It can happen only in India. A goods train carrying rice has disappeared.
The train was carrying 26,000 quintals (or 260 metric tonnes) of rice, stacked in 40 coaches. The rice stocks belonged to the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which had loaded the grain on May 23, 2010 at Dhamora (Rampur), and the food stock was to be delivered at Jorhat in Assam. Over two months have passed, and the FCI is unable to locate the goods train.
Well, I thought only the renowned magician P C Sarkar had the ability to make trains disappear before our eyes!!
This is not the first time however that a goods train has disappeared. I remember in the early 1980s, a goods train carrying chemical fertiliser from the public-sector National Fertiliser Ltd (NFL) had disappeared somewhere in Andhra Pradesh. As a young reporter with Indian Express, I recall a news report that I had written on this mysterious disappearance act. If I remember correctly, even a year later the NFL had failed to track the fertiliser that had disappeared.
I did not follow the news story thereafter. But it will be interesting if some intrepid reporter is able to find out from NFL whether the chemical fertiliser was ever traced. Also, what happened to the train? Was it ever traced?
I am sure you must be equally baffled at such disappearance acts. Only a month back, nearly 500,000 tonnes of iron ore valued at Rs 200-crore, and seized by the Karnataka forest department and Lok Ayukta, had disappeared from Bellikeri Port in Karnataka. I sometimes wonder how can such a huge quantity of metal simply disappear? It certainly would require a massive operation, involving hundreds of people and officials, and it shouldn't be difficult to pin down the culprits.
But such is the indifference that we have become accustomed to that we don't even raise an eyebrow. We no longer question, and make any effort to force the authorities to bring the crooks to book. We have simply accepted such frauds (and this one probably defies any visible logic) as nothing unusual. As a nation we have become immune to frauds, the size and scale does not matter any more.
Mera Bharat Mahaan
The jatropha scandal bursts. But who will punish the ministers, planners and the researchers who misled on the potential of this crop for bio-diesel?
The warning has come a little too late. The UN FAO has now come out with a special report that 'warns against the hype and half-truths around Jatropha curacas, and oil seed plant touted as a major potential source of biofuels,' says Economic Times (July 26, 2010).
It is amusing to find the FAO is behaving more or less like the way Indian police is normally portrayed in the Bollywood films. In Hindi films, the police invariably arrives after the hero has bashed up the villain, and its task is merely to handcuff the bad guy. Or the police is central to the theme of the film dealing with a corrupt society.
I find the FAO fitting the role very well. Either it joins the chorus with the likes of the chemical and biotech companies in hoodwinking the world to believe that GM crops is the answer to growing hunger, or comes out at the end with a warning when jatropha plantations have already done a huge damage. According to estimates, close to one million hectares of jatropha is being cultivated worldwide.
"Although there have been increasing investments and policy decisions concerning the use of jatropha as an oil crop, they have been based on little evidence-based information," the report said, adding: "identifying the true potential of jatropha requires separating the evidence from the hyped claims and half-truths." I agree. In fact, I had been questioning the claims being projected by the pro-jatropha lobby all these years, but for reasons we know now, they have always fallen on deaf ears. The fault not only rests with the politicians and policy makers but also with the academicians who came out with false studies demonstrating the potential of jatropha as an oil seed crop.
Sometimes back I was participating in a conference in Germany where researchers from several universities showcased their studies about the virtues of jatropha plantations as a fuel crop. This is not the only international conference where scientists came out with empirical findings to tell us the half-truths. This is indicative of the decay that has set in among the educational institutes worldwide. But unfortunately no one seems to be concerned. We will continue to be misled.
I think the FAO would do well if it were to list all those institutes and universities which came out with reports/studies eulogising the potential of jatropha as a fuel crops. At least this will expose the nexus that operates in the name of academic excellence.
Anyway, let us return back to the FAO study. The Economic Times states that the report came two weeks after two researchers at Belgium's University of Leuven said that the crop requires more water than had been thought, and was best suited for small-scale farming in remote areas, where alternative fuel supplies are erratic and expensive. I don't know what is new in this. Several studies in India and elsewhere had pointed to this, but probably we needed an endorsement from a western university to uphold the finding.
Sometimes back, I had quoted a report from The Independent (Feb 15) in these columns: In India, forecasted annual yields of three to five tonnes of seeds per hectare have been scaled back to 1.8 to two tonnes. It quoted Raju Sona, a farmer in north-east India who gave up land that usually produces vegetables to grow jatropha, said: "No one will buy jatropha. People said if you have a plantation then surely you have a good market. But we didn't see such a market. I threw the seeds away."
Way back, in May 2009, I had in a blog posting under the head "Jatropha seeds fuelling another scandal?" brought out how India had put up a jatropha plantation plan without even realising that the crop was not suitable. Foolish as we are, India has planned to bring in a total of 13 million hectares under jatropha plantations by 2013. Will the Prime Minister question the concerned policy makers who came out with this plan recommendations? Why shouldn't they be punished for misleading the nation, and putting in scarce resources where they were not required?
Look at this: "In April 2003, the Planning Commission had initiated a proposal calling for a major multi-dimensional programme seeking to replace 20 per cent of country's diesel requirement. In March 2004, the first instalment of Rs 800-crore for the National Programme on Jatropha was released to 'support cultivation of jatropha in 200,000 hectares'. Under the programme, a total allocation of Rs 1500 crore to cover 400,000 hectares was envisaged for the next five years."
You can read the blog at
http://devinder-sharma.blogspot.com/2009/05/biofuels-scandal-jatropha-dream-dying.html
The ET report further says that the FAO has also punctured the argument that growing jatropha utilizes marginal lands effectively. The level of economic returns needed to secure private sector investment "may not be attainable on degraded land" considering better gross margins which can be gained on sugarcane and oil palm plantations.
Here is the Economic Times report:
Don't fall for jatropha plants, warns UN body
http://bit.ly/cPWRXb
It is amusing to find the FAO is behaving more or less like the way Indian police is normally portrayed in the Bollywood films. In Hindi films, the police invariably arrives after the hero has bashed up the villain, and its task is merely to handcuff the bad guy. Or the police is central to the theme of the film dealing with a corrupt society.
I find the FAO fitting the role very well. Either it joins the chorus with the likes of the chemical and biotech companies in hoodwinking the world to believe that GM crops is the answer to growing hunger, or comes out at the end with a warning when jatropha plantations have already done a huge damage. According to estimates, close to one million hectares of jatropha is being cultivated worldwide.
"Although there have been increasing investments and policy decisions concerning the use of jatropha as an oil crop, they have been based on little evidence-based information," the report said, adding: "identifying the true potential of jatropha requires separating the evidence from the hyped claims and half-truths." I agree. In fact, I had been questioning the claims being projected by the pro-jatropha lobby all these years, but for reasons we know now, they have always fallen on deaf ears. The fault not only rests with the politicians and policy makers but also with the academicians who came out with false studies demonstrating the potential of jatropha as an oil seed crop.
Sometimes back I was participating in a conference in Germany where researchers from several universities showcased their studies about the virtues of jatropha plantations as a fuel crop. This is not the only international conference where scientists came out with empirical findings to tell us the half-truths. This is indicative of the decay that has set in among the educational institutes worldwide. But unfortunately no one seems to be concerned. We will continue to be misled.
I think the FAO would do well if it were to list all those institutes and universities which came out with reports/studies eulogising the potential of jatropha as a fuel crops. At least this will expose the nexus that operates in the name of academic excellence.
Anyway, let us return back to the FAO study. The Economic Times states that the report came two weeks after two researchers at Belgium's University of Leuven said that the crop requires more water than had been thought, and was best suited for small-scale farming in remote areas, where alternative fuel supplies are erratic and expensive. I don't know what is new in this. Several studies in India and elsewhere had pointed to this, but probably we needed an endorsement from a western university to uphold the finding.
Sometimes back, I had quoted a report from The Independent (Feb 15) in these columns: In India, forecasted annual yields of three to five tonnes of seeds per hectare have been scaled back to 1.8 to two tonnes. It quoted Raju Sona, a farmer in north-east India who gave up land that usually produces vegetables to grow jatropha, said: "No one will buy jatropha. People said if you have a plantation then surely you have a good market. But we didn't see such a market. I threw the seeds away."
Way back, in May 2009, I had in a blog posting under the head "Jatropha seeds fuelling another scandal?" brought out how India had put up a jatropha plantation plan without even realising that the crop was not suitable. Foolish as we are, India has planned to bring in a total of 13 million hectares under jatropha plantations by 2013. Will the Prime Minister question the concerned policy makers who came out with this plan recommendations? Why shouldn't they be punished for misleading the nation, and putting in scarce resources where they were not required?
Look at this: "In April 2003, the Planning Commission had initiated a proposal calling for a major multi-dimensional programme seeking to replace 20 per cent of country's diesel requirement. In March 2004, the first instalment of Rs 800-crore for the National Programme on Jatropha was released to 'support cultivation of jatropha in 200,000 hectares'. Under the programme, a total allocation of Rs 1500 crore to cover 400,000 hectares was envisaged for the next five years."
You can read the blog at
http://devinder-sharma.blogspot.com/2009/05/biofuels-scandal-jatropha-dream-dying.html
The ET report further says that the FAO has also punctured the argument that growing jatropha utilizes marginal lands effectively. The level of economic returns needed to secure private sector investment "may not be attainable on degraded land" considering better gross margins which can be gained on sugarcane and oil palm plantations.
Here is the Economic Times report:
Don't fall for jatropha plants, warns UN body
http://bit.ly/cPWRXb
France and India: The Beautiful Farms are all but dying
Little light at the end of the tunnel: Bertranine says her decision to move beyond crops and livestock came with the gritty realization that agriculture had become a buyers' market dominated by wholesalers whose sole objective was to crunch prices -- Time photo
The cover story of the latest issue of the Time magazine "The French Farms: Beautiful but in Danger" had a blurb which says it all: Hit by a shrinking agricultural sector, falling prices and diminishing European Union aid, French farms have learned to adapt -- or die." The more I gleaned through the pages of the cover story, the more I realise how true it is for agriculture in India or for that matter in other parts of the world.
The scale and size of farming may differ but agriculture across the globe is shrinking, and farmers are being pushed out of farming.
Several years back, one of the stalwarts of Indian agriculture, the late Dr M S Randhawa, had told me: "The real culture of Punjab, is agriculture." Why am I telling you about Punjab is because it is the food bowl of India, with a lot of creative writing centering around the romance of agriculture. That romance has certainly disappeared over the years, and today Punjab agriculture is on a death-bed. So when the Time article states: "La France profonde, an almost untranslatable term, conjures up the idea that the "real" France is rural France," I can understand what it portrays to convey.
The beautiful farms of Punjab are also dying.
As the article says: "FranÇois Purseigle, an expert in rural sociology and an agriculture professor at the National Polytechnic Institute of Toulouse, says that fully half of France's active population worked in agriculture at the turn of the 20th century. But the sector has shed 4 million jobs in the past 40 years, and now accounts for less than 3% of the national workforce. Purseigle says the number of farms in France has plunged from 2 million in 1960 to around 657,000 now, and only 346,500 of those are classified as professional operations under cultivation."
This is true for India too. Over the years agriculture has been shrinking. Its share in country's GDP has also been on a steep decline. Roughly 57 per cent workforce is still engaged in farming as per official estimates, down from 70 per cent some four decades back. There are still 600 million people directly engaged in agriculture, and the mainline economic thinking is to cut it drastically. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh feels that India needs to offload about 70 per cent of the workforce engaged in agriculture.
What is happening in France is also happening in India, and in fact in a much more worrisome way. The continuing apathy and neglect of agriculture has led to a massive increase in farmer suicides (which I find is a tragedy that also confronts rural France) and the marginalisation of the farming communities. Following the World Bank prescription of land rentals, India is on a fast forward approach to acquire farm lands for industry and real estate.
A third of India is faced with an unprecedented social unrest, a direct outcome of the destruction of agriculture and forestry, which I strongly feel is the first line of defence against Maoism. And yet, economic policies are aimed at reducing the dependence on agriculture, and shifting the focus to industry, manufacturing and services. Those who will stay back in agriculture will conform to 'an industrial mind-set to agriculture by relying on massive production, using dwindling numbers of farmers to cultivate multiple holdings that were abandoned by retiring neighbors, and raising crops for wholesalers who supply food-processing companies.'
So for many, as the authors say, 'the choice is now a stark one: find some new way to make ends meet, or risk being a victim to a farm sector that's predicted to shrink.'
I recall former Agricultural Commissioner and Vice-Chancellor Dr D R Bhumbla used to say that although everyone says that life in rural areas is healthy and uncontaminated, but no one actually wants to migrate to the countryside. "Even my grandchildren do not want to visit me during their summer holidays. They expect me to join them in the city instead. One reason is that at least for 12 hours a day, they have to do without electricity on my farm, which is intolerable for those who have got used to this luxury or necessity as you deem it fit." I was reminded of what Dr Bhumbla used to say when I read in the Time article: "A vacation in the country "is something that appeals to people with memories of childhood summers spent on their grandparents' farm, or who want their children to see what farms are like," says Marie-ThÉrÈse Lacroix. But as a business, she continues, it is "too small to turn back the trends we've seen in recent decades. No one wants to inherit family farms because it's too much work for too little money, and that's emptying the countryside."
There are so many parallels that one can draw from the analysis, but one thing is crystal clear -- there is a deliberate effort to kill agriculture. Globalisation is designed primarily to push farmers out of farming, and to replace food farming with the concept of 'farm to fork' kind of agribusiness. The fundamental fault lies with the way economists compute the gross domestic product (GDP). It does not factor in the cost and benefit of the prevailing farming systems, the food cultures, and the cost of protection and preservation of the environment by farmers who tend the farms.
For any progressive society, the erosion of the farms should come as a loud warning. We are fast moving towards a future where the romance of food is all set to disappear. Food choices are becoming increasingly narrow, and the entire food chain -- right from the farm to the fork -- is coming under the yoke of agribusiness. This is a frightful future, and I fail to understand why our political leaders remain blind to the food disaster that awaits the world.
Probably this is because people have become indifferent to the food crisis. As long as they can stuff themselves with cheaper food products nicely packed and wrapped, they believe all is well. This is what the food industry has managed to convince the masses with. Again, as I said earlier, it is linked to GDP growth. The more the harmful processed foods you eat, the more is the sale of pharmaceuticals; and the more is the sale of medicines and hospital treatments, the more is the need for insurance cover. No wonder, the insurance industry has pumped in $ 2 billion in food stocks.
We are becoming a victim of GDP.
Meanwhile, here is the Time article:
How to Save Rural France
By BRUCE CRUMLEY / SAINT-MARTIN-D'ARBEROUE
Surrounded by a deep blue sky and the green-fleeced slopes of rolling Basque-country hills, Bernadette Pochelu winds her way between an outdoor pen of pigs, a noisy barn full of lambs, and her zigzagging dog, whose barks announce each change of its mistress's direction. She strolls through a milking hangar and cheesemaking area, and finally the shop where she and husband Jean-Claude sell specialty Basque cheeses, sausages and ham to the around 10,000 people who visit their Agerria farm each year. Many who go for a free tour of the homestead in Saint-Martin-d'Arberoue, about 40 km west of Bayonne, wind up taking armfuls of its products home - or bedding down in one of the five B&B rooms the Pochelus operate. Their workdays stretch from 6:30 a.m. until after 8 p.m., with only a 20-minute break for lunch and the odd moment between chores to contemplate the single week of vacation they get away for each year. "Still, I wouldn't trade this for anything," Bernadette Pochelu says.
