Greenpa has said it better than I could. Go here to read his post.
The spiking of food prices around the world in just the past few months, especially in the poor countries, has many causes. It’s a coming together of effects from war, global climate change, drought, overpopulation, corrupt governments, and more. There are many organizations out there that are trying to address each of these individual causes, and many more that are just trying to help alleviate the hunger that is a result.
But as Greenpa and others have observed, there is one truly shameful addition to the list of causes. Pure greed. And while the other causes of hunger are truly so complex that no one can be certain whether enough of the right actions are being taken until we look back in hindsight and see success or failure, improvement or tragedy, THIS cause could easily be simply turned off. Regulated out of existence. What we’re talking about is the derivative market of speculation on food crops. People “investing” to “take advantage” of the “growth potential” of high food prices.
You know, we all wonder, as we watch the price of oil spike and sometimes plunge, or the price of gold or silver do the same, we all wonder how much of the price changes are truly a reflection of the demand versus the supply. I mean, it makes sense for a price to rise when an item has become scarce, whether through long-term depletion or because of some temporary logistical supply interruption. It makes sense for a price to rise when a static level of supply is expected to meet increasing demand. But it makes NO sense for the price to rise because some traders have decided to “go long” or “go short” on corn futures. And given the current situation, with hungry people rioting around the world because their barely-survivable food budget has suddenly become insufficient to keep them going, and given all the unavoidable forces pushing food prices higher at the moment (the aforementioned droughts, climate change, population pressures, peak oil-related costs of transportation, fertilizer, and all non-renewable energies), it’s absolutely *inhumane* that we permit a greed factor to be making it all worse.
As Greenpa says, this is one of those things where a rolling momentum, starting with bloggers, journalists, a grassroots awareness, can lead to legislative changes in fairly short order. It’s time for a demand to be created to stop this practice. In the USA, the pre-election year is as good a time as it gets for triggering national figures to take up causes from the grass roots. It just takes more and more and more and more people talking about it, until it becomes a visible demand.
So, talk it up. If you have a blog, post a link to Greenpa’s post. Send this information in an email to anyone you know who sees the horror that this food crisis is, or the potential uber-horror it is snowballing to be. If you know any politicians, rock stars, or tv producers, especially send it their way. If you participate in discussion boards that encompass current events or humanitarian issues or even just food, start a thread, put it in their sphere of consciousness.
Soon it will be on the news. Then it will be on the legislative floors of the most affected countries. It might not be on the floor of the US Congress until after November, but we’ll take what we can get.
Go forth. Help get the snowball rolling.
