Trying to tap into the best thinking about the future of global agriculture, as I have tried to do in my work as a reporter, can be an exercise in frustration. Many groups and many bright people go at the problem, but not many of them go at it in a holistic way.

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Perplexity

“…upon the earth distress•Strongs 4928: sunoche, soon-okh-ay´; from 4912; restraint, i.e. (figuratively) anxiety: — anguish, distress. of nations, with perplexity•Strongs 640: aporia, ap-or-ee´-a; from the same as 639; a (state of) quandary:—perplexity.
•Strongs 639: aporeo, ap-or-eh´-o; from a compound of 1 (as a negative particle) and the base of 4198; to have no way out, i.e. be at a loss (mentally):— (stand in) doubt, be perplexed….”
—Luke 21:25

Famines and Troubles

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines•Strongs 3042: limos, lee-mos´; probably from 3007 (through the idea of destitution); a scarcity of food:—dearth, famine, hunger. and troubles•Strongs 5016: tarache, tar-akh-ay´; feminine from 5015; disturbance, i.e. (of water) roiling, or (of a mob) sedition:—trouble(-ing). these are the beginnings of sorrows•Strongs 5604: odin, o-deen´; akin to 3601; a pang or throe, especially of childbirth:—pain, sorrow, travail.
•Strongs 3601: odune, od-oo´-nay; from 1416; grief (as dejecting):—sorrow..”
—Mark 13:8

The environmental crowd is worried mainly about the ecological damage from agriculture and is prone to recommend solutions that farmers say would undercut the food supply. Traditional agronomists are mainly worried about supply — and tend at times to recommend fixes that might worsen the environmental damage.

A separate crowd is primarily worried about the inequities in the global food system: that a billion people at the top end are killing themselves eating overly rich diets while a billion poor people live desperate lives circumscribed by malnutrition.

Can’t we figure out how to fix all this at once?

It’s a tall order, but a heartening development in global agricultural policy is that some people are starting to try. Now comes an interesting new installment in the literature of the Big Fix. It’s an analysis by an international team of scientists led by Jonathan A. Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota.

Their paper, “Solutions for a Cultivated Planet,” was released online and is scheduled as the cover article of the Oct. 20 issue of the journal Nature. Dr. Foley is also publishing a piece in the November issue of Scientific American, due on newsstands next week, that summarizes the team’s analysis in layman’s terms.

The group finds, as others have before them, that the challenge of doubling global food production in coming decades can probably be met, albeit with considerable difficulty. The interesting thing to me about the analysis is that it doesn’t treat any of the problems confronting the food system as superior to the others — it treats the environmental problem, the supply problem and the equity problem as equally important, laying out a case that they all need to be tackled at once.

“Feeding nine billion people in a truly sustainable way will be one of the greatest challenges our civilization has ever faced,” Dr. Foley says in the Scientific American article, referring to the projected global population at midcentury. (He outlines some of the links between environmental problems and agriculture in this talk, and his group produced a popular animated clip that gives a sense of the scale of the problems here.)

Many elements of the new paper will be familiar to readers who follow these issues. Yet it is interesting to see these building blocks of a smarter food system spelled out in one paper, with hard numbers attached.

For starters, the group argues that the conversion of forests and grasslands to agricultural use needs to stop now; the environmental damage we are doing chopping down the Amazon far exceeds the small gain in food production, it says.

Next, the paper contends that increases in food supply need to come from existing farmland by a process of intensified production in regions where yields are low: northeastern India, Eastern Europe, parts of South America and large parts of Africa being good examples.

If yields in these regions could be brought to within 75 percent of their known potential using modern farming methods, including fertilizer and irrigation, total global supply of major foodstuffs would expand by 28 percent, the paper found. If yields were brought to 95 percent of their potential, close to those achieved in rich countries, the supply increase would be a whopping 58 percent.

The paper does not say so, but I suspect that either development would be enough to reverse the soaring food prices of recent years.