What the Pochelus have at Agerria is an example of how many of France's smallholding farmers are adapting to secure their futures. It involves finding a way out of a tightening trap of falling prices that markets are willing to pay for produce, together with plans to reduce aid and decouple it from production criteria when the European Union's current $1.1 trillion Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) expires in 2013. That challenge is especially critical for French farmers, who currently receive nearly 20% of CAP funding - a total package worth about $54 billion this year alone. E.U. criteria linking subsidies to greener, sustainable farming practices and wider rural development rather than traditional production volumes will expand considerably, placing additional pressure on France, whose $82 billion agricultural sector is by far the largest in Europe. While no one expects that financial support to go away, it's already clear its enormous costs to the E.U. - which spends around 45% of its entire budget on agriculture - will force farmers to look for new ways of doing business, and with less aid.
Both farm productivity and competition have surged in the past two decades, while the wholesaling and food-processing businesses in European agriculture have undergone significant consolidation. Globalization means that food companies can shop around, so fewer farmers can find industrial buyers willing to pay them as much as it costs to produce fruit, vegetables, milk and meat. Some French farmers prefer to give their produce away - or dump it in protest. For many, the choice is now a stark one: find some new way to make ends meet, or risk being a victim to a farm sector that's predicted to shrink.
All of this is part of a wider evolution that has brought profound changes to rural France. The land - fruitful, fertile and able to deliver the highest-quality products to consumers - has been an important part of modern France's mental makeup, and has assumed a central role over decades of French economic development as other E.U. neighbors focused on industry. La France profonde, an almost untranslatable term, conjures up the idea that the "real" France is rural France, found in the landscape that shifts constantly from plain to mountain and back again, and which produces here a cuisine based on butter, but just over there, one that relies on oil. It's not just the French who think there's something magical about it all; at a time of the year when TV viewers around the world are watching the Tour de France wind its way through the countryside, the sense that there is something special about rural France is one that has long been held far beyond the Hexagon.
But rural France has been changing for years. FranÇois Purseigle, an expert in rural sociology and an agriculture professor at the National Polytechnic Institute of Toulouse, says that fully half of France's active population worked in agriculture at the turn of the 20th century. But the sector has shed 4 million jobs in the past 40 years, and now accounts for less than 3% of the national workforce. Purseigle says the number of farms in France has plunged from 2 million in 1960 to around 657,000 now, and only 346,500 of those are classified as professional operations under cultivation. With fewer children stepping up to take over from retiring parents, the total number of farms is set to drop further to 320,000 by 2020. Many of those, meanwhile, will bear no resemblance to the family-run farms of yore, but instead take the form of the megaoperations dominating grain production in the Ile-de-France region - historically the nation's breadbasket. Those have brought an industrial mind-set to agriculture by relying on massive production, using dwindling numbers of farmers to cultivate multiple holdings that were abandoned by retiring neighbors, and raising crops for wholesalers who supply food-processing companies.
"As recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there were 120 smallholding farmers in our village compared to two or three now - and they all cultivate areas covering four or five older farms just to survive," says Joseph Lacroix, 80, who along with wife Marie-ThÉrÈse worked their corn and kiwi farm 160 km south of Bordeaux before retiring and handing it over to their son in 1992. Before they did, they transformed buildings on the farm into two studios and a guest room to rent to tourists to fill revenue shortfalls, and they continue running the operation to augment their pension. A vacation in the country "is something that appeals to people with memories of childhood summers spent on their grandparents' farm, or who want their children to see what farms are like," says Marie-ThÉrÈse Lacroix. But as a business, she continues, it is "too small to turn back the trends we've seen in recent decades. No one wants to inherit family farms because it's too much work for too little money, and that's emptying the countryside."
It's tempting to explain the change as a consequence of globalization - and its impact on the relatively high costs of agricultural production in France. Though the amount of French land cultivated has steadily reduced over time to 32 million hectares, French farmers have adapted and modernized to increase volumes, cut costs, and boost efficiency. In 1970, the work of each French farmer fed 15 people; now it feeds 60. But however French farmers have improved their efficiency, wholesalers and food processors now can access even cheaper alternatives - wheat from Ukraine, strawberries from Morocco.
Read the full article at:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100723/wl_time/09171200577700
Hungry will remain hungry
There can be nothing more disappointing. After 63 years of Independence, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) has also expressed its helplessness in feeding the country’s hungry.
The hungry must live in hunger.
For a country which has the largest population of hungry in the world, and given that half of all children in India is under-nourished according to the National Family Health Survey III (2005-06), I was expecting Sonia Gandhi to spell out a time-bound programme to make hunger history, and at the same time overhaul the existing corruption-ridden public distribution system (PDS). But from what we read in the newspapers, the NAC recommendations will not make any significant difference to the life of millions of hungry and malnourished.
From what I gather, Sonia Gandhi did probably make the effort. But it is her NAC team which failed to match her enthusiasm. If the members had made meaningful suggestions, there is no reason why the NAC wouldn’t have made the right recommendations. Come to think of it, the NAC recommendations will only bring cheers to the grain traders.
Promising to provide 35 kg of foodgrains at Rs 3/kg to below the poverty line population, and ensuring 25 kg of grains to the APL households in 2000-poorest blocks in the country, is actually a clever move to move away from universalisation of food entitlements. In any case, I feel the the universal food entitlement approach can wait. The middle class is capable of feeding itself. If they can buy swanky cars and consumer durables at the drop of a hat, they can also meet their food requirements. The best way forward is to start by feeding the poor first, and then move to the above the poverty line.
The challenge is to first feed the hungry. According to ICMR norms, each able-body adult needs a minimum of 14 kg a month. Given that an average family comprise five members, each household would need 70 kg of grains. By providing 35 kg only, we are ensuring that the hungry remain perpetually hungry. They continue to sleep with an empty stomach. In any case, this much quantity was being made available to them earlier too. The purpose of bringing in a National Food Security Act (NFSA) is not to simply legitimise what was being delivered through the bogus PDS all these years.
The argument against increasing the food allocations is that the annual procurement on an average is around 50 million tonnes and by promising more than 35 kg per household, the government will fail to provide the entitlement. Well, in my understanding this is merely an apology. Although food production in India remains stagnant over the years, and even then much of the procured foodgrains rot for want of proper storage, the fact remains that given an attractive price, Indian farmers are capable of doubling production.
Let us look at China. Its population is approximately 200 million more than that of India. Against India’s foodgrain production of 230 million tonnes, China produces 500 million tonnes of foodgrains. Even with more than double food production, it imports huge quantities every year to meet the domestic needs. Unlike India, which exports foodgrains and other agricultural commodities by keeping its own people hungry, China has emerged as a major importer of food and agricultural products primarily to feed its teeming millions.
In India, the average per capita availability of foodgrains is less than 500 gm a day. On the other hand, China provides six times more at 3kg per day. No wonder, while India is trying to ride the high-growth trajectory with empty stomachs and emaciated bodies, China is building a healthy nation knowing well that a well-fed population is not only a political necessity but makes strong social and economic sense.
Also, agriculture and food security is the first line of defence against insurgency. Resurrecting agriculture therefore should have been the first step to ensure long-term food security.
I had therefore expected Sonia Gandhi to have over-ruled the mandarins from the Planning Commission, as well as from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, to lay out a blueprint for feeding the country for all times to come by incorporating measures like extending sustainable farming practices which do not acerbate the environmental crisis, and also making agriculture economically viable; by redesigning trade and development policies that do not open the floodgates to highly subsidised agricultural commodities, and also shifting the focus from corporate agriculture back to making small farms profitable and environmentally sustainable.
Local production and local procurement is the key to any successful food security initiative. The proposed National Food Security Act (NFSA) therefore should be overarching enough to incorporate suitable policies and plans that not only cuts into the domain of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, but also extends to Ministry of Environment & Forests as well as the Ministry of Science & Technology. It will require an overall economic policy shift to ensure that agricultural land is not acquired for the industry, and technologies like GM crops are not thrust upon the farming communities.
Knowing that enhancing production remains outside the ambit of the NFSA, merely making a mention of it will not help. If the objective is to simply create a new position of Food Commissioner (with the rank of a Supreme Court judge) at the national level, and a series of State Commissioners (with the rank of a High Court judge), then the basic objective of feeding the hungry is lost.
Although the NFSA has created a new category of “socially vulnerable” it is not sure as to how will that be implemented. On the contrary, it leaves a lot of room for misappropriation and corruption. The better option should have been to extend the ‘below the poverty line’ to 55 per cent of the population so as to also include those who are on the margins.
In fact, this would be in tune with the latest multi-dimensional poverty estimates developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Accordingly, eight States – Bihar, Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal – have more desperately poor people than 26 poorest African nations. Earlier, India ranked 66th in the Global Hunger Index prepared for 88 countries.
There is no justification for India to fare below Sub-Saharan Africa in hunger and poverty rankings. Most of the African nations are torn by strife and have unstable governments. If those African countries had stable governments like India, I am sure India would have been relegated to the bottom of the pile. I don’t know how long we Indians can remain indifferent to growing hunger and malnutrition. Let us for once nip the evil in the bud. #
The hungry must live in hunger.
For a country which has the largest population of hungry in the world, and given that half of all children in India is under-nourished according to the National Family Health Survey III (2005-06), I was expecting Sonia Gandhi to spell out a time-bound programme to make hunger history, and at the same time overhaul the existing corruption-ridden public distribution system (PDS). But from what we read in the newspapers, the NAC recommendations will not make any significant difference to the life of millions of hungry and malnourished.
From what I gather, Sonia Gandhi did probably make the effort. But it is her NAC team which failed to match her enthusiasm. If the members had made meaningful suggestions, there is no reason why the NAC wouldn’t have made the right recommendations. Come to think of it, the NAC recommendations will only bring cheers to the grain traders.
Promising to provide 35 kg of foodgrains at Rs 3/kg to below the poverty line population, and ensuring 25 kg of grains to the APL households in 2000-poorest blocks in the country, is actually a clever move to move away from universalisation of food entitlements. In any case, I feel the the universal food entitlement approach can wait. The middle class is capable of feeding itself. If they can buy swanky cars and consumer durables at the drop of a hat, they can also meet their food requirements. The best way forward is to start by feeding the poor first, and then move to the above the poverty line.
The challenge is to first feed the hungry. According to ICMR norms, each able-body adult needs a minimum of 14 kg a month. Given that an average family comprise five members, each household would need 70 kg of grains. By providing 35 kg only, we are ensuring that the hungry remain perpetually hungry. They continue to sleep with an empty stomach. In any case, this much quantity was being made available to them earlier too. The purpose of bringing in a National Food Security Act (NFSA) is not to simply legitimise what was being delivered through the bogus PDS all these years.
The argument against increasing the food allocations is that the annual procurement on an average is around 50 million tonnes and by promising more than 35 kg per household, the government will fail to provide the entitlement. Well, in my understanding this is merely an apology. Although food production in India remains stagnant over the years, and even then much of the procured foodgrains rot for want of proper storage, the fact remains that given an attractive price, Indian farmers are capable of doubling production.
Let us look at China. Its population is approximately 200 million more than that of India. Against India’s foodgrain production of 230 million tonnes, China produces 500 million tonnes of foodgrains. Even with more than double food production, it imports huge quantities every year to meet the domestic needs. Unlike India, which exports foodgrains and other agricultural commodities by keeping its own people hungry, China has emerged as a major importer of food and agricultural products primarily to feed its teeming millions.
In India, the average per capita availability of foodgrains is less than 500 gm a day. On the other hand, China provides six times more at 3kg per day. No wonder, while India is trying to ride the high-growth trajectory with empty stomachs and emaciated bodies, China is building a healthy nation knowing well that a well-fed population is not only a political necessity but makes strong social and economic sense.
Also, agriculture and food security is the first line of defence against insurgency. Resurrecting agriculture therefore should have been the first step to ensure long-term food security.
I had therefore expected Sonia Gandhi to have over-ruled the mandarins from the Planning Commission, as well as from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, to lay out a blueprint for feeding the country for all times to come by incorporating measures like extending sustainable farming practices which do not acerbate the environmental crisis, and also making agriculture economically viable; by redesigning trade and development policies that do not open the floodgates to highly subsidised agricultural commodities, and also shifting the focus from corporate agriculture back to making small farms profitable and environmentally sustainable.
Local production and local procurement is the key to any successful food security initiative. The proposed National Food Security Act (NFSA) therefore should be overarching enough to incorporate suitable policies and plans that not only cuts into the domain of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, but also extends to Ministry of Environment & Forests as well as the Ministry of Science & Technology. It will require an overall economic policy shift to ensure that agricultural land is not acquired for the industry, and technologies like GM crops are not thrust upon the farming communities.
Knowing that enhancing production remains outside the ambit of the NFSA, merely making a mention of it will not help. If the objective is to simply create a new position of Food Commissioner (with the rank of a Supreme Court judge) at the national level, and a series of State Commissioners (with the rank of a High Court judge), then the basic objective of feeding the hungry is lost.
Although the NFSA has created a new category of “socially vulnerable” it is not sure as to how will that be implemented. On the contrary, it leaves a lot of room for misappropriation and corruption. The better option should have been to extend the ‘below the poverty line’ to 55 per cent of the population so as to also include those who are on the margins.
In fact, this would be in tune with the latest multi-dimensional poverty estimates developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Accordingly, eight States – Bihar, Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal – have more desperately poor people than 26 poorest African nations. Earlier, India ranked 66th in the Global Hunger Index prepared for 88 countries.
There is no justification for India to fare below Sub-Saharan Africa in hunger and poverty rankings. Most of the African nations are torn by strife and have unstable governments. If those African countries had stable governments like India, I am sure India would have been relegated to the bottom of the pile. I don’t know how long we Indians can remain indifferent to growing hunger and malnutrition. Let us for once nip the evil in the bud. #
"The Food Bubble: How Wall Street Starved Millions and Got Away with It"
In 2008, the world witnessed an unprecedented food crisis. Food prices skyrocketed, and staple food disappeared from the market shelves. The resulting tremors were felt across the globe, with some 37 countries facing food riots.
Was the food crisis an outcome of the drought in Australia? Or was it because wheat production had fallen? Or was it because quite a sizable area under foodgrains had been diverted for biofuel production? The world had debated these options, but what emerged clearly was that much of it was triggered because of speculation in the futures trade. In fact, it was much worse than what was earlier anticipated.
In 2008, wheat production was the highest. There was therefore no reason why wheat prices should have soared to a record level.
America's popular TV show Democracy Now had in a two part series a few days ago unearthed the murky world of speculation in markets, and the role it played in creating the food crisis. Amy Goodman's interview with Frederick Kaufman, author of the article "The Food Bubble: How wall Street Starved Millions and Got Away with it" (Harper's Magazine), and Juan Gonzalez, political reporter for Rolling Stone, is a must read for everyone engaged in food and agriculture, including policy makers, planners and economists.
I strongly recommend this interview for every business editor and reporter who have out of their ignorance done more damage to farmers as well as the consumers. They need to first understand the dirty game of commodity trading. The people dealing in commodity trading, I am sure you will agree after you have read the inteview below, are a bunch of crooks. The Business Channels and the pink newspapers have done enough damage by backing these traders without even knowing what it actually translates into.
