Corn: What now?

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Permalink Reply by OntAG Admin on September 18, 2010 at 5:48am

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Permalink Reply by Joann on September 28, 2010 at 8:24am

By all accounts, the financial situation to the south of us appear to have the hallmarks of another recession as you suggest Michael. As our federal minister of finance, Mr. Flaherty has announced the recession of 08 ended, I can well imagine the looming American financial difficulties will inspire new verbiage for the approaching recession..... but the price of commodities???

There has been some interesting discussions concerning the price of commodities... and as we all know... the price in Chicago does not always translate in the same way to the farmer.

The UN Special Rapporteur on food, Mr. Olivier De Schutter, released a report recently called the Food Commodities Speculation and Food Price Crises.

Mr. De Schutter writes: '[Beginning in ]2001, food commodities derivatives markets, and commodities indexes began to see an influx of non-traditional investors,; De Schutter writes. 'The reason for this was because other markets dried up one by one: the dotcoms vanished at the end of 2001, the stock market soon after, and the US housing market in August 2007. As each bubble burst, these large institutional investors moved into other markets, each traditionally considered more stable than the last. Strong similarities can be seen between the price behaviour of food commodities and other refuge values, such as gold.'

Further stating: 'A significant contributory cause of the price spike [has been] speculation by institutional investors who did not have any expertise or interest in agricultural commodities, and who invested in commodities index funds or in order to hedge speculative bets.'
http://www.stwr.org/food-security-agriculture/food-commodities-spec...

Problem identified.

Now for the reactions: Engage the public

"An ActionAid report released last week revealed that hunger could be costing poor nations $450bn a year – more than 10 times the amount needed to halve hunger by 2015 and meet Millennium Development Goal One." http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/sep/24/food-crisis-un-em...

Solution: take Sovereignty away from individual nations for the ultimate solution of global food regulation.

Jacques Diouf, Director-General, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, called for "bolstered global governance system for world food security". He said, “We have to build a more coherent and effective system of governance for world food security; we have to correct the policies and international trade system that have resulted in more hunger and poverty." when responding to the 2008 food crisis (which many blamed on bio-fuels at the time)


Will the higher prices translate into more money for the farmers? I doubt it. There appears to be a movement afoot to control agricultural commodity prices under the guise of "food security" with enhanced trade.

If anything, food commodity prices will be globally harmonized... which will not bode well for Ontario farmers.

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