Another important strategy laid out in the paper is to improve the efficiency of agriculture in places where yields are already high. If farmers in Africa need more fertilizer, farmers in the United States need less.

The paper essentially argues that high yields can be attained with fewer chemicals and less water, which would not only cut pollution but in some cases also cut costs for farmers.

And finally, the paper argues that more of the food we grow needs to wind up on people’s plates. That means cutting food waste, not just the kind so common in Western kitchens but also the tremendous post-harvest losses caused by bad storage conditions in poor countries.

And it means a shift in diets away from meat and dairy products, which are inefficient to produce, and toward plants. The paper acknowledges that a massive transition to vegetarianism is unlikely but argues that even incremental changes — getting many people to move from less-efficient beef to more-efficient chicken, for instance — would make a difference.

The paper studiously avoids taking sides in the ideological wars over the food system. It does not adopt the left-leaning argument that organic production is the answer to the world’s food issues, nor the rightward view that markets will solve all problems.

It does argue for pulling as many good ideas as possible from emerging food movements into the conventional system — but only if they serve the three goals of increasing supply, reducing environmental damage and improving food security.

As a scientific report, not a policy document, the Foley paper does not offer any big new proposals for how to make all these things happen. Many commentators who have studied these issues have come to the conclusion that the barriers are not primarily technical but involve a lack of political will to solve the problems, leading to low public investment in agriculture.

In his Scientific American article, Dr. Foley does make one intriguing proposal. Pointing to the certification system that has encouraged the construction of green buildings, he asks: what about a new certification system for sustainably produced food?

Instead of catering to a single ideological predilection, the way the organic label does now, the new label would be based on a system that awards points for public benefits and subtracts them for environmental harm. Foods produced according to the best practices would get the highest scores, or possibly the highest letter grades. If consumers adopted it, such a certification would put pressure on companies and farmers to clean up their practices.

“This certification would help us get beyond current food labels such as ‘local’ and ‘organic,’ which do not tell us much about what we are eating,” Dr. Foley writes in Scientific American.

I can only imagine the ideological battles that will erupt if this idea is taken seriously. Yet some of the needed elements are already falling into place, like attempts in Europe to measure the carbon footprint of various foods.

If scientists with no axes to grind could manage to keep control of the certification system, using it as a vehicle to apply stringent performance criteria to farming systems while turning the label into a global brand, the world might have a powerful new tool for improving the food supply — and the health of the planet.

The head of the world’s biggest food company Nestle said on Friday that rising food prices have created conditions “similar” to 2008 when hunger riots took place in many countries.

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Famines and Troubles

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines•Strongs 3042: limos, lee-mos´; probably from 3007 (through the idea of destitution); a scarcity of food:—dearth, famine, hunger. and troubles•Strongs 5016: tarache, tar-akh-ay´; feminine from 5015; disturbance, i.e. (of water) roiling, or (of a mob) sedition:—trouble(-ing). these are the beginnings of sorrows•Strongs 5604: odin, o-deen´; akin to 3601; a pang or throe, especially of childbirth:—pain, sorrow, travail.
•Strongs 3601: odune, od-oo´-nay; from 1416; grief (as dejecting):—sorrow..”
—Mark 13:8

“The situation is similar (to 2008). This has become the new reality,” the Swiss giant’s chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe told the Salzburger Nachrichten daily in his native Austria in an interview.
“We have reached a level of food prices that is substantially higher than before. It will likely settle down at this level.
“If you live in a developing country and spend 80 percent of your income on food then of course you are going to feel it more than here (in Europe) where it is maybe eight percent.”
In 2008, the price of cereals reached historic levels, provoking a food crisis and riots in a number of African countries, as well as in Haiti and the Philippines.
In September the UN food agency’s food price index came in at 225 points, just higher than the peak it hit in June 2008. It is down from the record 237.7 points hit in February this year.
Food price inflation this year is seen as having contributed to the “Arab Spring” unrest in north Africa and the Middle East and there are fears of fresh unrest elsewhere.
The increases are blamed on speculative commodity trading, climate change, rising populations and changing eating habits in countries like India and China, most notably an increase in meat consumption by a growing middle class.
Brabeck-Letmathe said another factor was water, saying humans were “using more water than is sustainable” and calling for the price of water to rise in order to encourage firms and consumers to be less wasteful.