True, while Goldman Sachs agreed last Thursday to pay $550 million to resolve a civil fraud lawsuit filed by the SEC, Goldman has not been held accountable for many of its other questionable investment practices. Read this shocking exposure below:
AMY GOODMAN: We continue with Goldman Sachs.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, while Goldman Sachs agreed Thursday to pay $550 million to resolve a civil fraud lawsuit filed by the SEC, Goldman has not been held accountable for many of its other questionable investment practices. A new article in Harper’s Magazine examines the role Goldman played in the food crisis of 2008, when the ranks of the world’s hungry increased by 250 million. The article is titled "The Food Bubble: How Wall Street Starved Millions and Got Away With It."
AMY GOODMAN: The author of the article, Frederick Kaufman, joins us now. He’s a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine. Well, explain. We’re talking about Goldman Sachs today, this—they call it a landmark settlement, but they made more after-hours in trading last night than they will have to pay. So let’s look at Goldman Sachs and its record overall.
FREDERICK KAUFMAN: Yeah, this is really—it’s really outrageous. And on a certain level, this reform bill is really a sham, because it does not cover, in any way, shape or form, what Goldman Sachs—and really, let’s be honest here, it wasn’t just Goldman; it was Goldman, and it was Bear, and it was AIG, and it was Lehman, it was Deutsche, it was all across the board, JPMorgan Chase—what these banks were able to do in commodity markets, really which reached its peak from 2005 to 2008, in what is now known as the food bubble. And as Juan points out, this is unconscionable what happened, in the sense that their speculation and their restructuring of these commodity markets pushed 250 million new people into food insecurity and starving, and brought the world total up to over a billion people. This is the most abysmal total in the history of the world.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, what were these commodities markets like before the Wall Street firms got involved? And you have a haunting picture, especially of the Minneapolis Exchange, what it was before, what it was like. Could you talk about how things operated and then what Goldman Sachs did precisely?
FREDERICK KAUFMAN: The wheat markets, in particular, in this country are the outcome of a process of development of over 150 years. And that is why, from about 1903 to 2003, the real price of wheat in this country has gone down. And this was one of the great reasons for America’s great twentieth century, the fact that we had cheap food, we had cheap bread. And Goldman, in 1991, came up with a new idea and a new product, which, as I said before, completely restructured this market and completely threw it out of whack.
But before we go there, we just have to maybe review for a second a little bit about how these markets worked and what kept that wheat price stabilized. And Juan, you mentioned the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, this kind of obscure syndicate in the Midwest, which is where the price of this particular kind of wheat, hard red spring wheat, which is the most widely traded wheat in the world, and it’s the most widely exported wheat from the American continent—we kind of set the world price on this wheat. This is where it happens. What’s the history of that price being stabilized is you have, traditionally, in the wheat futures market, two kinds of players: one of the farmers and the millers and the warehousemen—right? And this, of course, includes players like Domino’s Pizza and Sara Lee and General Mills, very large business, capitalist stakes are in this wheat market, right? And they are called bona fide hedgers, because they’re actually buying and selling real wheat. As the price fluctuates in the futures markets, you also traditionally have speculators in this market, people who don’t want wheat, who wouldn’t have any place to put it if they bought it, but they’re making money off buy orders and sell orders, as the price fluctuates each day, and hopefully they’re bringing in some money for themselves every day. That’s the idea.
Now, the key here is that both the bona fide hedgers and the speculators, every time they buy, they’re also selling, and every time they sell, they eventually buy. So their positions are cleared off at the end of the day, OK? Goldman, we have to understand, and a lot of these banks, are not interested in the particular structure of any of these markets. I think it’s a lot of mistake people make when they think about how these bankers are working. We think that they’re actually interested in the markets. We think that they’re—no. What they’re after are very large pools of cash for themselves. They’re after accumulating huge pools of money that they can do with whatever they like on a day-to-day basis. Right? And so, Goldman, in 1991, came up with this idea of the commodity index fund, which really was a way for them to accumulate huge piles of cash for themselves. It wasn’t really about the markets, anyway. The market was just an excuse. And so, the fact that they threw these wheat markets out of whack didn’t really matter to them.
How did this work? Instead of a buy-and-sell order, like everybody does in these markets, they just started buying. It’s called "going long." They started going long on wheat futures. OK? And every time one of these contracts came due, they would do something called "rolling it over" into the next contract. So they would take all those buy promises they had made and say, "OK, we still—we’re just going to—we’ll buy more later. And plus we’re going to buy more now." And they kept on buying and buying and buying and buying and accumulating this unprecedented, this historically unprecedented pile of long-only wheat futures. And this accumulation created a very odd phenomenon in the market. It’s called a "demand shock." Usually prices go up because supply is low, right? That’s the idea. There’s not a lot of supply, so the price goes up. In this case, Goldman and the other banks had introduced this completely unnatural and artificial demand to buy wheat, and that then set the price up. Now, a lot of people are saying, "Oh, it was biofuel production. It was drought in Australia. It was floods in Kazakhstan." Let me tell you, hard red wheat generally trades between $3 and $6 per sixty-pound bushel. It went up to $12, then $15, then $18. Then it broke $20. And on February 25th, 2008, hard red spring futures settled at $25 per bushel. This is completely beyond the pale, particularly at a—
JUAN GONZALEZ: Almost ten times its historic price.
FREDERICK KAUFMAN: Yeah. It was just completely out of control. And, of course, the irony here is that in 2008, it was the greatest wheat-producing year in world history. The world produced more wheat in 2008 than ever before.
And here’s the other outrage of it, which is that at the time that Goldman and these other banks are completely messing up the structure of this market, they’ve protected themselves outside the market, through this really almost diabolical idea called "replication," which is what I discovered when I was looking into how they had structured this. What they do—let’s say, Juan, you want me to invest for you in the wheat market. You give me a hundred bucks, OK? Well, what I should be doing is putting a hundred bucks in the wheat markets. But I don’t have to do that. All I have to do is put $5 in. Good-faith promise. And with that $5, I can hold your hundred-dollar position. Well, now I got ninety-five of your dollars. What am I going to do with them? Well, what Goldman did with hundreds of billions of dollars, and what all these banks did with hundreds of billions of dollars, is they put them in the most conservative—no fools, they—they put them in the most conservative investments conceivable. They put it in T-bills. And then what did they do? Well, now that you have hundreds of billions of dollars in T-bills, you can leverage that into trillions of dollars. This is what I’m talking about, large pools of cash for themselves. And then they take that trillion dollars, they give it to their day traders, and they say, "Go at it, guys. Do whatever is most lucrative today." And so, as billions of people starve, they use that money to make billions of dollars for themselves.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And the result was, as the price went up, that there were food riots around the world.
FREDERICK KAUFMAN: Yeah.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And what about the human dislocation that occurred?
FREDERICK KAUFMAN: Yeah, in 2008, there were food riots in more than thirty countries. The global price of food rose over 80 percent. This had an effect not only on wheat, but on corn, on soy, on cooking oil, on rice. You know, people talk about globalization. "We don’t need to set prices or have tariffs, because we’re globalized. You know, people can buy their wheat, anyway." Well, gee, guess what happened. When the price of wheat started to go through the roof, something new, which was something old, came up, called "nationalism," and people said, "OK, sorry, we’re closing our wheat, and we’re setting up tariffs." And you had—you had riots. You had hunger. You had a disaster. You had a global disaster, because, remember, in America, we’re spending maybe 15 percent of our weekly paycheck on food, right? I mean, maybe you remember, a couple years ago, why was that dozen eggs so expensive? Why was that milk so expensive? Why was that meat so expensive? That’s 15 percent. For most people on the earth, they’re spending more than 50 percent of their daily income on their daily bread. And when their daily bread moves up 80 percent, they’ve just moved right into the ranks of the food insecure. And it was not only in Burkina Faso. This was in America. You had 49 million hungry families in America. You had one out of five children in America at soup kitchens. You had a million hungry people in Los Angeles.
So, I mean, it is unconscionable that Wall Street has completely lost touch with the reality. They’ve forgotten that there is their mathematical formula, there’s virtuality, on the one hand—"Gee, I can make a lot of money by making a formula"—and on the other hand, there’s reality. There are real things that they are affecting, and they’ve completely forgotten about it, to devastating effect.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think needs to be done?
FREDERICK KAUFMAN: Well, the solution is interesting, and it certainly is not going to be solved by the financial reform bill we’ve just seen, because, of course, the people I talk to at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange and all over, they’re already prepared for every single trade being exchange-traded. The people at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange have already prepared 50,000 exchange-traded slots for anything that people want to trade. Now, when I was talking to the hedge fund guys and the traders and all my contacts on this, and I said, you know, "What if Wall Street—I’m sorry, what if the federal government regulates you?" they just laugh. They literally laugh. They scoff at federal regulators, because they’re like, "By the time they get around, they figure out what we’re doing, we’re so far beyond it." And in fact, the commodity index funds, the long-only commodity index funds that I looked at now, they’re already dinosaurs. They’re onto second-, third- and fourth-generation reiterations of this. There’s no way the federal government is going to be on top of them, because they’re so far ahead.
So, what’s the other possibility? The other possibility is simply outlaw it, say, if you’re a bank, you’re not allowed a stake, you’re not allowed a stake in actual commodity markets. And I said to these guys, you know, "What if they just outlaw you?" And once again, rather unsurprisingly, their reaction is outright laughter, because it takes them about ten seconds to get over that problem. Either they make a phone call to London and do all their trading out of the London Exchange, or they do an over-the-counter swap with a Cargill or a Nestlé or a bona fide hedger, and it’s taken care of.
So what’s the solution? I think the best solution that’s been floated around in Washington in the groups I’ve been close to is an actual international or national grain reserve. I mean, we actually in this country, before this kind of mania of deregulation, had a farmer-owned grain reserve under the Clinton administration, real grain held back, so that in times of a bubble like this, regulators can say, "Look, you know, we have plenty of real wheat. Here’s a hundred million bushels of wheat. We can bring it to the market. We can bring that price back into a stable band." And this is, I think, in some ways, the best solution: real wheat to counter virtual madness.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, yet, as you were saying, that the Wall Street firms are always able to devise new ways to get around regulation. I was reading in today’s paper on the new bill, the financial regulation bill, that the banks have already devised new methods. For instance, that they are no longer able to charge such exorbitant interest rates on credit cards, so now they’re going to begin imposing fees on checking accounts. And they just come up with an immediate new solution to keep making huge amounts of money and getting around the regulators. So, even with this reserve situation that you raise about creating grain reserve, are there potentials for the Wall Street firms to figure out a new way to continue to control and make money off the food supply?
FREDERICK KAUFMAN: Well, I think the theory behind what you’re saying, Juan, is called "market capture," in the sense that whenever you have a group of people, be they in the auto business or in the healthcare business, whenever they fear regulation from the government, this group is, of course, the most at-risk group. They are the ones who put more of their resources into understanding this regulation than anybody else, more of their lobbyists, more of their money into understanding what’s going on, and therefore, they’re the ones who ultimately—the people whose interest it touches most intrinsically are the ones who then capture that reform, market capture. So what I like about the grain reserve is that it’s actually outside of the purview, outside of the financial purview. As I said before, it’s no longer in the realm of the virtual; it’s no longer in the realm of the numbers. It’s actual real wheat, and you can actually bring it to bear. You can bring it to markets. There was a complete madness for hard red spring wheat in 2008, when you had international orders coming in from Nigeria, from all over the world, and there literally was the perception that there was no wheat out there. And so this thing, as you say, goes up and up and up and up and up. If there is actually somebody who can say, who can bring real wheat and calm these markets, you’re going to save lives. It’s not just that you’re going to save mortgages or that you’re going to save, you know, finances; it is that, literally, you no longer have those outrageous numbers of starving people on earth, most of them women and children.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there. I want to thank you very much for being with us. "The Food Bubble" is Frederick Kaufman’s piece http://harpers.org/archive/2010/07/0083022 in Harper’s Magazine, "How Wall Street Starved Millions and Got Away With It." We’ll link to it at http://www.democracynow.org/
Was the food crisis an outcome of the drought in Australia? Or was it because wheat production had fallen? Or was it because quite a sizable area under foodgrains had been diverted for biofuel production? The world had debated these options, but what emerged clearly was that much of it was triggered because of speculation in the futures trade. In fact, it was much worse than what was earlier anticipated.
In 2008, wheat production was the highest. There was therefore no reason why wheat prices should have soared to a record level.
America's popular TV show Democracy Now had in a two part series a few days ago unearthed the murky world of speculation in markets, and the role it played in creating the food crisis. Amy Goodman's interview with Frederick Kaufman, author of the article "The Food Bubble: How wall Street Starved Millions and Got Away with it" (Harper's Magazine), and Juan Gonzalez, political reporter for Rolling Stone, is a must read for everyone engaged in food and agriculture, including policy makers, planners and economists.
I strongly recommend this interview for every business editor and reporter who have out of their ignorance done more damage to farmers as well as the consumers. They need to first understand the dirty game of commodity trading. The people dealing in commodity trading, I am sure you will agree after you have read the inteview below, are a bunch of crooks. The Business Channels and the pink newspapers have done enough damage by backing these traders without even knowing what it actually translates into.
True, while Goldman Sachs agreed last Thursday to pay $550 million to resolve a civil fraud lawsuit filed by the SEC, Goldman has not been held accountable for many of its other questionable investment practices. Read this shocking exposure below:
AMY GOODMAN: We continue with Goldman Sachs.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, while Goldman Sachs agreed Thursday to pay $550 million to resolve a civil fraud lawsuit filed by the SEC, Goldman has not been held accountable for many of its other questionable investment practices. A new article in Harper’s Magazine examines the role Goldman played in the food crisis of 2008, when the ranks of the world’s hungry increased by 250 million. The article is titled "The Food Bubble: How Wall Street Starved Millions and Got Away With It."
AMY GOODMAN: The author of the article, Frederick Kaufman, joins us now. He’s a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine. Well, explain. We’re talking about Goldman Sachs today, this—they call it a landmark settlement, but they made more after-hours in trading last night than they will have to pay. So let’s look at Goldman Sachs and its record overall.
FREDERICK KAUFMAN: Yeah, this is really—it’s really outrageous. And on a certain level, this reform bill is really a sham, because it does not cover, in any way, shape or form, what Goldman Sachs—and really, let’s be honest here, it wasn’t just Goldman; it was Goldman, and it was Bear, and it was AIG, and it was Lehman, it was Deutsche, it was all across the board, JPMorgan Chase—what these banks were able to do in commodity markets, really which reached its peak from 2005 to 2008, in what is now known as the food bubble. And as Juan points out, this is unconscionable what happened, in the sense that their speculation and their restructuring of these commodity markets pushed 250 million new people into food insecurity and starving, and brought the world total up to over a billion people. This is the most abysmal total in the history of the world.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, what were these commodities markets like before the Wall Street firms got involved? And you have a haunting picture, especially of the Minneapolis Exchange, what it was before, what it was like. Could you talk about how things operated and then what Goldman Sachs did precisely?
FREDERICK KAUFMAN: The wheat markets, in particular, in this country are the outcome of a process of development of over 150 years. And that is why, from about 1903 to 2003, the real price of wheat in this country has gone down. And this was one of the great reasons for America’s great twentieth century, the fact that we had cheap food, we had cheap bread. And Goldman, in 1991, came up with a new idea and a new product, which, as I said before, completely restructured this market and completely threw it out of whack.
