidity got out of control.

[BlueStateSaint]

That's because those of us who weren't  quite as dumb as the majority of the herd over there left when the stupidity got out of control.

Being dumb is excusable, because you don't know that you don't know.  Being stupid is another thing entirely, because you should know better.