FORT MYERS – There is a major drug shortage across the country and hospitals are running dangerously low on life-saving medications. Southwest Florida is not exempt, but doctors here say they’re prepared to handle it.

!–more–>

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Perplexity

“…upon the earth distress•Strongs 4928: sunoche, soon-okh-ay´; from 4912; restraint, i.e. (figuratively) anxiety: — anguish, distress. of nations, with perplexity•Strongs 640: aporia, ap-or-ee´-a; from the same as 639; a (state of) quandary:—perplexity.
•Strongs 639: aporeo, ap-or-eh´-o; from a compound of 1 (as a negative particle) and the base of 4198; to have no way out, i.e. be at a loss (mentally):— (stand in) doubt, be perplexed….”
—Luke 21:25

Divided Nation

“But he, knowing their thoughts, said unto them, Every kingdom•Strongs 932: basileia, bas-il-i´-ah; from 935; properly, royalty, i.e. (abstractly) rule, or (concretely) a realm (literally or figuratively): — kingdom, + reign. divided•Strongs 1266: diamerizo, dee-am-er-id´-zo; from 1223 and 3307; to partition thoroughly (literally in distribution, figuratively in dissension): — cloven, divide, part. against itself is brought to desolation•Strongs 2049: eremoo, er-ay-mo´-o; from 2048; to lay waste (literally or figuratively): — (bring to, make) desolate(-ion), come to nought.; and a house divided against a house falleth.”
—Luke11:17

“Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.”
—Isaiah 1:4

Famines and Troubles

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines•Strongs 3042: limos, lee-mos´; probably from 3007 (through the idea of destitution); a scarcity of food:—dearth, famine, hunger. and troubles•Strongs 5016: tarache, tar-akh-ay´; feminine from 5015; disturbance, i.e. (of water) roiling, or (of a mob) sedition:—trouble(-ing). these are the beginnings of sorrows•Strongs 5604: odin, o-deen´; akin to 3601; a pang or throe, especially of childbirth:—pain, sorrow, travail.
•Strongs 3601: odune, od-oo´-nay; from 1416; grief (as dejecting):—sorrow..”
—Mark 13:8

Hospitals are experiencing some of the worst drug shortages in modern times. And there are several reasons why, according to John Armistead – who oversees all of the pharmacies within Lee Memorial Health Systems.

“What happens is some of those manufacturer’s have dropped out of the market leading in part to that shortage,” he said.

He says the economy has played a role in the shortage of 150 drugs – like electrolytes, antibiotics, and chemo treatments.

“In our regional cancer center, we’ve experienced some shortages in which we’ve had difficulty in getting the products. In some cases we’ve had to change patients over to other therapy regimens,” Armistead said.

And he adds there have been no deaths locally because of the shortage. To handle it, Armistead says they keep track of the drugs they think they might run out of.

It requires pharmacists to keep doctors in the loop so that a patient’s treatment can stay on track.

“We’re finding that we’re spending a lot more time trying to acquire the drugs and trying to come up with alternate regimens for patients,” Armistead said.

And in some cases, he says, they had to reserve treatments for high priority patients.

To view popup window put your cursor on the blue words

Famines and Troubles

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines•Strongs 3042: limos, lee-mos´; probably from 3007 (through the idea of destitution); a scarcity of food:—dearth, famine, hunger. and troubles•Strongs 5016: tarache, tar-akh-ay´; feminine from 5015; disturbance, i.e. (of water) roiling, or (of a mob) sedition:—trouble(-ing). these are the beginnings of sorrows•Strongs 5604: odin, o-deen´; akin to 3601; a pang or throe, especially of childbirth:—pain, sorrow, travail.
•Strongs 3601: odune, od-oo´-nay; from 1416; grief (as dejecting):—sorrow..”
—Mark 13:8

“There’s going to be an inflation tax to hit us and I am just afraid there will be people in the streets when they don’t get what they want,” Paul told the FOX Business Network.