But before we go there, we just have to maybe review for a second a little bit about how these markets worked and what kept that wheat price stabilized. And Juan, you mentioned the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, this kind of obscure syndicate in the Midwest, which is where the price of this particular kind of wheat, hard red spring wheat, which is the most widely traded wheat in the world, and it’s the most widely exported wheat from the American continent—we kind of set the world price on this wheat. This is where it happens. What’s the history of that price being stabilized is you have, traditionally, in the wheat futures market, two kinds of players: one of the farmers and the millers and the warehousemen—right? And this, of course, includes players like Domino’s Pizza and Sara Lee and General Mills, very large business, capitalist stakes are in this wheat market, right? And they are called bona fide hedgers, because they’re actually buying and selling real wheat. As the price fluctuates in the futures markets, you also traditionally have speculators in this market, people who don’t want wheat, who wouldn’t have any place to put it if they bought it, but they’re making money off buy orders and sell orders, as the price fluctuates each day, and hopefully they’re bringing in some money for themselves every day. That’s the idea.
Now, the key here is that both the bona fide hedgers and the speculators, every time they buy, they’re also selling, and every time they sell, they eventually buy. So their positions are cleared off at the end of the day, OK? Goldman, we have to understand, and a lot of these banks, are not interested in the particular structure of any of these markets. I think it’s a lot of mistake people make when they think about how these bankers are working. We think that they’re actually interested in the markets. We think that they’re—no. What they’re after are very large pools of cash for themselves. They’re after accumulating huge pools of money that they can do with whatever they like on a day-to-day basis. Right? And so, Goldman, in 1991, came up with this idea of the commodity index fund, which really was a way for them to accumulate huge piles of cash for themselves. It wasn’t really about the markets, anyway. The market was just an excuse. And so, the fact that they threw these wheat markets out of whack didn’t really matter to them.
How did this work? Instead of a buy-and-sell order, like everybody does in these markets, they just started buying. It’s called "going long." They started going long on wheat futures. OK? And every time one of these contracts came due, they would do something called "rolling it over" into the next contract. So they would take all those buy promises they had made and say, "OK, we still—we’re just going to—we’ll buy more later. And plus we’re going to buy more now." And they kept on buying and buying and buying and buying and accumulating this unprecedented, this historically unprecedented pile of long-only wheat futures. And this accumulation created a very odd phenomenon in the market. It’s called a "demand shock." Usually prices go up because supply is low, right? That’s the idea. There’s not a lot of supply, so the price goes up. In this case, Goldman and the other banks had introduced this completely unnatural and artificial demand to buy wheat, and that then set the price up. Now, a lot of people are saying, "Oh, it was biofuel production. It was drought in Australia. It was floods in Kazakhstan." Let me tell you, hard red wheat generally trades between $3 and $6 per sixty-pound bushel. It went up to $12, then $15, then $18. Then it broke $20. And on February 25th, 2008, hard red spring futures settled at $25 per bushel. This is completely beyond the pale, particularly at a—
JUAN GONZALEZ: Almost ten times its historic price.
FREDERICK KAUFMAN: Yeah. It was just completely out of control. And, of course, the irony here is that in 2008, it was the greatest wheat-producing year in world history. The world produced more wheat in 2008 than ever before.
And here’s the other outrage of it, which is that at the time that Goldman and these other banks are completely messing up the structure of this market, they’ve protected themselves outside the market, through this really almost diabolical idea called "replication," which is what I discovered when I was looking into how they had structured this. What they do—let’s say, Juan, you want me to invest for you in the wheat market. You give me a hundred bucks, OK? Well, what I should be doing is putting a hundred bucks in the wheat markets. But I don’t have to do that. All I have to do is put $5 in. Good-faith promise. And with that $5, I can hold your hundred-dollar position. Well, now I got ninety-five of your dollars. What am I going to do with them? Well, what Goldman did with hundreds of billions of dollars, and what all these banks did with hundreds of billions of dollars, is they put them in the most conservative—no fools, they—they put them in the most conservative investments conceivable. They put it in T-bills. And then what did they do? Well, now that you have hundreds of billions of dollars in T-bills, you can leverage that into trillions of dollars. This is what I’m talking about, large pools of cash for themselves. And then they take that trillion dollars, they give it to their day traders, and they say, "Go at it, guys. Do whatever is most lucrative today." And so, as billions of people starve, they use that money to make billions of dollars for themselves.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And the result was, as the price went up, that there were food riots around the world.
FREDERICK KAUFMAN: Yeah.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And what about the human dislocation that occurred?
FREDERICK KAUFMAN: Yeah, in 2008, there were food riots in more than thirty countries. The global price of food rose over 80 percent. This had an effect not only on wheat, but on corn, on soy, on cooking oil, on rice. You know, people talk about globalization. "We don’t need to set prices or have tariffs, because we’re globalized. You know, people can buy their wheat, anyway." Well, gee, guess what happened. When the price of wheat started to go through the roof, something new, which was something old, came up, called "nationalism," and people said, "OK, sorry, we’re closing our wheat, and we’re setting up tariffs." And you had—you had riots. You had hunger. You had a disaster. You had a global disaster, because, remember, in America, we’re spending maybe 15 percent of our weekly paycheck on food, right? I mean, maybe you remember, a couple years ago, why was that dozen eggs so expensive? Why was that milk so expensive? Why was that meat so expensive? That’s 15 percent. For most people on the earth, they’re spending more than 50 percent of their daily income on their daily bread. And when their daily bread moves up 80 percent, they’ve just moved right into the ranks of the food insecure. And it was not only in Burkina Faso. This was in America. You had 49 million hungry families in America. You had one out of five children in America at soup kitchens. You had a million hungry people in Los Angeles.
So, I mean, it is unconscionable that Wall Street has completely lost touch with the reality. They’ve forgotten that there is their mathematical formula, there’s virtuality, on the one hand—"Gee, I can make a lot of money by making a formula"—and on the other hand, there’s reality. There are real things that they are affecting, and they’ve completely forgotten about it, to devastating effect.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think needs to be done?
FREDERICK KAUFMAN: Well, the solution is interesting, and it certainly is not going to be solved by the financial reform bill we’ve just seen, because, of course, the people I talk to at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange and all over, they’re already prepared for every single trade being exchange-traded. The people at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange have already prepared 50,000 exchange-traded slots for anything that people want to trade. Now, when I was talking to the hedge fund guys and the traders and all my contacts on this, and I said, you know, "What if Wall Street—I’m sorry, what if the federal government regulates you?" they just laugh. They literally laugh. They scoff at federal regulators, because they’re like, "By the time they get around, they figure out what we’re doing, we’re so far beyond it." And in fact, the commodity index funds, the long-only commodity index funds that I looked at now, they’re already dinosaurs. They’re onto second-, third- and fourth-generation reiterations of this. There’s no way the federal government is going to be on top of them, because they’re so far ahead.
So, what’s the other possibility? The other possibility is simply outlaw it, say, if you’re a bank, you’re not allowed a stake, you’re not allowed a stake in actual commodity markets. And I said to these guys, you know, "What if they just outlaw you?" And once again, rather unsurprisingly, their reaction is outright laughter, because it takes them about ten seconds to get over that problem. Either they make a phone call to London and do all their trading out of the London Exchange, or they do an over-the-counter swap with a Cargill or a Nestlé or a bona fide hedger, and it’s taken care of.
So what’s the solution? I think the best solution that’s been floated around in Washington in the groups I’ve been close to is an actual international or national grain reserve. I mean, we actually in this country, before this kind of mania of deregulation, had a farmer-owned grain reserve under the Clinton administration, real grain held back, so that in times of a bubble like this, regulators can say, "Look, you know, we have plenty of real wheat. Here’s a hundred million bushels of wheat. We can bring it to the market. We can bring that price back into a stable band." And this is, I think, in some ways, the best solution: real wheat to counter virtual madness.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, yet, as you were saying, that the Wall Street firms are always able to devise new ways to get around regulation. I was reading in today’s paper on the new bill, the financial regulation bill, that the banks have already devised new methods. For instance, that they are no longer able to charge such exorbitant interest rates on credit cards, so now they’re going to begin imposing fees on checking accounts. And they just come up with an immediate new solution to keep making huge amounts of money and getting around the regulators. So, even with this reserve situation that you raise about creating grain reserve, are there potentials for the Wall Street firms to figure out a new way to continue to control and make money off the food supply?
FREDERICK KAUFMAN: Well, I think the theory behind what you’re saying, Juan, is called "market capture," in the sense that whenever you have a group of people, be they in the auto business or in the healthcare business, whenever they fear regulation from the government, this group is, of course, the most at-risk group. They are the ones who put more of their resources into understanding this regulation than anybody else, more of their lobbyists, more of their money into understanding what’s going on, and therefore, they’re the ones who ultimately—the people whose interest it touches most intrinsically are the ones who then capture that reform, market capture. So what I like about the grain reserve is that it’s actually outside of the purview, outside of the financial purview. As I said before, it’s no longer in the realm of the virtual; it’s no longer in the realm of the numbers. It’s actual real wheat, and you can actually bring it to bear. You can bring it to markets. There was a complete madness for hard red spring wheat in 2008, when you had international orders coming in from Nigeria, from all over the world, and there literally was the perception that there was no wheat out there. And so this thing, as you say, goes up and up and up and up and up. If there is actually somebody who can say, who can bring real wheat and calm these markets, you’re going to save lives. It’s not just that you’re going to save mortgages or that you’re going to save, you know, finances; it is that, literally, you no longer have those outrageous numbers of starving people on earth, most of them women and children.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there. I want to thank you very much for being with us. "The Food Bubble" is Frederick Kaufman’s piece http://harpers.org/archive/2010/07/0083022 in Harper’s Magazine, "How Wall Street Starved Millions and Got Away With It." We’ll link to it at http://www.democracynow.org/
An Experiment in Scientific Truth: GM wheat yields 48-56 % less in field experiments
As a student of agriculture, I had worked on a research project on genotype x phenotype interaction in some of the traditional cultivars of wheat found in the hilly State of Himachal Pradesh in northwest India, leading to my master's degree. My research project, supported by a GTZ sponsored fellowship, entailed conducting field trials on 30-odd wheat cultivars that I had painstakingly collected from different regions, for two consecutive years. I wish I had the time and the inclination to continue with the same research project for my doctorate thesis.
It was quite a laborious job. The similarly designed experiments were laid out at three different locations (from three different ecological zones) and altitude in Himachal Pradesh. The frequent travels especially to the higher reaches of Himachal Pradesh (where roads would open for not more than 6-8 months in a year) made it quite a difficult task to monitor the experiments, but at the same time posed a challenge.
Why I am telling you this is to highlight the importance of genotype x environment interactions, which receive less attention nowadays. In my opinion, the absence of multi-locational field trials under diverse environments, is what is leading to the failure of crop varieties, including transgenes, in several parts of the globe. In India, multi-location trials especially in case of genetically modified crops are being used primarily to build on seed supply. There is not enough scientific literature on genotype x environment interactions. "Breeding trials to select lines for further investigation do not need full replication randomization, yet for an assessment of the ecological behaviour of such lines, replicated and randomized ecological experiments would be required. (see the study below)"
It is after long that I have come across an excellent scientific paper that needs proper understanding and more scientific investigation. It has thrown up so many questions, and good science is all about enquiry, that the GM industry may find it difficult to fathom. And knowing its muscle-power, I am sure the GM industry will throttle the scientific community into silence. It knows how to bribe and manipulate the regulatory system (and US FDA as well as India's GEAC are classic examples) into submission, and therefore good science will remain buried.
I draw your attention to a research experiment being reported from Switzerland for transgene x environment interactions in genetically modified wheat. The team of researchers, led by Simon L Zeller from the Institute of Evolutionary Ecology and Environment Studies at the University of Zurich, had used the transgene wheat variety Bobwhite SH 98 26 transformed with a powdery mildew resistance gene Pm3b. They grew four offspring pairs, each consisting of a GM line and its corresponding non-GM line, under different soil nutrient conditions and also treated for fungicide treatments in the glasshouse as well as in the field.
What is interesting is to see the performance of the transgene in the glasshouse conditions and in the fields. It differed quite significantly. This is what the researchers found: Without fungicide treatment, in the glasshouse GM lines had increased vegetative biomass and seed number and a twofold yield compared with control lines. In the field these results were reversed. Fertilization generally increased GM/control differences in the glasshouse but not in the field. Two of four GM lines showed up to 56% yield reduction and a 40-fold increase of infection with ergot disease Claviceps purpurea compared with their control lines in the field experiment; one GM line was very similar to its control.
Interestingly, when you dwell deep, you find that in the glasshouse experiments, the researchers found that while the control lines benefited from the fungicide treatment, the GM lines reacted negatively. The next line is more significant. It says: The yield of GM lines dropped lower than the yield of the sprayed controlled lines. According to researchers, it means that the cost of resistance might be high if the pathogen is absent. I think we need more explanation for this interaction.
Unintended effects of single gene transfers, says the researchers, are always smaller in experiments using naturally occurring genetic variation and wild plants. I agree. "Even when we included crop plants, we could not find any publications where single genes reduced quantitative fitness traits in a plant as strongly as in the present case, yet only in the field and not in the glasshouse."
"Commercial glyphosate-resistant soybean cultivars were found to suffer from a 5 per cent yield depression that might be caused by the transgene or its insertion process; One study tested wheat varieties with introduced resistant genes against leaf and stripe rust and reported a 12 per cent reduction in yield, which was considered to be a very large effect. Compared with these, the yield reductions of 48 to 56 per cent in our two GM lines of wheat expressing the Pm3b gene are much larger."
The researchers also found that differences between GM plants and non-GM plants increased with nutrient levels (read fertiliser application, in the glasshouse). I am so glad that the researchers were honest in admitting that they have no explanation for this result, and have suggested more such tests across a range of environments.
Let me draw out some other salient points from this study:
1. GM plants had significantly fewer seeds and lower seed yield than control plants.
2. In the field, GM plants showed increased infestation by ergot fungus compared with control plants. In the glasshouse, soils were free of ergot fungus.
3. Like in the glasshouse, mildew infection increased with fertiliser application in the field.
4. In the field, yield of GM lines significantly differed when compared with the corresponding control lines.
5. High fungicide dose increased the extent of the stress reaction of GM plants. In the field too, environment stress reduced the fitness of the GM plants. In other words, GM plants were increasingly prone to biotic and abiotic stress.
6. GM plants differ in morphological, fitness and pathogen-related traits from their control plants.
7. The four GM lines, although with identical transgenes in homozygous condition, significantly differed among themselves. Although the researchers have given several explanations to address this mystery, including the disruption of the native genes by the insertion of the transgene, but have refrained from pointing to any definite reason.
8. There is still a question whether the over expression of the transgene led to an overabundance of its protein product and the subsequent phenotypic effects or of other mechanisms would be involved.
9. Plant morphology changed when the GM plants were exposed to field conditions, with significant differences in the flowering time, and the level of ergot infection.
10. The study concludes by saying that the lines that perform particularly well in a specific environment may perform poorly in other environments.
You can view the scientific paper at:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0011405
The scientific community definitely needs to have a fresh look at GM crops in view of the disruptions that ecological and environmental factors can cause to its genetic makeup resulting in serious distortions in performance. This has grave implications for farmers, consumers and the environment. Scientists cannot be pardoned for deliberately ignoring genotype x environment interactions.
It was quite a laborious job. The similarly designed experiments were laid out at three different locations (from three different ecological zones) and altitude in Himachal Pradesh. The frequent travels especially to the higher reaches of Himachal Pradesh (where roads would open for not more than 6-8 months in a year) made it quite a difficult task to monitor the experiments, but at the same time posed a challenge.
