Monday, July 28, 2008
Speculators Trying to Buy Control of Food Supply
According to the New York Times, Financial Times, and others, hedge funds and other investors are buying up farms, farmland, fertilizer, grain elevators, shipping equipment and other necessities for producing food.
Given the meltdown in the housing and financial sectors and the weakness in the U.S. economy, large investors figure that everyone has to eat, and so investing in food production is a sure thing.
That means that speculators will drive up food prices.
As Jim Hightower puts it:
"By 'owning structure,' they mean centralizing control of food in the hands of financial manipulators who have only one crop in mind: fat profits.
***Price? Aha! That’s what consolidation of farms and storage facilities is all about. If you can lock down production and stockpile the supply – you can control price. If corn prices are lower than what investors want them to be, simply store the corn and force prices up. Or, if corn prices are down in the U.S., ship it to Japan or wherever else might be more profitable. And if these distortments cause a food crash? Hey, the speculators will already have sucked out billions in profits, and they will just move to the next hot investment.
Hedge funds bring nothing but greed and grief to the farm economy and our food supply, and they should be banned from 'owning structure.'"
Hightower may be right: we should demand that Congress prevent speculators from buying up one of the main necessities.
Moreover, this just strengthens my conviction that we should guarantee our access to inexpensive and healthy food. See this and this.
6 comments:
→ Thank you for contributing to the conversation by commenting. We try to read all of the comments (but don't always have the time).
→ If you write a long comment, please use paragraph breaks. Otherwise, no one will read it. Many people still won't read it, so shorter is usually better (but it's your choice).
→ The following types of comments will be deleted if we happen to see them:
-- Comments that criticize any class of people as a whole, especially when based on an attribute they don't have control over
-- Comments that explicitly call for violence
→ Because we do not read all of the comments, I am not responsible for any unlawful or distasteful comments.
Posts
Very nice site. Organized and an eye-pleaser.Celebrate your love this Valentine’s Day in renovated and redesigned style at the all-new Westward Look Resort. Online Booking your table of love in the resort’s new cheers with a little pack of sham pen drinks, GOLD, and surprise your sweetheart with a perfect beginning to a perfectly romantic day.
ReplyDeleteThe first wow gold thing for wow gold you to consider buy wow gold about the buy wow gold Druid class cheap wow gold is this: Is the cheap wow gold Druid class wow power leveling right for wow power leveling you? The power leveling Druid class power leveling is kind of wow gold unique in that buy wow gold it's not for cheap wow gold everyone. While world of warcraft gold master of none.
ReplyDeletet is what we call 'the syndrome of the passive patient'. Basically we can't have anything with nothing and we know that if the client does not implicate himself wow gold or herself a little bit financially then he or she won't make the effort later on and make
ReplyDeletebiodegradable cutlery the changes which are truly necessary. This is why it is essential for me that the people I help implicate themselves and why I do not work for free. It is very important for me to know that I am not working pointlessly on an individual's analysis, producing a reading that wow gold 5000 will not be fully read or assimilated while all I really want to do is to pass on the valuable information which SRO gold. is going to so radically change your life Isis. Experience has shown me that the only means for me to be absolutely certain that the person who requests my work Get free WOW gold is going wow gold sale to make the effort and implicate himself or herself to bring about real change is to ask for a small financial participation. Isis, you will understand that if you don't want pulp egg tray to spend a few dollars to ask me to produce this full reading for you whilst I have already spent over
food container 10 hours on your file without asking you for anything at all in return (once again please understand
SRO gold
Relative laptop battery:dell 700m battery
ReplyDeleteVGP-BPL2 PA-1650-01 hp EV088AA hp EV089AA hp 446506-001 dell C1295 hp 441425-001
hp 432306-001
apple A1079 apple M9421
D5318
B130
417066-001
VGP-BPS2A VGP-BPS2C
VGP-BPS2
hp 375126-001
gateway 0225C1965
gateway API3AD03
Dell Inspiron E1505
Acer Aspire 3000
sony VGN-BX168GP
hp PPP017L
Dell Inspiron 1100
gateway 6020GZ
PA-1650-02
hp 325112-001
Relative lcd panel:
ReplyDeletemacbook a1181
LP154W01
LP154WX4
dell Inspiron 6000
apple LP133WX1
Relative Keyboard:
dell NC929
hp 441541-001
dell B130
hp DV9000
hp 441427-001
dell inspiron 6000
hp dv6000 keyboard
toshiba satellite 2410
Actually, I think it is a wise investment. Land seems to continue to appreciate and we will always need food.
ReplyDeleteAmanda,
owner of Personal Checks Company