digg

Join DiggAbout

Digg Townhall Tonight!
Tune into the live Digg townhall tonight at 5:00pm PST/8:00pm EST.

Global food crisis - Do we blame Al Gore or George W Bush

americangoy.blogspot.com — Our media is missing the biggest story of the decade here. Right now, millions around the world are starving, because food prices rose 80% (sourced number!) and there are food riots in 33 countries. This is thanks to the biofuel craze (making food into fuel for cars) and the record price of oil, caused by US Iraq War 2.

show profanity settings
expand all
  • americangoy, on 04/09/2008, -3/+23This is a treasure trove of info - pure gold for intelligence analyst:

    http://www.climatechangenews.org/nFood.html

    Despite the website name, it simply lists articles from worldwide mainstream news (UK, USA, other countries) that deal with this topic.

    It is hair raising - go through the article titles and descriptions one by one, and try to fight back your panic.
  • MarkusGarvey, on 04/09/2008, -2/+28for starters, converting food crops to fuel is totally ridiculous...there are so many plants that can be converted to bio fuel, with little or no maintenance...(i.e . hemp, various noxious weeds, switch grass, algae..etc..) and not to mention trash...also the effects of GMO's, that have been responsible for epic crop failures...
    • americangoy, on 04/09/2008, -1/+16Finding a chemical process to convert trash seems like a no brainer to me.

      But you know, the farmer lobby needs to earn a living...

      Very good point Markus!
    • kemp34, on 04/10/2008, -0/+7Converting crops to fuel is despicable.
  • jflowers45, on 04/09/2008, -1/+16Great original content in the article ... author does a good job of summarizing and analyzing articles from all over.
  • lastdalek, on 04/09/2008, -4/+6I hate to say it, but Earth may be reaching it's limited ability to sustain life. We are running out of/wrecking land needed to produce crops to sustain people. Sorry 3rd world, no food this month. :(
  • Loudtyper, on 04/09/2008, -1/+6Do we really utilize land as well as we once did?
    • MarkusGarvey, on 04/09/2008, -1/+9of coarse we do! we turn prime farm land into housing developments and poison the rest...//s...
  • 3tcp, on 04/09/2008, -3/+6All of them. Without protectionist policies that prevent the import of ethanol or sugar we wouldn't need to look to corn to produce all of our ethanol. We should fund our own sugar ethanol program but the corn lobby is too strong to give up their monopoly and all the politicians have their hands out.
    • jbur816, on 04/09/2008, -0/+15Sugar based ethanol is responsible for major damage to tropical rainforests. Ethanol is lame. There are other, better alternatives.
  • i70CuDa, on 04/10/2008, -2/+1misery and famine, great ellipse, we bend to thee
  • sUGArDawg, on 04/10/2008, -8/+3Does the US have enough food? Yes? Good.
  • kemp34, on 04/10/2008, -1/+2Both
  • dualboy24, on 04/10/2008, -0/+2Well I would blame us all, but mainly those greedy bastards running the big corporations, you know the ones that put their profit above people, well then again most of us would do that, well not I, nor you of course.
  • PeppermintPig, on 04/10/2008, -0/+8Farm subsidization and anti-competition regulation is primarily to blame. Farmers are being paid to NOT grow crops over a certain amount, but we have crops becoming scarce due to an EXPANSION IN APPLICATION of crops. In other words, why the hell are we still subsidizing farmers not to grow? Why are we setting artificially inflated prices on milk and produce? *****. *****.
  • martalli, on 04/10/2008, -1/+2Maybe you could also blame baby number 5.
  • crazybugger, on 04/10/2008, -0/+1Soon we will have GM crops solving the problem of food shortage.
    • markvand, on 04/10/2008, -0/+6Yeah, Monsanto's terminator seeds are going to save the day. /sarcasm
    • PlagueOfMorons, on 04/10/2008, -0/+6In India, cotton farmers are committing suicide (horribly by drinking pesticide) because their Monsanto GM-cottonseed crops are complete failures. The proprietary seed fails to produce as claimed, and the farms fail. The farmers cannot pay their loans, feed their families, and they kill themselves. Thank you, Monsanto, for the brave new world of GM crops.
  • TrevaLVF, on 04/10/2008, -0/+5We can have the renewable energy without creating more problems. We don't need to dip into food supplies to do it.
    People have been making bio-diesel by recycling quality cooking oil from restaurants and other food service industries that would have otherwise paid somebody to haul away and do whatever they wanted to do with it.
    As MarcusGarvey mentioned (Comment #2 on this page), there are plenty of non-food sources that naturally grow all over the place (except Hemp, which naturally *grew* all over a large percentage of this planet before the anti-hemp/anti-marijuana fascists decided to rigidly restrict it to places like Jamaica).
    Problem is, elite profiteers, including Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Albert Gore, and also some Bush Oil Cartel insiders, decided that if we are to reduce, or remove our dependency on global oil, then they would seize a vast amount of control on the alternative fuel market. That's why they've been pushing ethanol, hydrogen, and hybrid vehicles that depend on these two alternative fuels and on electricity. They want consumers to depend on these resources and the hybrid made to run on them, instead of on alternative resources that you and I could grow in our yards and in flower pots, or find along roadsides anywhere, and process in our own garages, workshops and sheds. They can't cash in on these products if they aren't controlled by corporations which sell shares on Wall St., which is why the "need" us to depend on products where they have invested, regardless of the greater price we all pay as a result.
  • badwithcomputer, on 04/10/2008, -1/+5call me crazy, but i blame crab people- look like crab, cause global food crisis like people.
  • louiebaur, on 04/11/2008, -0/+1Can I guy advertising on that tank?
  • AvangionQ, on 04/11/2008, -0/+3"Americans, who do not use the internet to connect to Reuters and Associated Press, as well as blogs run by unpaid volunteers whose mission it is to inform their readership of political and other news, are screwed - because TV "news" is worse than useless - it is a total waste of time." ... couldn't agree more -- you find more real news on the internet than you do on any mainstream television news network ... mostly because those networks are corporate controlled and have been running puff pieces as distraction from more urgent matters (economy, Iraq, environment, crime at the highest ranks of politics) ...
  • davharrington, on 04/11/2008, -0/+3When a barrel of oil costs 150 bucks BEFORE it's refined so a tractor can cut the wheat (using diesel), then is transported to market (using a diesel engine). The cost of the wheat cannot stay the same.

    When biofuels are being grown so less wheat gets grown and grounded into flower (using engergy) the price of Flour/wheat cannot stay the same it goes up.
  • lschofield, on 04/11/2008, -0/+5Please check out a page I've put together about the US Farm Bill, which is currently being debated. There is background info, current status, and an action center with things you can do if you like. The Farm Bill is the cause of the US' food crisis - many articles are cited providing excellent research into this. View it at http://digg.com/health/Why_are_America_s_poor_the_ ... (BTW - thats neither a classist nor an anti-American statement - quite the opposite. The USDA's nutritional guidelines and the crops they fund the production of are very much at odds!).
    • americangoy, on 04/13/2008, -0/+2done and done.

      good web page btw.
  •  

    Login or register to add a comment

    Create a new account or login to join in the conversation on Digg. You'll also be able to Digg stories to help promote things you like.


© Digg Inc. 2008 — Content posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain.
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.