Why I am telling you this is to highlight the importance of genotype x environment interactions, which receive less attention nowadays. In my opinion, the absence of multi-locational field trials under diverse environments, is what is leading to the failure of crop varieties, including transgenes, in several parts of the globe. In India, multi-location trials especially in case of genetically modified crops are being used primarily to build on seed supply. There is not enough scientific literature on genotype x environment interactions. "Breeding trials to select lines for further investigation do not need full replication randomization, yet for an assessment of the ecological behaviour of such lines, replicated and randomized ecological experiments would be required. (see the study below)"
It is after long that I have come across an excellent scientific paper that needs proper understanding and more scientific investigation. It has thrown up so many questions, and good science is all about enquiry, that the GM industry may find it difficult to fathom. And knowing its muscle-power, I am sure the GM industry will throttle the scientific community into silence. It knows how to bribe and manipulate the regulatory system (and US FDA as well as India's GEAC are classic examples) into submission, and therefore good science will remain buried.
I draw your attention to a research experiment being reported from Switzerland for transgene x environment interactions in genetically modified wheat. The team of researchers, led by Simon L Zeller from the Institute of Evolutionary Ecology and Environment Studies at the University of Zurich, had used the transgene wheat variety Bobwhite SH 98 26 transformed with a powdery mildew resistance gene Pm3b. They grew four offspring pairs, each consisting of a GM line and its corresponding non-GM line, under different soil nutrient conditions and also treated for fungicide treatments in the glasshouse as well as in the field.
What is interesting is to see the performance of the transgene in the glasshouse conditions and in the fields. It differed quite significantly. This is what the researchers found: Without fungicide treatment, in the glasshouse GM lines had increased vegetative biomass and seed number and a twofold yield compared with control lines. In the field these results were reversed. Fertilization generally increased GM/control differences in the glasshouse but not in the field. Two of four GM lines showed up to 56% yield reduction and a 40-fold increase of infection with ergot disease Claviceps purpurea compared with their control lines in the field experiment; one GM line was very similar to its control.
Interestingly, when you dwell deep, you find that in the glasshouse experiments, the researchers found that while the control lines benefited from the fungicide treatment, the GM lines reacted negatively. The next line is more significant. It says: The yield of GM lines dropped lower than the yield of the sprayed controlled lines. According to researchers, it means that the cost of resistance might be high if the pathogen is absent. I think we need more explanation for this interaction.
Unintended effects of single gene transfers, says the researchers, are always smaller in experiments using naturally occurring genetic variation and wild plants. I agree. "Even when we included crop plants, we could not find any publications where single genes reduced quantitative fitness traits in a plant as strongly as in the present case, yet only in the field and not in the glasshouse."
"Commercial glyphosate-resistant soybean cultivars were found to suffer from a 5 per cent yield depression that might be caused by the transgene or its insertion process; One study tested wheat varieties with introduced resistant genes against leaf and stripe rust and reported a 12 per cent reduction in yield, which was considered to be a very large effect. Compared with these, the yield reductions of 48 to 56 per cent in our two GM lines of wheat expressing the Pm3b gene are much larger."
The researchers also found that differences between GM plants and non-GM plants increased with nutrient levels (read fertiliser application, in the glasshouse). I am so glad that the researchers were honest in admitting that they have no explanation for this result, and have suggested more such tests across a range of environments.
Let me draw out some other salient points from this study:
1. GM plants had significantly fewer seeds and lower seed yield than control plants.
2. In the field, GM plants showed increased infestation by ergot fungus compared with control plants. In the glasshouse, soils were free of ergot fungus.
3. Like in the glasshouse, mildew infection increased with fertiliser application in the field.
4. In the field, yield of GM lines significantly differed when compared with the corresponding control lines.
5. High fungicide dose increased the extent of the stress reaction of GM plants. In the field too, environment stress reduced the fitness of the GM plants. In other words, GM plants were increasingly prone to biotic and abiotic stress.
6. GM plants differ in morphological, fitness and pathogen-related traits from their control plants.
7. The four GM lines, although with identical transgenes in homozygous condition, significantly differed among themselves. Although the researchers have given several explanations to address this mystery, including the disruption of the native genes by the insertion of the transgene, but have refrained from pointing to any definite reason.
8. There is still a question whether the over expression of the transgene led to an overabundance of its protein product and the subsequent phenotypic effects or of other mechanisms would be involved.
9. Plant morphology changed when the GM plants were exposed to field conditions, with significant differences in the flowering time, and the level of ergot infection.
10. The study concludes by saying that the lines that perform particularly well in a specific environment may perform poorly in other environments.
You can view the scientific paper at:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0011405
The scientific community definitely needs to have a fresh look at GM crops in view of the disruptions that ecological and environmental factors can cause to its genetic makeup resulting in serious distortions in performance. This has grave implications for farmers, consumers and the environment. Scientists cannot be pardoned for deliberately ignoring genotype x environment interactions.
Beware of AminoSweet: sugar substitutes bring more problems
Most of the times when I politely decline a teaspoonful of sugar in my cup of tea/coffee or refuse a desert, I have often seen my hosts come up with a 'sugar-free' alternative. And invariably I am handed a yellow sachet, which comes under different brand names. If you take a closer look, and read what is said on the label, you find that it is actually Aspartame packed under different names.
Many a times when I tell people around that Aspartame is harmful than white sugar, I see the eye-brows raised. Shockingly, very rarely have I come across someone who really knows that the sugar-free Aspartame is actually more harmful.
I wonder whether the sexy siren Bipasa Basu knows this.
Nevertheless, my friend Mark Griffith from the UK has sent me this very well researched piece mostly drawn from a latest research conducted by Princeton University. I think this should serve as an eye-opener to all those who rely on the sugar-free substitutes.
New Food And Drink Research Finds More Problems
With Suspect Sugar Substitutes
www.nlpwessex.org/docs/sugarsubstitutes.htm
Linkages To Premature Births And Obesity
July 2010
"Mothers-to-be who down cans of fizzy drink containing artificial sweeteners could be at greater risk of having a premature baby. Research funded by the EU found a correlation between the amount of diet drink consumed and an early birth among the 60,000 women studied. Many had switched from sugary drinks to those with artificial sweeteners believing they were a healthier option. But this study suggests that drinks using sweeteners, such as aspartame, carried dangers for the unborn child. Some British public health experts are now advising expectant mothers to avoid food and drink containing the chemicals. It is rare for a mother-to-be to give birth before 37 weeks of a normal pregnancy. But the EU research suggests this low risk was increased by 38 per cent if the woman was drinking, on average, one can of diet drink a day. Routinely drinking four or more cans a day could increase the risk by as much as 78 per cent. However, the researchers said in a report in the journal of the American Society for Clinical Nutrition that there was no link associated with sugar-sweetened drinks."
Do sweeteners bring on early birth? How fizzy drinks can harm an unborn child
Daily Mail, 10 July 2010 says: 'Aspartame' - Changing The Name Not The Product - 'AminoSweet'. "Ajinomoto has unveiled a new brand name for its aspartame sweetener which draws on its origin from amino acids. Aspartame has been approved as a sweetener in Europe for some 25 years, and is used across food and beverage categories in products marketed as low calorie or sugar-free. Its reputation has been clouded somewhat by some negative perceptions amongst consumers and some studies that have investigated reports of ill-effects – despite regulatory and scientific authorities finding no just cause to reassess its status. On announcing at FiE last week that its aspartame will now be called AminoSweet..."
[You can also read: Ajinomoto brands aspartame AminoSweet, Food Navigator, 25 November 2009]
"A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same. In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides. The researchers say the work sheds light on the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United States. 'Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn't true, at least under the conditions of our tests,' said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. 'When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese -- every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight.' In results published online Feb. 26 by the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, the researchers from the Department of Psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute reported on two experiments investigating the link between the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup and obesity. The first study showed that male rats given water sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup in addition to a standard diet of rat chow gained much more weight than male rats that received water sweetened with table sugar, or sucrose, in conjunction with the standard diet. The concentration of sugar in the sucrose solution was the same as is found in some commercial soft drinks, while the high-fructose corn syrup solution was half as concentrated as most sodas. The second experiment -- the first long-term study of the effects of high-fructose corn syrup consumption on obesity in lab animals -- monitored weight gain, body fat and triglyceride levels in rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup over a period of six months. Compared to animals eating only rat chow, rats on a diet rich in high-fructose corn syrup showed characteristic signs of a dangerous condition known in humans as the metabolic syndrome, including abnormal weight gain, significant increases in circulating triglycerides and augmented fat deposition, especially visceral fat around the belly. Male rats in particular ballooned in size: Animals with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained 48 percent more weight than those eating a normal diet....The rats in the Princeton study became obese by drinking high-fructose corn syrup, but not by drinking sucrose..... In the 40 years since the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup as a cost-effective sweetener in the American diet, rates of obesity in the U.S. have skyrocketed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1970, around 15 percent of the U.S. population met the definition for obesity; today, roughly one-third of the American adults are considered obese, the CDC reported. High-fructose corn syrup is found in a wide range of foods and beverages, including fruit juice, soda, cereal, bread, yogurt, ketchup and mayonnaise. On average, Americans consume 60 pounds of the sweetener per person every year. 'Our findings lend support to the theory that the excessive consumption of high-fructose corn syrup found in many beverages may be an important factor in the obesity epidemic,' Avena said."
Ref - A sweet problem: Princeton researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain; Princeton University, 22 March 2010
Many a times when I tell people around that Aspartame is harmful than white sugar, I see the eye-brows raised. Shockingly, very rarely have I come across someone who really knows that the sugar-free Aspartame is actually more harmful.
I wonder whether the sexy siren Bipasa Basu knows this.
Nevertheless, my friend Mark Griffith from the UK has sent me this very well researched piece mostly drawn from a latest research conducted by Princeton University. I think this should serve as an eye-opener to all those who rely on the sugar-free substitutes.
New Food And Drink Research Finds More Problems
With Suspect Sugar Substitutes
www.nlpwessex.org/docs/sugarsubstitutes.htm
Linkages To Premature Births And Obesity
July 2010
"Mothers-to-be who down cans of fizzy drink containing artificial sweeteners could be at greater risk of having a premature baby. Research funded by the EU found a correlation between the amount of diet drink consumed and an early birth among the 60,000 women studied. Many had switched from sugary drinks to those with artificial sweeteners believing they were a healthier option. But this study suggests that drinks using sweeteners, such as aspartame, carried dangers for the unborn child. Some British public health experts are now advising expectant mothers to avoid food and drink containing the chemicals. It is rare for a mother-to-be to give birth before 37 weeks of a normal pregnancy. But the EU research suggests this low risk was increased by 38 per cent if the woman was drinking, on average, one can of diet drink a day. Routinely drinking four or more cans a day could increase the risk by as much as 78 per cent. However, the researchers said in a report in the journal of the American Society for Clinical Nutrition that there was no link associated with sugar-sweetened drinks."
Do sweeteners bring on early birth? How fizzy drinks can harm an unborn child
Daily Mail, 10 July 2010 says: 'Aspartame' - Changing The Name Not The Product - 'AminoSweet'. "Ajinomoto has unveiled a new brand name for its aspartame sweetener which draws on its origin from amino acids. Aspartame has been approved as a sweetener in Europe for some 25 years, and is used across food and beverage categories in products marketed as low calorie or sugar-free. Its reputation has been clouded somewhat by some negative perceptions amongst consumers and some studies that have investigated reports of ill-effects – despite regulatory and scientific authorities finding no just cause to reassess its status. On announcing at FiE last week that its aspartame will now be called AminoSweet..."
[You can also read: Ajinomoto brands aspartame AminoSweet, Food Navigator, 25 November 2009]
"A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same. In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides. The researchers say the work sheds light on the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United States. 'Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn't true, at least under the conditions of our tests,' said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. 'When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese -- every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight.' In results published online Feb. 26 by the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, the researchers from the Department of Psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute reported on two experiments investigating the link between the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup and obesity. The first study showed that male rats given water sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup in addition to a standard diet of rat chow gained much more weight than male rats that received water sweetened with table sugar, or sucrose, in conjunction with the standard diet. The concentration of sugar in the sucrose solution was the same as is found in some commercial soft drinks, while the high-fructose corn syrup solution was half as concentrated as most sodas. The second experiment -- the first long-term study of the effects of high-fructose corn syrup consumption on obesity in lab animals -- monitored weight gain, body fat and triglyceride levels in rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup over a period of six months. Compared to animals eating only rat chow, rats on a diet rich in high-fructose corn syrup showed characteristic signs of a dangerous condition known in humans as the metabolic syndrome, including abnormal weight gain, significant increases in circulating triglycerides and augmented fat deposition, especially visceral fat around the belly. Male rats in particular ballooned in size: Animals with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained 48 percent more weight than those eating a normal diet....The rats in the Princeton study became obese by drinking high-fructose corn syrup, but not by drinking sucrose..... In the 40 years since the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup as a cost-effective sweetener in the American diet, rates of obesity in the U.S. have skyrocketed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1970, around 15 percent of the U.S. population met the definition for obesity; today, roughly one-third of the American adults are considered obese, the CDC reported. High-fructose corn syrup is found in a wide range of foods and beverages, including fruit juice, soda, cereal, bread, yogurt, ketchup and mayonnaise. On average, Americans consume 60 pounds of the sweetener per person every year. 'Our findings lend support to the theory that the excessive consumption of high-fructose corn syrup found in many beverages may be an important factor in the obesity epidemic,' Avena said."
Ref - A sweet problem: Princeton researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain; Princeton University, 22 March 2010
Who needs poverty estimates?
There is hardly a month when I don't get to see a new estimate of poverty. In fact, there are so many estimates floating around that I have lost count.
At least, I am confused.
And that makes me wonder how long will we go on measuring poverty? When will we instead launch a global initiative to make poverty history? When will we redesign international monetary policies to ensure that we do not add on to poverty?
In India, which lives in poverty, there are a number of estimates doing the round. The Planning Commission had earlier estimated poverty at 26 per cent. Suresh Tendulkar committee had raised to 37.2 per cent. Before that, we had the Arjun Sengupta committee concluding that 77 per cent of the population is unable to spend more than Rs 20 a day. And then there are estimates by people/experts who were actually not asked to measure poverty. N C Saxena for instance has simply used a 'compromise' estimate of 50 per cent.
As if all this is not enough, we now have the new Multi-dimensional Poverty Index (MPI) developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) which pegs poverty in India at 55 per cent. Even this estimate I am told is faulty because it relies on the traditional barometer of kilocalories, 2400 for the rural population, that India uses deliberately to keep poverty low. This comes to Rs 356 a month, which is not even generous enough to feed a pet dog. Adding another ten indicators, including child mortality, school enrollment, drinking water, sanitation etc does not do justice if the base remains faulty.
The MPI may be used for calculating the global HDI ranking. But it still hides the reality. If India's poverty estimates are found wanting, I am sure other countries too are not that honest in acknowledging the correct number of poor.
MPI tells us that Delhi fares much better in India (vis a vis the other States) in the poverty index. I don't think I will ever try to vouch for this. I don't know what kind of parameters have the researchers applied, but for someone who lived in Delhi for more than 20 years I find the National Capital to be a virtual cesspool of poverty. Compared to Mumbai and Kolkata, Delhi certainly fares much better. But over the years, I have only seen poverty worsening in the midst of a concrete jungle that is being laid out.