When food shortages and rising prices drive people to desperation, social unrest soon follows. It’s as true today as it was in 18th-century France. According to a new analysis of food prices and unrest, the 2008 global food riots and ongoing Arab Spring may be a preview of what’s coming.

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Famines and Troubles

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines•Strongs 3042: limos, lee-mos´; probably from 3007 (through the idea of destitution); a scarcity of food:—dearth, famine, hunger. and troubles•Strongs 5016: tarache, tar-akh-ay´; feminine from 5015; disturbance, i.e. (of water) roiling, or (of a mob) sedition:—trouble(-ing). these are the beginnings of sorrows•Strongs 5604: odin, o-deen´; akin to 3601; a pang or throe, especially of childbirth:—pain, sorrow, travail.
•Strongs 3601: odune, od-oo´-nay; from 1416; grief (as dejecting):—sorrow..”
—Mark 13:8

“When you have food prices peak, you have all these riots. But look under the peaks, at the background trend. That’s increasing quite rapidly, too,” said Yaneer Bar-Yam, president of the New England Complex Systems Institute. “In one to two years, the background trend runs into the place where all hell breaks loose.”

Bar-Yam and his colleagues are hunters of mathematical signals in social data: market trends and economic patterns, ethnic violence, Hollywood movies. In their latest expedition, described Aug. 11 in the prepublication online arXiv, they focus on the 2008 food riots and the Arab Spring, both of which followed year-long surges in basic food prices.

FAO Price Index at current prices (black curve) and corrected for inflation (blue curve) between January 2004 and May 2011. Red dashed lines signify the beginning dates of food riots and unrest in North Africa and the Middle East. Black and blue horizontal lines represent the current-price and inflation-adjusted food price thresholds for riots. Bar-Yam et al/arXiv

The researchers are hardly the first to portray food problems as a spark that inflames social inequality and stokes individual desperation, unleashing and amplifying impulses of rebellion. The role of food prices in triggering the Arab Spring has been widely described. Their innovation is a pair of price points on the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s food price index: about 215 in current prices, or 190 when corrected for inflation.

It’s at those points where, on a graph of food prices and social unrest between 2004 and 2011, unrest breaks out. But whereas they were crossed by price jumps in 2008, Bar-Yam and colleagues calculate that the underlying, steady trend — driven primarily by commodity speculation, agricultural crop-to-fuel conversion and rising prices of fertilizer and oil — crosses those points between 2012 and 2013.

“Once we get there, the peaks aren’t the problem anymore. Instead it’s the trend. And that’s harder to correct,” said Bar-Yam. At that point, widespread political unrest and instability can be expected, even in countries less troubled than those in North Africa and the Middle East.

“When the ability of the political system to provide security for the population breaks down, popular support disappears. Conditions of widespread threat to security are particularly present when food is inaccessible to the population at large,” write Bar-Yam and colleagues in arXiv. “All support for the system and allowance for its failings are lost. The loss of support occurs even if the political system is not directly responsible for the food security failure, as is the case if the primary responsibility lies in the global food supply system.”

The analysis comes with caveats, one of which is the possibility that it’s the dynamics of spiking prices, rather than a particular price level, that unleashes unrest. But according to Bar-Yam, even the underlying trends are rising at an extremely fast pace. “If things change slowly rather than rapidly, there would be a different response,” he said. “If it was going to happen over a period of 10 to 20 years, we’d be talking about something else. But the circumstance we’re talking about is one of changes in a year or two.”

