Street Race Syndicate Mediafire

Why raise the price of food?

UN fears unrest ("revolutions?) Due to the rising price of staple foods. Mexico is a surreal crisis tortillas (no corn, no tortillas, the national dish). What's happening? What happens when the world has 9000 million people (2035)? The brilliant animation explains Denis Van Waerebeke quite the mess. Summarize ten conclusions about two Movement Landless Rural Workers (MST) and Via Campesina. Why rising food staples? What are the causes? 1.The
oligopolistic control a few companies have global agricultural trade (soybean, corn, rice, wheat, milk ...) because they impose a price regardless of the actual cost of production. 2. Speculation of large investors in the stock of agricultural commodities to food has become mere business papers. Since the bags are sold in the next seven crops of soybeans in the world.

3. Financial speculation, many banks invest their volatile capital in agricultural goods to protect the general crisis.

4. The agricultural production of biofuels (ethanol), which has its prices based on oil, finished pushing the average rate of profit in agriculture up.

5. The high cost to transform millions of tons of grain in animal protein. In other words, the elites are demanding more meat, and therefore part of the production of vegetables, which could be consumed by the population, goes for animals.

6. The privatization of public services for agriculture, which transferred the control of multinational corporations.

7. Environmental health laws and patent licenses, implemented in the period of neoliberal governments to promote oligopolistic control of some enterprises gives them power to impose price.

8. The general rule imposed by the WTO (World Trade Organization) from 1994 that turned food into mere commodities, to be regulated solely by the market.

9. The introduction of private ownership of GM seeds requires new technological matrix with higher production costs and the benefit of the same companies that control the trade, seeds and agricultural inputs.

10. Food prices internationalized. The parameters of production and prices are no longer the real cost of food production in each country, but establishing a global average price-controlled companies.


(From CounterPunch)