Nevertheless, I think all these estimates are actually being done to demonstrate that poverty is declining because of neoliberal reforms. The World Bank (and also the UN) have been vying to justify its backing for market economy. Such is the desperation that all kinds of permutations and combinations are being applied. There is this story of an Indian research centre which actually fudged the figures to conclude that the social indicators have turned positive after the market reforms began. I will not name the institute, but it will be interesting if ever the Criminal Bureau of Investigation (CBI) decides to launch an investigation into this.
Well, will all these estimates make a difference to the poor? Mercifully, they don't even know which estimate they fit into. What they know for sure is that poverty is their destiny. Only a miracle (or by becoming a crook) can pull them out of the real hell. Rest all is economic jugglery.
55% of India's population poor: Report
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/55-of-Indias-population-poor-Report/articleshow/6169549.cms
At least, I am confused.
And that makes me wonder how long will we go on measuring poverty? When will we instead launch a global initiative to make poverty history? When will we redesign international monetary policies to ensure that we do not add on to poverty?
In India, which lives in poverty, there are a number of estimates doing the round. The Planning Commission had earlier estimated poverty at 26 per cent. Suresh Tendulkar committee had raised to 37.2 per cent. Before that, we had the Arjun Sengupta committee concluding that 77 per cent of the population is unable to spend more than Rs 20 a day. And then there are estimates by people/experts who were actually not asked to measure poverty. N C Saxena for instance has simply used a 'compromise' estimate of 50 per cent.
As if all this is not enough, we now have the new Multi-dimensional Poverty Index (MPI) developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) which pegs poverty in India at 55 per cent. Even this estimate I am told is faulty because it relies on the traditional barometer of kilocalories, 2400 for the rural population, that India uses deliberately to keep poverty low. This comes to Rs 356 a month, which is not even generous enough to feed a pet dog. Adding another ten indicators, including child mortality, school enrollment, drinking water, sanitation etc does not do justice if the base remains faulty.
The MPI may be used for calculating the global HDI ranking. But it still hides the reality. If India's poverty estimates are found wanting, I am sure other countries too are not that honest in acknowledging the correct number of poor.
MPI tells us that Delhi fares much better in India (vis a vis the other States) in the poverty index. I don't think I will ever try to vouch for this. I don't know what kind of parameters have the researchers applied, but for someone who lived in Delhi for more than 20 years I find the National Capital to be a virtual cesspool of poverty. Compared to Mumbai and Kolkata, Delhi certainly fares much better. But over the years, I have only seen poverty worsening in the midst of a concrete jungle that is being laid out.
Nevertheless, I think all these estimates are actually being done to demonstrate that poverty is declining because of neoliberal reforms. The World Bank (and also the UN) have been vying to justify its backing for market economy. Such is the desperation that all kinds of permutations and combinations are being applied. There is this story of an Indian research centre which actually fudged the figures to conclude that the social indicators have turned positive after the market reforms began. I will not name the institute, but it will be interesting if ever the Criminal Bureau of Investigation (CBI) decides to launch an investigation into this.
Well, will all these estimates make a difference to the poor? Mercifully, they don't even know which estimate they fit into. What they know for sure is that poverty is their destiny. Only a miracle (or by becoming a crook) can pull them out of the real hell. Rest all is economic jugglery.
55% of India's population poor: Report
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/55-of-Indias-population-poor-Report/articleshow/6169549.cms
How big retail spreads its wings
Despite what the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) in New Delhi says about FDI in retail, the US has been colonised over the years by Wal-Mart and the tribe. It has virtually wiped out the neighbourhood 'mom and pop' stores. Many of the cities/towns in the US look as if these are centered only around Wal-Mart or the other big retails. There is nothing else in these mofussil towns/cities.
Nevertheless, the malignancy is now spreading to India.
After having played havoc with the economies of the Latin American countries, which fell quite early to the World Bank/IMF prescriptions, the menace is now eyeing the lucrative market of India. With Prime Minister Manmohan Singh facilitating the entry of these big retail chains in India, and with the Opposition parties also bitten by the FDI bug, I don't think it will be too late before the big retail spreads its wings.
This is also because of faulty socio-economic analysis. I wonder, for instance, how the ICRIER study concludes: "there was no evidence of a decline in overall employment in the unorganised sector as a result of the entry of organised retailers." It is primarily for such manipulated reports that the country is faced with its worst-ever crisis. The DIPP discussion paper (that we talked about yesterday) is also based on such flawed analysis or on the basis of lobbying documents prepared by the industry groups like FICCI/CII/ASSOCHAM.
Anyway, I have received an interesting digital flowchart. You need to click on this link, and then press the play button (in the centre of the US map), and you will get to see how the malignancy spreads.
Watch the growth of Wal-Mart and Sam's Club
http://projects.flowingdata.com/walmart/
Nevertheless, the malignancy is now spreading to India.
After having played havoc with the economies of the Latin American countries, which fell quite early to the World Bank/IMF prescriptions, the menace is now eyeing the lucrative market of India. With Prime Minister Manmohan Singh facilitating the entry of these big retail chains in India, and with the Opposition parties also bitten by the FDI bug, I don't think it will be too late before the big retail spreads its wings.
This is also because of faulty socio-economic analysis. I wonder, for instance, how the ICRIER study concludes: "there was no evidence of a decline in overall employment in the unorganised sector as a result of the entry of organised retailers." It is primarily for such manipulated reports that the country is faced with its worst-ever crisis. The DIPP discussion paper (that we talked about yesterday) is also based on such flawed analysis or on the basis of lobbying documents prepared by the industry groups like FICCI/CII/ASSOCHAM.
Anyway, I have received an interesting digital flowchart. You need to click on this link, and then press the play button (in the centre of the US map), and you will get to see how the malignancy spreads.
Watch the growth of Wal-Mart and Sam's Club
http://projects.flowingdata.com/walmart/
FDI in retail: Importing a failed model
The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) has come out with a discussion paper in on multi-brand FDI in retail. It has spurred a debate on whether there is a need for opening up for multi-brand retail, and if yes, on what conditions. This follows an earlier study by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) on FDI in retail.
The discussion paper was expected. After all, the G-20 mandates its member countries to open up to FDI in retail. It is therefore amusing to hear economists and market experts sing virtues of FDI in retail in excitement. The reality is that we are under an international obligation to open up for FDI in retail. You just have to read the last few paras of the G-20 Toronto declaration, and it becomes clear as to why the government has launched this exercise now to build up on public opinion.
Having said that, I find the pink dailies and the Business TV channels jumping into the debate with obviously industry-backed speakers being invited to tell us about the great potential FDI in retail has for consumers, farmers, and for generating employment. For the sake of maintaining a 'balance' they will invite one critical voice and then at the end say that you are the lone voice against FDI on this show. Not even one TV channel has in fact cared to ask as to what happened with the 2006 approval for 100 per cent FDI in cash and carry and 51 per cent stake in FDI in single-brand retail. Did it benefit farmers and the end consumer?
The answer is NO. At a time when food inflation was at its peak, the big retail maliciously fleeced the consumers. It continues to do so merrily.
No one has cared to ask this embarrassing question to all those who backed the entry of selective FDI in retail earlier. No one will later question the economics of centres like ICRIER, which is now building up a case for a green light for multi-brand FDI in retail. The DIPP should be first made to explain as to why it has failed to stop the loot that the big retail is indulging in? As G Ganapathy Subramaniam writes in the Economic Times today (Put the consumer first: FDI in retail's back on radar but lowering prices must be priority): "Supermarket chains also get their supply of fresh produce from the same mandis that feed hawkers and efforts to procure directly from farmers largely remain on paper."
He goes on to say: "Nothing prevents foreign investment from flowing into the back-end logistics business which is vital for the wholesale. the ground reality, however, is that not much overseas investment has flown into warehouse facilities or cold chains ... What is preventing more investment flowing into wholesale and back-end? What should be done to encourage investment in this important segment?"
For the last few days I am repeatedly asked whether the multi-brand retail will help farmers as claimed. I would like to share a few of my thoughts and concerns with you.
1. Increasing corporate control over food and agriculture has meant that the profits are being shared among the traders, processors, wholesalers and retailers. This is not only limited to the developing countries where policy makers tend to blindly ape the farm model from the industrialised countries. In the US till 1990, a farmer used to receive about 70 per cent of every dollar spent on food. Today, it is no more than 3 to 4 per cent. (Source: Sharma 2005; Trade liberalisation in agriculture: Lessons from the first 10 years of WTO, Aprodev, Brussels)
2. If big retail was so good for farmers, there is no reason why the US/EU should be providing direct income support to farmers. Farmers in US/EU survive not because of big retail/commodity trading but because they receive direct income support. Take the Netherlands, for example, the average farm family income is 275 per cent of average household income, and so on . (Source: OECD 2002). This is because of the farm subsidies. Please also see my article 'Entitled to subsidies' http://indiatogether.org/2004/oct/dsh-entitle.htm
In the US, the situation is no better. I had recently written a piece on this on my blog: US farmers are bailed out, Indian farmers are left to die http://devinder-sharma.blogspot.com/2010/05/us-farmers-are-bailed-out-indian.html
We are therefore importing a failed model from the US/EU.
3. Regarding employment, big retail does not squeeze out middle-men from the food chain. Middle-men by definition means someone who is between the producer and the consumer. Wal-Mart claims that it removes middle-men. In fact, it only replaces the plethora of small middle-men. Wal-Mart itself is a middle-man. The drop in the farmer income is therefore shared by the new battery of middle-men who come under the same retail hub. The new battery of middle-men, who replaces the traditional middle-men, are the quality controller, certification agencies, packaging industry, processors, wholesalers etc etc.
In Latin America, the biggest retail chains, most of them owned by multinational giants, now control 65 to 95 per cent of supermarket sales (Source: FAO 2004). Can anyone tell me if the income of Latin American farmers has increased? Are the Latin American farmers well-off today? The answer is a big NO. Their condition has in fact worsened.
It is now the turn of Indian farmers to be squeezed out by big retail.
The discussion paper was expected. After all, the G-20 mandates its member countries to open up to FDI in retail. It is therefore amusing to hear economists and market experts sing virtues of FDI in retail in excitement. The reality is that we are under an international obligation to open up for FDI in retail. You just have to read the last few paras of the G-20 Toronto declaration, and it becomes clear as to why the government has launched this exercise now to build up on public opinion.
Having said that, I find the pink dailies and the Business TV channels jumping into the debate with obviously industry-backed speakers being invited to tell us about the great potential FDI in retail has for consumers, farmers, and for generating employment. For the sake of maintaining a 'balance' they will invite one critical voice and then at the end say that you are the lone voice against FDI on this show. Not even one TV channel has in fact cared to ask as to what happened with the 2006 approval for 100 per cent FDI in cash and carry and 51 per cent stake in FDI in single-brand retail. Did it benefit farmers and the end consumer?
The answer is NO. At a time when food inflation was at its peak, the big retail maliciously fleeced the consumers. It continues to do so merrily.
No one has cared to ask this embarrassing question to all those who backed the entry of selective FDI in retail earlier. No one will later question the economics of centres like ICRIER, which is now building up a case for a green light for multi-brand FDI in retail. The DIPP should be first made to explain as to why it has failed to stop the loot that the big retail is indulging in? As G Ganapathy Subramaniam writes in the Economic Times today (Put the consumer first: FDI in retail's back on radar but lowering prices must be priority): "Supermarket chains also get their supply of fresh produce from the same mandis that feed hawkers and efforts to procure directly from farmers largely remain on paper."
He goes on to say: "Nothing prevents foreign investment from flowing into the back-end logistics business which is vital for the wholesale. the ground reality, however, is that not much overseas investment has flown into warehouse facilities or cold chains ... What is preventing more investment flowing into wholesale and back-end? What should be done to encourage investment in this important segment?"
For the last few days I am repeatedly asked whether the multi-brand retail will help farmers as claimed. I would like to share a few of my thoughts and concerns with you.
1. Increasing corporate control over food and agriculture has meant that the profits are being shared among the traders, processors, wholesalers and retailers. This is not only limited to the developing countries where policy makers tend to blindly ape the farm model from the industrialised countries. In the US till 1990, a farmer used to receive about 70 per cent of every dollar spent on food. Today, it is no more than 3 to 4 per cent. (Source: Sharma 2005; Trade liberalisation in agriculture: Lessons from the first 10 years of WTO, Aprodev, Brussels)
2. If big retail was so good for farmers, there is no reason why the US/EU should be providing direct income support to farmers. Farmers in US/EU survive not because of big retail/commodity trading but because they receive direct income support. Take the Netherlands, for example, the average farm family income is 275 per cent of average household income, and so on . (Source: OECD 2002). This is because of the farm subsidies. Please also see my article 'Entitled to subsidies' http://indiatogether.org/2004/oct/dsh-entitle.htm
In the US, the situation is no better. I had recently written a piece on this on my blog: US farmers are bailed out, Indian farmers are left to die http://devinder-sharma.blogspot.com/2010/05/us-farmers-are-bailed-out-indian.html
We are therefore importing a failed model from the US/EU.
3. Regarding employment, big retail does not squeeze out middle-men from the food chain. Middle-men by definition means someone who is between the producer and the consumer. Wal-Mart claims that it removes middle-men. In fact, it only replaces the plethora of small middle-men. Wal-Mart itself is a middle-man. The drop in the farmer income is therefore shared by the new battery of middle-men who come under the same retail hub. The new battery of middle-men, who replaces the traditional middle-men, are the quality controller, certification agencies, packaging industry, processors, wholesalers etc etc.
In Latin America, the biggest retail chains, most of them owned by multinational giants, now control 65 to 95 per cent of supermarket sales (Source: FAO 2004). Can anyone tell me if the income of Latin American farmers has increased? Are the Latin American farmers well-off today? The answer is a big NO. Their condition has in fact worsened.
It is now the turn of Indian farmers to be squeezed out by big retail.
After ruining Punjab's agriculture; Punjab farmers now aim at Africa
African farms are the new attraction for Punjab farmers -- pic from Indian Express
This is disturbing news. After doing the damage in Punjab, some farmers are now being encouraged to look for greener pastures in Africa. In the quest to make a fast buck, these farmers will now be doing to Africa what they did to what was once a fertile and verdant land of Punjab.
"Our state government and armchair experts at Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) have failed us. Land holdings in the state has shrunk, water levels have depleted and fertility of soil has gone down," Jagjit Singh Hara of Kanganwal village in Jalandhar district has been quoted as saying in a centre-spreadout under the caption Punjab's African Plot (Sunday Indian Express, July 11, 2010).
I am so glad that Jagjit Singh Hara now realises that the PAU farm research and extension has failed Punjab farmers. But what is a little intriguing is that this should come from Jagjit Singh Hara who has been the showpiece of PAU and has also served on the Board of Directors of the university for quite some time. At no stage did he ever complain that PAU was not on the right path. In fact, he was more or less a spokesperson for all the faulty recommendations that he now cribs against. He enjoyed all the attention he got, and did everything wrong that PAU asked him to do.
This is my worry. The more enterprising of the farming lot, who are now eyeing the vast acreage of land available in Africa, are actually the real beneficiary of Green Revolution in Punjab. This lot comprise primarily the big farmers, who have taken advantage of all the subsidies, technologies, and promotional services that the PAU and the Department of Agriculture came up with. I remember visiting Jagjit Singh Hara's 90-acre farm in Kanganwal village a number of times at the peak of Green Revolution, and knew him as a proud representative of the new emerging breed of techno-savvy farmers riding the Green Revolution bandwagon.