Citation: “The Food Crises and Political Instability in North Africa and the Middle East.” By Marco Lagi, Karla Z. Bertrand and Yaneer Bar-Yam. arXiv, Aug. 11, 2011.

Take care the next time you order high-quality meat at a lower-than-possible price. With food prices escalating, meat thieves — organized groups who target steaks and high-end cuts at supermarkets for resale to unscrupulous restaurants and markets — are a growing problem. They’re also hitting meat lockers, cattle pens and even 18-wheelers.

To view popup window put your cursor on the blue words

Famines and Troubles

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines•Strongs 3042: limos, lee-mos´; probably from 3007 (through the idea of destitution); a scarcity of food:—dearth, famine, hunger. and troubles•Strongs 5016: tarache, tar-akh-ay´; feminine from 5015; disturbance, i.e. (of water) roiling, or (of a mob) sedition:—trouble(-ing). these are the beginnings of sorrows•Strongs 5604: odin, o-deen´; akin to 3601; a pang or throe, especially of childbirth:—pain, sorrow, travail.
•Strongs 3601: odune, od-oo´-nay; from 1416; grief (as dejecting):—sorrow..”
—Mark 13:8

The most recent example was in Austin, where in late July police arrested six men in what they dubbed Operation Meat Locker. The sting operation started when managers at H-E-B, a Texas supermarket chain, called police to say that they had stopped a couple of shoplifters who said they were selling the meat they stole to three local restaurants.
H-E-B was mostly worried about the safety of the consumers who were ending up eating the meat. “They’re watching these guys with this stuff in their pants, and besides being nasty, what’s the temperature of the meat?” says Sgt. David Socha, who took part in the investigation.

