U.N. says markets are to blame for world food crisis

Hannah Bell

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Fri Apr-11-08 04:46 AM
Original message

U.N. says markets are to blame for world food crisis

Source: Yahoo

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Global investment funds and the weak dollar are largely to blame for high world food prices, a senior official of the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization said on Thursday.

"The crisis is a speculative attack and it will last," said Jose Graziano, the UN food and farm organization's regional representative for Latin America and the Caribbean.

"This is not a conspiracy theory," he said.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080410/wl_nm/brazil_un_food_dc

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Hannah Bell

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Fri Apr-11-08 05:28 AM
Response to Original message

1. To this I might add: why are world food stocks down, leading

to the kind of vulnerabilities speculators can exploit?

One reason, a primary one:

Free trade agreements which forced draw-downs in a variety of ways.

Why? To let the free market in food reign, the market in which speculators make bumper profits in troubled times.

IT'S NOT OVER-POPULATION. IT'S NOT FOOD SHORTAGE, or inability to produce sufficient food because of global warming, or insufficient land, or anything else.

It's under-regulated financial capital, too much money in too few hands.

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bananas

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Fri Apr-11-08 06:31 AM
Response to Reply #1

2. Absolutely correct - k&r nt

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Earth_First

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Fri Apr-11-08 06:54 AM
Response to Original message

3. I had to laugh at the originating Reuters location of this story...

Being the capital of Brazil, yes.

But it definately sounds like an imaginary place that * would make up after stumbling word after word in front of the press corps; "Brasilia".

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