If only these farmers had the long-term vision to ensure that their farms could remain sustainable; if only they had realised that intensive farming practices were suicidal in the long run; if only they had looked beyond making a fast buck; and gone in for farming practices that do not plunder the natural resource base things wouldn't have looked so bleak. They wouldn't have then left behind a trail of dying fields, and crying farmers. Punjab wouldn't be dying civilisation, as Dr Amar Singh Azad, often rues.
In a way, and I say this loudly, Punjab farmers are responsible for the ecological mess they have created. The better-off among them can surely migrate to Africa, leaving their poor cousins -- small and marginal farmers -- not only to clean-up the mess but also to live with it.
Let us not blame the PAU alone.
PAU has meanwhile embarked upon 2nd Green Revolution. It is stealthily aimed at forcing farmers to quit agriculture, and thereby make it easier for the agribusiness industry to takeover farming. Already, Bharti Telecom has made a foray. You will soon see the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) bringing in more and more industrial units to Punjab. PAU therefore is master-minding the strategy, in collaboration with several American universities and MNCs, to make it more painful for farmers to stay on the farms.
For Africa, the import of Punjab farmers is as disastrous as it is for India and other developing countries to invite Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in agriculture with open arms. G-20 has already made it mandatory for the member countries to open for what is called 'responsible' FDI in agriculture. India has been for quite some time engaged in facilitating the process, changing its laws in a quick succession, so as to make it easy for the FDI to step in and take roots.
I had expected the more enterprising of Punjab farmers to join hands and work towards bringing the lost glory back to Punjab's agriculture. I wanted these resourceful farmers (also well connected politically) to throw away the PAU cloak, and show the way forward where by the soil health could be restored, plunging groundwater line recharged, and farming adopting the low-external input sustainable pathway. But perhaps I was expecting too much.
It is now the turn of Africa. They are willingly inviting Punjab farmers to destroy their lands. They need to know that short-term gains do not help in building robust civilisations. These farmers will make the best use of opportunities available under AGRA to make a fast buck, and in turn leave Africa bleeding for ever. The African dream will sooner than later turn into a dying civilisation.
Meanwhile, here is the link to Indian Express report Punjab's African Plot
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Punjab-s-African-plot/644788
Food sabotage is now a reality; Australia is the first major victim
Yesterday, Al Jazeera TV invited me to their news programme to talk about the mysterious mass poisoning of vegetable plants in Australia. It set me thinking. In today's world, food can become a soft 'terrorist' target which can be more lethal than bombings. The more the food -- from farm to fork as they say -- is concentrated in the hands of a few companies, the bigger is the threat.
Al Jazeera asked me about the increasing concentration of food, and my reply was that at present not more than 10 food companies, of which the predominant share belongs to 4 or 5 agribusiness companies, controls bulk of the global food supply. Such a concentrated system makes the entire food chain more vulnerable. My suggestion is that the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that is behind concentration of food in the hands of a few agribusiness giants, need to ensure that diversity of food systems is maintained for global food security.
"What happens if next time the 'poisoning' is of rice and wheat grains?" I was asked. "The impact will be global," I replied, adding "This is where the world needs to appreciate the diverse farming systems that exist in India. Even if 'poisoning' of nursery plants had taken place in India, its impact would have been minimal. It wouldn't have sent the vegetable prices zooming as is being experienced in Australia.
In a way, increasing control over the food chain is akin to monoculture. The world has failed to draw any lessons from the Irish Potato famine that happened some 200 years ago. One disease erupts and the entire crop was wiped out resulting in an unprecedented famine. The same can happen now, only the scale and scope is different.
This is probably the first time that a food sabotage -- whether through a terrorist activity, vandalism or business rivalry -- at such a large scale has been observed anywhere in the world. Seven million plants, including 4 million tomato, brinjal and capsicum saplings, were reportedly poisoned with a herbicide in sprinklers in a major nursery.
Veggie prices likely to rise after plants poisoned
ADELAIDE, Australia (AP) _ Was it a competitor or just a vandal who poisoned 7 million vegetable plants at a seedling nursery in Australia?
The sabotage _ estimated at a loss of 23.5 million Australian dollars ($20.3 million) _ could more than double produce prices across the country due to decreased supply.
About 4 million tomato seedlings were poisoned, as well as bell peppers, melons and eggplant. The region of Bowen, in northern Queensland state, grows the majority of
Australia's winter vegetables.
Police investigations found that a herbicide was introduced in late June into the irrigation system of the Supa Seedlings nursery, which sells its seedlings to farmers for planting. Workers noticed the wilting and dying plants between June 20 and June 25.
Townsville Police Acting Inspector Dave Miles said police were considering a range of motives. ``It could be a grudge, it could be competition based, it could be the result of time-established market share, or it could be an act of vandalism,'' Miles told reporters Wednesday. He said 12 detectives were working on the case and would investigate possible links with three previous poisonings since 2002.
The owners of Supa Seedlings declined to comment to the media about the poisoning. Denise Kreymborg of the Bowen District Growers' Association told Sky News Australia that the poisoning affected 350 hectares of production land with the potential to produce about 200 tonnes of fresh produce. She said about 30 growers would be affected. She said growers would continue harvesting their established crops in the next two months, with prices likely to spike around September when the lost seedlings would have been on the market.
`You can expect prices to double or even triple, we don't know for sure,'' Kreymborg said. ``There's still going to be tomatoes, capsicum, melons, zucchinis and eggplants grown in this area, just not as much.'' #
Al Jazeera asked me about the increasing concentration of food, and my reply was that at present not more than 10 food companies, of which the predominant share belongs to 4 or 5 agribusiness companies, controls bulk of the global food supply. Such a concentrated system makes the entire food chain more vulnerable. My suggestion is that the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that is behind concentration of food in the hands of a few agribusiness giants, need to ensure that diversity of food systems is maintained for global food security.
"What happens if next time the 'poisoning' is of rice and wheat grains?" I was asked. "The impact will be global," I replied, adding "This is where the world needs to appreciate the diverse farming systems that exist in India. Even if 'poisoning' of nursery plants had taken place in India, its impact would have been minimal. It wouldn't have sent the vegetable prices zooming as is being experienced in Australia.
In a way, increasing control over the food chain is akin to monoculture. The world has failed to draw any lessons from the Irish Potato famine that happened some 200 years ago. One disease erupts and the entire crop was wiped out resulting in an unprecedented famine. The same can happen now, only the scale and scope is different.
This is probably the first time that a food sabotage -- whether through a terrorist activity, vandalism or business rivalry -- at such a large scale has been observed anywhere in the world. Seven million plants, including 4 million tomato, brinjal and capsicum saplings, were reportedly poisoned with a herbicide in sprinklers in a major nursery.
Veggie prices likely to rise after plants poisoned
ADELAIDE, Australia (AP) _ Was it a competitor or just a vandal who poisoned 7 million vegetable plants at a seedling nursery in Australia?
The sabotage _ estimated at a loss of 23.5 million Australian dollars ($20.3 million) _ could more than double produce prices across the country due to decreased supply.
About 4 million tomato seedlings were poisoned, as well as bell peppers, melons and eggplant. The region of Bowen, in northern Queensland state, grows the majority of
Australia's winter vegetables.
Police investigations found that a herbicide was introduced in late June into the irrigation system of the Supa Seedlings nursery, which sells its seedlings to farmers for planting. Workers noticed the wilting and dying plants between June 20 and June 25.
Townsville Police Acting Inspector Dave Miles said police were considering a range of motives. ``It could be a grudge, it could be competition based, it could be the result of time-established market share, or it could be an act of vandalism,'' Miles told reporters Wednesday. He said 12 detectives were working on the case and would investigate possible links with three previous poisonings since 2002.
The owners of Supa Seedlings declined to comment to the media about the poisoning. Denise Kreymborg of the Bowen District Growers' Association told Sky News Australia that the poisoning affected 350 hectares of production land with the potential to produce about 200 tonnes of fresh produce. She said about 30 growers would be affected. She said growers would continue harvesting their established crops in the next two months, with prices likely to spike around September when the lost seedlings would have been on the market.
`You can expect prices to double or even triple, we don't know for sure,'' Kreymborg said. ``There's still going to be tomatoes, capsicum, melons, zucchinis and eggplants grown in this area, just not as much.'' #
In-depth Analysis: Role the Media has Forgotten
This is the role that the media has forgotten to perform. It was therefore a pleasant surprise to find a front page anchor in The Times of India (July 7) under the caption "Bandh loss stats way off mark?" Written by Rukmini Shrinivasan of the TOI Insight Group, I think it should be a lesson for other newspapers.
We all know that the media has lately become a mouthpiece for not only the government but also for the Corporate. The credibility of the media is at the rock bottom. They have simply been putting out whatever the government and the industry says without ever questioning the veracity of the claims. With the advent of the pink newspapers and subsequently the TV business channels this trend became more gory.
Not that things are going to change overnight, but the analysis of the economic losses from Monday's bandh should hopefully inspire more of such analytical reports. For instance, I don't know why the media did not question Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when on his flight back home from Toronto G-20 meet he said that India would seek Warren Anderson's extradition from the US. But when he met US President Obama he did not even make a mention of this.
I thought any responsible media would have questioned the PM for his double talk. How can the PM be allowed to make a different statement for the domestic audience and at the same time bow before the US leadership? He did it because he knew the Indian media has lost its ability to bite.
If only the media had played its role, the government of the day would get know what governance really means. Similarly on the recent hike in petrol prices. With all the public sector undertakings dealing in oil raking in profits I don't know why the media did not question the UPA-II on its claims. If only the media had come out with quick analysis, like the TOI report today, the government would have been forced on the back foot.
I know it is difficult to be quick with such analysis for the simple reason that the Indian journalists by and large have given up on reading. It is only to cover up the growing illiteracy within the top hierarchy of the tribe that the media often takes refuge behind its obsession with bollywood and titillation saying that this is what the audience needs.
But hopefully this can change if the viewers/readers demand more analytical reports. It is our silence that is in a way the cause behind all kinds of useless reports being fed on to us. If you were to use your SMS to send some sensible messages (rather than only voting for meaningless questions often asked, which actually help the tele-companies make more profits) we will continue to be fed with gossip and sub-standard reportage.
Meanwhile, here is the TOI analysis Bandh loss stats way off mark? Read it, and you will realise the need for what I am saying.
Bandh loss stats off mark?
Rukmini Shrinivasan
TOI Insight Group
On Monday, industry associations were quick to put out figures estimating the loss suffered by India on account of the bandh, figures that were then repeated ad nauseum as talking points by UPA members. A closer look at the numbers, however, shows that they were way off base if not entirely impossible to calculate.
Ficci put out a press release citing a figure of Rs 13,000 crore. ‘‘We spoke to our regional offices in various states to get an overview of the situation. Then we looked at the aggregate national income, and adjusting for holidays, looked at what the daily figures would be. We then looked at the sectors that were affected and what the losses would be. For example, in agriculture only trading and transportation would be affected,’’ said a Ficci official who asked not to be named.
With Assocham pegging the losses at Rs 10,000 crore, the CII figure of Rs 3,000 crore was the most conservative of the lot. ‘‘We used a top-down and a bottom-up method to arrive at the figure,’’ a CII official told TOI.
As per CSO, India’s GDP at factor cost (the figure Ficci said it used) at current prices for 2009-10 was Rs 42.3 lakh crore. Assuming 8.4% growth, as Ficci did, this would work out to about Rs 48 lakh crore for 2010-11, factoring in inflation. Assuming 365 days of work, this comes to around Rs 13,000 crore per day, which is the Ficci estimate for losses from the strike.
In other words, the Ficci estimates amount to saying the bandh was not just much more effective than even its organizers are claiming but absolutely total, shutting down all economic activity in India for the day.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Bandh-loss-stats-way-off-mark/articleshow/6136677.cms
We all know that the media has lately become a mouthpiece for not only the government but also for the Corporate. The credibility of the media is at the rock bottom. They have simply been putting out whatever the government and the industry says without ever questioning the veracity of the claims. With the advent of the pink newspapers and subsequently the TV business channels this trend became more gory.
Not that things are going to change overnight, but the analysis of the economic losses from Monday's bandh should hopefully inspire more of such analytical reports. For instance, I don't know why the media did not question Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when on his flight back home from Toronto G-20 meet he said that India would seek Warren Anderson's extradition from the US. But when he met US President Obama he did not even make a mention of this.
I thought any responsible media would have questioned the PM for his double talk. How can the PM be allowed to make a different statement for the domestic audience and at the same time bow before the US leadership? He did it because he knew the Indian media has lost its ability to bite.
If only the media had played its role, the government of the day would get know what governance really means. Similarly on the recent hike in petrol prices. With all the public sector undertakings dealing in oil raking in profits I don't know why the media did not question the UPA-II on its claims. If only the media had come out with quick analysis, like the TOI report today, the government would have been forced on the back foot.
I know it is difficult to be quick with such analysis for the simple reason that the Indian journalists by and large have given up on reading. It is only to cover up the growing illiteracy within the top hierarchy of the tribe that the media often takes refuge behind its obsession with bollywood and titillation saying that this is what the audience needs.
But hopefully this can change if the viewers/readers demand more analytical reports. It is our silence that is in a way the cause behind all kinds of useless reports being fed on to us. If you were to use your SMS to send some sensible messages (rather than only voting for meaningless questions often asked, which actually help the tele-companies make more profits) we will continue to be fed with gossip and sub-standard reportage.
Meanwhile, here is the TOI analysis Bandh loss stats way off mark? Read it, and you will realise the need for what I am saying.
Bandh loss stats off mark?
Rukmini Shrinivasan
TOI Insight Group
On Monday, industry associations were quick to put out figures estimating the loss suffered by India on account of the bandh, figures that were then repeated ad nauseum as talking points by UPA members. A closer look at the numbers, however, shows that they were way off base if not entirely impossible to calculate.
Ficci put out a press release citing a figure of Rs 13,000 crore. ‘‘We spoke to our regional offices in various states to get an overview of the situation. Then we looked at the aggregate national income, and adjusting for holidays, looked at what the daily figures would be. We then looked at the sectors that were affected and what the losses would be. For example, in agriculture only trading and transportation would be affected,’’ said a Ficci official who asked not to be named.
With Assocham pegging the losses at Rs 10,000 crore, the CII figure of Rs 3,000 crore was the most conservative of the lot. ‘‘We used a top-down and a bottom-up method to arrive at the figure,’’ a CII official told TOI.
As per CSO, India’s GDP at factor cost (the figure Ficci said it used) at current prices for 2009-10 was Rs 42.3 lakh crore. Assuming 8.4% growth, as Ficci did, this would work out to about Rs 48 lakh crore for 2010-11, factoring in inflation. Assuming 365 days of work, this comes to around Rs 13,000 crore per day, which is the Ficci estimate for losses from the strike.
In other words, the Ficci estimates amount to saying the bandh was not just much more effective than even its organizers are claiming but absolutely total, shutting down all economic activity in India for the day.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Bandh-loss-stats-way-off-mark/articleshow/6136677.cms
Bandh is an expression of democratic rights
I was expecting this. The Economic Times shrieks: "Bharat is left badly bruised as age-old bandh politics over fuel price hike hits industrial activity and disrupts normal life." It's sister publication The Times of India is a little restrained when it says: "Opposition parties on Monday joined forces to enforce a countrywide strike against rising prices, in an effective protest that marked the return of a hot-button political issue and is being seen as a wake-up call for the UPA regime."