To stop it, officers took fresh meat to more than 28 area restaurants to offer for sale. It wasn’t an easy sting to carry out because unlike the thieves, they had to abide by food safety regulations. “The meat had to be kept under 41 degrees, so we didn’t have much time to work,” Socha says.
None of the 25 restaurants chosen at random would touch the meat brought to their back doors and offered at half off, but the three who’d been fingered by the shoplifters “bought it again and again and again,” Socha says. It wasn’t just staff looking to make money on the side, but management who were involved, “so we knew it wasn’t a fluke,” he says.
After each restaurant had bought more than $1,500 worth of stolen meat, making it a felony, police moved in and made arrests July 28.
This sort of organized retail crime is a common and growing problem, says Joseph LaRocca, who focuses on asset protection for the National Retail Federation. A recent poll by the group found 95% of retailers falling victim to it in 2010, up from 89% in 2009. More than two-thirds of members say “these groups are getting more brazen and they’re getting hit harder,” LaRocca says.
High-ticket consumable goods that are easily resold “are the most commonly ripped off” and meat falls into that category, along with infant formula, razors and over-the-counter drugs, LaRocca says. Although it doesn’t track meat thefts specifically, the federation says annual losses from such organized groups can reach as high as $30 billion.
Organized retail crime rings consist of professional shoplifters, called boosters, who take “orders” from fences who buy the pilfered product. “Their entire job is to go out and steal. It seems that they stay within their realm — meat thieves will steal meat,” says officer Scott Stanley of the Tacoma, Wash., Police Department. Stanley is also the founder of the Washington State Organized Retail Crime Alliance.
In his experience, most of the boosters are drug addicts. Many are even paid in drugs. “They say ‘You go out and steal me $150 in tri-tip (roasts), and I’ll give you enough crack for a week,” he says.
The meat gets sold to unscrupulous restaurants or out of the back of a van at swap meets. Sometimes it goes to mom-and-pop convenience stores. “We’ve gone into a Shell (gas) station and found steaks with the Safeway sticker still on them,” Stanley says.
Supermarkets have long been aware of the problem, says Jason Moulton, Safeway’s Seattle District loss prevention director. “They’ll steal shrimp and lobster and high-value cuts of meat,” he says. His job has been made somewhat easier recently by new laws smoothing the way for prosecution of organized retail theft. There’s also a movement within the grocery world to work together to fight the thieves. “We don’t compete in this area,” he says. “We share information with other grocers so we get to these guys quicker.”
Not only are the meat cuts stolen goods, but they’re potentially a source of sickness. These meats aren’t being refrigerated. A common way for thieves to grab the meat is to shove it down their pants. “They’ll rubber-band the bottom of their sweats at the ankle and then they just start shoving it down their pants and they load up their pants leg,” Stanley says.
“The lack of refrigeration is a serious food safety concern; so is the suspect handling,” says Douglas Powell, a professor of food safety at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan. “And if restaurant owners are willing to cut corners and buy street meat, what else are they cutting corners on in the back kitchen? It doesn’t inspire confidence.”
The organizations aren’t all small-scale. Thieves made off with $11,000 worth of meat from Sedlacek’s Wholesale Meat Co. in Melbourne, Iowa, in February. Owner Barry Sedlacek came in one morning to find his cooler door open and 2,500 pounds of top-quality meat missing.
“They took a bunch of rib eye rolls and top sirloin, hams, steaks and a scale,” Sedlacek says. Because they stole the scale, he thinks the thieves planned to break up the meat into smaller packages for sale.
Though he had security, Sedlacek says, he has come to realize how much meat is a target. “Now we’ve got cameras on, we’ve got new locks, steel mesh over the windows. People go by and they say it looks like Fort Knox,” he says.
Texas has already had between 700 and 800 cattle rustling cases this year, says Larry Gray, law enforcement officer for the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association in Fort Worth. “There’s been an uptick in cattle thefts, first because of the economy and also because cattle prices are so high,” he says.
An 800-pound steer is worth about $880 right now, he says. Thieves will pull up to a feeding pen, load up their truck and “be out of there in 10, 15 minutes,” Gray says. They sell them at livestock auctions for quick cash.
The thieves aren’t novices when it comes to cattle, Gray says. They’re people who have worked in the industry and know how to load and market big, dangerous animals. “We don’t find many city boys who decided to steal some cattle.”
The market is big. Sometimes it’s 41,350 pounds of ground beef out of an 18-wheeler. That’s what police in Geneva, Ala., discovered when they checked out an empty tractor-trailer parked in town on Feb. 1 and traced it to a $95,000 load of ground beef that had been stolen from a Louisiana truck stop.
“The driver parked it and when he got back it was gone,” says Lt. Rickey Morgan of the Geneva police. Meat inspected by USDA is shipped with a special locking tag on the back of the truck, Morgan says. “You’ll have folks that ride around truck stops, they’ll see the tag and they know it’s some type of meat product. It may be hamburger, it may be steaks, they don’t know, but they know it’s a high-dollar load,” he says.
Geneva police traced “eight or nine pallets” containing 20-pound packages of ground meat to a local store that sells discount foods, “a bent-can store” as Morgan describes it. Each package had a serial number and the insurer had photographs of all of them, so they were able to identify the meat. It was recovered and then destroyed because it was impossible to know whether it had been contaminated during its sojourn.

World food prices that rose 37 percent in a year, driving 44 million more people into poverty, are a “plague” that need action from world leaders now, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said.

To view popup window put your cursor on the blue words

Perplexity

“…upon the earth distress•Strongs 4928: sunoche, soon-okh-ay´; from 4912; restraint, i.e. (figuratively) anxiety: — anguish, distress. of nations, with perplexity•Strongs 640: aporia, ap-or-ee´-a; from the same as 639; a (state of) quandary:—perplexity.
•Strongs 639: aporeo, ap-or-eh´-o; from a compound of 1 (as a negative particle) and the base of 4198; to have no way out, i.e. be at a loss (mentally):— (stand in) doubt, be perplexed….”
—Luke 21:25