Well, for those who have not been following the Monday developments in India, opposition parties had given a call for a nationwide protest (we call it 'bandh') against high inflation and a sharp increase in fuel prices. The bandh as a newspaper headline says: put India on hold.
All through on Monday, most of the TV channels went on chanting the Corporate mantra: "Monday's Bharat bandh, which disrupted life, stopped work, created loss and damaged property, not so much articulated democratic rights as abused them." All of them quoted imaginary figures of collateral damage that the three industry lobbying groups put up. The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) estimated a loss of Rs 3,000 crore; the Assocham raised it to Rs 10,000 crore; and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) put both the figures together and came out with a magical estimate of Rs 13,000 crore.
If a day's protest has cost the country Rs 13,000 crore, industry lobbyists should demand making it compulsory to work for seven days a week. Why should we have a five-day week? In fact, FIICI should even considering seeking an extension in work hours to 11 pm at night.
Nevertheless, the media's reaction is a reflection of what India Inc thinks. Just like the UPA-II, which actually is a government of the industry, by the industry and for the industry. So let us not unnecessarily worry about what the media says or be carried away by the 'pro-people' cliches on TV by our impotent netas.
During the day, I was asked by a TV channel whether bandh is the right form of protest. My response was that there are only two ways of expressing your anger and protesting against the high-handedness of the government: using the democratic form of protest or by picking up the gun like the naxals have done in 230 districts of the country.
The next question obviously is that it it is the people who bear the brunt of such protests. My answer is that in any case people have been reeling under the stupendous rise in prices for over a year now. They have been bearing the brunt silently. How long do you want the poor to go to bed hungry unable to buy two square meals a day? What about those millions who cannot afford to buy their daily quota of dal and chapati?
Anyway, the media decries bandh. The media also slams the opposition for disrupting the proceeding in Parliament if ever the Opposition parties come together on popular issues. What is the choice then? Should the people be left to adopt militant means? Or the media expects people to write letters to the editor? Even that space has disappeared in most newspapers, with hardly few inches of space left for public feedback.
It is not only the newspapers which have drastically curtailed space for public opinion, increasing privatisation is actually taking away the right of expression. Let me illustrate this. Some years back, I was travelling to Manila to attend a CGIAR conference. In the afternoon, we heard slogans outside the hotel. These were a group of farmers and activists who were protesting against the corporatisation of agriculture. Within minutes I found that the police arrived telling the protesters that they can't demonstrate inside the hotel's boundary walls.
Fine. The protesters moved to the road outside. They were told that the road was also a private property. They then went back to the small park in front of the hotel. They were then told that the park was also a private property.
In reality, India Inc is trying to take away all democratic spaces. They do not want any finger to be raised at the usurping of resources that the business and industry is engaged in. The economic loot that goes on with the support of the government is something they don't want to stop. Obviously the share prices go up, and that keeps the middle class happy. Those who groan, do it silently. But with the dominant media on their side, Corporates are trying to muffle all democratic options and voices. In other words, it is actually an assault on the fundamental right of expression.
We are therefore at a very crucial stage in history. If we let the debate over democratic norms be defined by the Corporates and their employees (and I am including the economists in this list), it is time to say goodbye to democracy.
Well, for those who have not been following the Monday developments in India, opposition parties had given a call for a nationwide protest (we call it 'bandh') against high inflation and a sharp increase in fuel prices. The bandh as a newspaper headline says: put India on hold.
All through on Monday, most of the TV channels went on chanting the Corporate mantra: "Monday's Bharat bandh, which disrupted life, stopped work, created loss and damaged property, not so much articulated democratic rights as abused them." All of them quoted imaginary figures of collateral damage that the three industry lobbying groups put up. The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) estimated a loss of Rs 3,000 crore; the Assocham raised it to Rs 10,000 crore; and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) put both the figures together and came out with a magical estimate of Rs 13,000 crore.
If a day's protest has cost the country Rs 13,000 crore, industry lobbyists should demand making it compulsory to work for seven days a week. Why should we have a five-day week? In fact, FIICI should even considering seeking an extension in work hours to 11 pm at night.
Nevertheless, the media's reaction is a reflection of what India Inc thinks. Just like the UPA-II, which actually is a government of the industry, by the industry and for the industry. So let us not unnecessarily worry about what the media says or be carried away by the 'pro-people' cliches on TV by our impotent netas.
During the day, I was asked by a TV channel whether bandh is the right form of protest. My response was that there are only two ways of expressing your anger and protesting against the high-handedness of the government: using the democratic form of protest or by picking up the gun like the naxals have done in 230 districts of the country.
The next question obviously is that it it is the people who bear the brunt of such protests. My answer is that in any case people have been reeling under the stupendous rise in prices for over a year now. They have been bearing the brunt silently. How long do you want the poor to go to bed hungry unable to buy two square meals a day? What about those millions who cannot afford to buy their daily quota of dal and chapati?
Anyway, the media decries bandh. The media also slams the opposition for disrupting the proceeding in Parliament if ever the Opposition parties come together on popular issues. What is the choice then? Should the people be left to adopt militant means? Or the media expects people to write letters to the editor? Even that space has disappeared in most newspapers, with hardly few inches of space left for public feedback.
It is not only the newspapers which have drastically curtailed space for public opinion, increasing privatisation is actually taking away the right of expression. Let me illustrate this. Some years back, I was travelling to Manila to attend a CGIAR conference. In the afternoon, we heard slogans outside the hotel. These were a group of farmers and activists who were protesting against the corporatisation of agriculture. Within minutes I found that the police arrived telling the protesters that they can't demonstrate inside the hotel's boundary walls.
Fine. The protesters moved to the road outside. They were told that the road was also a private property. They then went back to the small park in front of the hotel. They were then told that the park was also a private property.
In reality, India Inc is trying to take away all democratic spaces. They do not want any finger to be raised at the usurping of resources that the business and industry is engaged in. The economic loot that goes on with the support of the government is something they don't want to stop. Obviously the share prices go up, and that keeps the middle class happy. Those who groan, do it silently. But with the dominant media on their side, Corporates are trying to muffle all democratic options and voices. In other words, it is actually an assault on the fundamental right of expression.
We are therefore at a very crucial stage in history. If we let the debate over democratic norms be defined by the Corporates and their employees (and I am including the economists in this list), it is time to say goodbye to democracy.
Dow owns all liability for Union Carbide-related law suits in US, but refuses to do so in India
The Group of Ministers (GoM) headed by Home Minister P Chidambaram, known to be a sympathizer of Dow Chemicals, has done what it was expected to do: absolve Dow Chemical of all responsibilities of the Bhopal gas tragedy. For some strange reasons, the national outrage witnessed over the injustice being meted out to Bhopal gas victims was somehow missing when the GoM came out with an equally harmful decision.
P Chidambaram must be asked to explain as to how and why the government has refused to initiate any action against Dow Chemical for its refusal to own damages caused by Union Carbide in Bhopal. I agree that the legal route to make that possible had already been blocked by faulty judicial verdicts earlier, But there are several ways the government can step in. It can easily pressurise Dow Chemicals to behave.
Nevertheless, The Times of India (July 3, 2010) has published an excellent analysis that exposes the double standard's of Dow Chemicals. In the US, Dow is fighting 75,000 Union carbide-related suits and is expected to part with $ 839 million in coming years, while in India it has remained steadfast in denying any role for Bhopal clean up. This is only possible with support from the Government of India. I don't blame Dow Chemicals as much as I blame my own government. They have failed the people of India.
In case you missed it, here is the TOI analysis:
Dow's double standards exposed
Subodh Verma
Times Insight Group
Here is something for legal eagles of the government of India to chew on: while Dow Chemical Company denies any responsibility for damages caused by Union Carbide in Bhopal, it has taken over all liability of Carbide for fighting out over 75,000 asbestos related law suits in the US. Dow/Carbide expects to incur liability costs of $839 million in the coming years. They have already spent a whopping $687 million in litigation costs, besides paying out $1,480 million to an unspecified number of claimants till date. Carbide became a subsidiary of Dow through a merger in 2001.
These facts, gleaned from the mandatory annual filing (Form 10-k) for 2009 submitted by Dow to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the US on February 19, 2010, clearly establish that Dow has taken over Union Carbide liabilities for bodily damages caused by the latter's commercial activities. In the case of Bhopal, Dow has consistently claimed that it had nothing to do with the massive gas leak disaster of December 3, 1984 in the pesticide plant run by Union Carbide.
In 1994, Union Carbide (USA) sold off its interest of 50.9% in Union Carbide (India) to Macleod Russel (India) which renamed it as Eveready Industries India. According to Dow, its connection with UCIL doesn't exist because it took over the parent company only in 2001. But, according to N D Jaiprakash, one of the petitioners in the lawsuits on Bhopal, Union Carbide (USA) had already been declared an absconder in 1992 and it is named in the chargesheet filed by the Union government. "All criminal liability, as also liability for clean up of contamination caused by Carbide prior to disaster naturally passes to Dow," he explains.
In the US asbestosis cases, Dow is defending or settling the suits on behalf of Union Carbide as well as Carbide's subsidiary Amchem Products Limited, which Carbide took over in 1977. In India, Dow is distancing itself from Union Carbide (USA), which in turn is washing its hands off its own subsidiary Union Carbide India Limited.
According to the latest Form 10-k filing by Dow, there were 75,030 unresolved asbestosis related claims at the end of 2009, including 24,146 claims against both Union Carbide and Amchem. There are over 50,000 individual claimants. Dow/Carbide settled 9,131 claims in 2009.
Of the $839 million estimated future liability reported in the 10-k filing, about 23% is for existing pending claims and 77% is for future claims. Asbestosis claims have arisen from thousands of people who were exposed to asbestos used by companies in the 1940s and 50s. Inhalation of asbestos fibres causes four categories of compensable diseases: mesothelioma; lung cancer; certain other cancers (colon-rectal, throat, intestines and stomach); and non-malignant conditions like lung damage. Claimants are seeking compensation for a variety of causes including negligent failure to warn, strict liability, breach of express and implied warranty, negligent infliction of emotional distress, enhanced risk of disease, medical monitoring, and civil conspiracy. A Supreme Court appointed committee said in 1991 that by 2015, about 265,000 people would have suffered damage from asbestos.
The 10-k filing of Dow also states that it is seeking recovery of $84 million from insurers for its asbestos liability, and $448 million as costs of defence and resolution of law suits in courts.
The similarities between the Bhopal disaster and asbestosis cases in US are striking in that both have led to long term and severe bodily harm to people because of actions of the companies. But the attitude of Dow is strikingly different between US and India. In the US, Dow is responsible for what its subsidiaries (and their subsidiaries) did years ago. Hence, it is in the thick of litigation and forced to pay affected persons because of immense pressure from public opinion and judiciary. So much so that Dow admits that asbestos related claims, including future defence costs could have a material adverse impact on its consolidated financial position.
In India, Dow is denying any responsibility for what its subsidiary Union Carbide (USA) and its then subsidiary Union Carbide India did in the Bhopal tragedy in 1984.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Dows-double-standards-exposed/articleshow/6122640.cms
P Chidambaram must be asked to explain as to how and why the government has refused to initiate any action against Dow Chemical for its refusal to own damages caused by Union Carbide in Bhopal. I agree that the legal route to make that possible had already been blocked by faulty judicial verdicts earlier, But there are several ways the government can step in. It can easily pressurise Dow Chemicals to behave.
Nevertheless, The Times of India (July 3, 2010) has published an excellent analysis that exposes the double standard's of Dow Chemicals. In the US, Dow is fighting 75,000 Union carbide-related suits and is expected to part with $ 839 million in coming years, while in India it has remained steadfast in denying any role for Bhopal clean up. This is only possible with support from the Government of India. I don't blame Dow Chemicals as much as I blame my own government. They have failed the people of India.
In case you missed it, here is the TOI analysis:
Dow's double standards exposed
Subodh Verma
Times Insight Group
Here is something for legal eagles of the government of India to chew on: while Dow Chemical Company denies any responsibility for damages caused by Union Carbide in Bhopal, it has taken over all liability of Carbide for fighting out over 75,000 asbestos related law suits in the US. Dow/Carbide expects to incur liability costs of $839 million in the coming years. They have already spent a whopping $687 million in litigation costs, besides paying out $1,480 million to an unspecified number of claimants till date. Carbide became a subsidiary of Dow through a merger in 2001.
These facts, gleaned from the mandatory annual filing (Form 10-k) for 2009 submitted by Dow to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the US on February 19, 2010, clearly establish that Dow has taken over Union Carbide liabilities for bodily damages caused by the latter's commercial activities. In the case of Bhopal, Dow has consistently claimed that it had nothing to do with the massive gas leak disaster of December 3, 1984 in the pesticide plant run by Union Carbide.
In 1994, Union Carbide (USA) sold off its interest of 50.9% in Union Carbide (India) to Macleod Russel (India) which renamed it as Eveready Industries India. According to Dow, its connection with UCIL doesn't exist because it took over the parent company only in 2001. But, according to N D Jaiprakash, one of the petitioners in the lawsuits on Bhopal, Union Carbide (USA) had already been declared an absconder in 1992 and it is named in the chargesheet filed by the Union government. "All criminal liability, as also liability for clean up of contamination caused by Carbide prior to disaster naturally passes to Dow," he explains.
In the US asbestosis cases, Dow is defending or settling the suits on behalf of Union Carbide as well as Carbide's subsidiary Amchem Products Limited, which Carbide took over in 1977. In India, Dow is distancing itself from Union Carbide (USA), which in turn is washing its hands off its own subsidiary Union Carbide India Limited.
According to the latest Form 10-k filing by Dow, there were 75,030 unresolved asbestosis related claims at the end of 2009, including 24,146 claims against both Union Carbide and Amchem. There are over 50,000 individual claimants. Dow/Carbide settled 9,131 claims in 2009.
Of the $839 million estimated future liability reported in the 10-k filing, about 23% is for existing pending claims and 77% is for future claims. Asbestosis claims have arisen from thousands of people who were exposed to asbestos used by companies in the 1940s and 50s. Inhalation of asbestos fibres causes four categories of compensable diseases: mesothelioma; lung cancer; certain other cancers (colon-rectal, throat, intestines and stomach); and non-malignant conditions like lung damage. Claimants are seeking compensation for a variety of causes including negligent failure to warn, strict liability, breach of express and implied warranty, negligent infliction of emotional distress, enhanced risk of disease, medical monitoring, and civil conspiracy. A Supreme Court appointed committee said in 1991 that by 2015, about 265,000 people would have suffered damage from asbestos.
The 10-k filing of Dow also states that it is seeking recovery of $84 million from insurers for its asbestos liability, and $448 million as costs of defence and resolution of law suits in courts.
The similarities between the Bhopal disaster and asbestosis cases in US are striking in that both have led to long term and severe bodily harm to people because of actions of the companies. But the attitude of Dow is strikingly different between US and India. In the US, Dow is responsible for what its subsidiaries (and their subsidiaries) did years ago. Hence, it is in the thick of litigation and forced to pay affected persons because of immense pressure from public opinion and judiciary. So much so that Dow admits that asbestos related claims, including future defence costs could have a material adverse impact on its consolidated financial position.
In India, Dow is denying any responsibility for what its subsidiary Union Carbide (USA) and its then subsidiary Union Carbide India did in the Bhopal tragedy in 1984.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Dows-double-standards-exposed/articleshow/6122640.cms
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