Famines and Troubles

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines•Strongs 3042: limos, lee-mos´; probably from 3007 (through the idea of destitution); a scarcity of food:—dearth, famine, hunger. and troubles•Strongs 5016: tarache, tar-akh-ay´; feminine from 5015; disturbance, i.e. (of water) roiling, or (of a mob) sedition:—trouble(-ing). these are the beginnings of sorrows•Strongs 5604: odin, o-deen´; akin to 3601; a pang or throe, especially of childbirth:—pain, sorrow, travail.
•Strongs 3601: odune, od-oo´-nay; from 1416; grief (as dejecting):—sorrow..”
—Mark 13:8

Group of 20 farm ministers are in Paris for the second day of a summit. France, which holds the G-20 presidency, wants a central database on crops, limits on export bans, international market regulation, emergency stockpiles and a plan to raise global output. The proposals to limit export curbs and start a database will be “especially sensitive,” French Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire said last week.
Wheat as much as doubled in the past year as Russia and Ukraine curbed exports after drought decimated crops, adding to record global food prices the World Bank says put 44 million more people into poverty since June. Nations will spend $1.29 trillion on food imports this year, the most ever and 21 percent more than in 2010, the United Nations estimates.
“Volatility is a plague on farmers and consumers,” Sarkozy said in a speech to the ministers yesterday. “It can plunge entire populations into famine and poverty.”
A lack of transparency in agricultural markets is exacerbating price swings, threatening economic recovery and food production, Sarkozy said.
“We have to act, and act together,” the president said. “The world is watching you.”
‘Century of Hunger’
World leaders risk making this “the century of hunger” unless they can agree to new rules on food supply, Le Maire said before the meeting. France’s position on the main proposals being put to the G-20 ministers is that either all are agreed on or there is no accord, Le Maire said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on June 20.
“Transparency is an issue,” Abah Ofon, a Singapore-based analyst at Standard Chartered Plc, said in an interview with Susan Li on Bloomberg Television’s First Up. “The market isn’t giving enough signals to farmers and stakeholders” to boost production to make up for potential losses to crops in importing countries, he said.
The ministers will most likely balk at the proposal on trade restrictions, said Robert Carlson, international relations director at the Washington-based National Farmers Union.
‘Tough One’
“That’s going to be a tough one,” Carlson said in an interview in Brussels. “Probably the last thing you get agreement on is the agreement to let somebody else control the borders of your country.”
The last time prices surged, from 2007 to 2009, more than 60 food riots occurred worldwide, according to the U.S. State Department. The G-20 countries account for 65 percent of all farmland and 77 percent of global grain output, according to a statement on the website of the G-20 presidency.
Corn futures advanced 77 percent in the past 12 months in Chicago trading, a global benchmark, rice gained 39 percent and sugar jumped 64 percent. There will be shortages in corn, wheat, soybeans, coffee and cocoa this year or next, according to Utrecht, Netherlands-based Rabobank Groep. Prices also rose after droughts and floods from Australia to Canada ruined crops last year. European farmers are now contending with their driest growing season in more than three decades.
‘Corn And Yields’
“In terms of supply, there’s been some concerns in Europe, in southern U.S. Plains, in northern plains in China,” Standard Chartered’s Ofon said. “We’re concerned about corn and yields and acreage.”
Growth in agricultural output will slow to 1.7 percent a year through 2020, compared with 2.6 percent in the previous decade, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization and Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in a report this month.
While Standard Chartered forecasts global wheat production will expand, prices may still be sustained at current levels as “demand surges back into the market,” Ofon said.
France will sign only an agreement that includes regulation of financial markets for agricultural commodities, Le Maire said. The details will be discussed by G-20 finance ministers later this year, he said.
“A market that is not regulated is not a market, it’s a lottery in which fortune smiles on the most cynical, instead of rewarding hard work, investment and the creation of value,” Sarkozy said.

The strain of Escherichia coli bacteria responsible for an outbreak that has left 18 dead, sickened hundreds and sparked economic and diplomatic disruptions across Europe is a lethal strain that has never been behind a human outbreak and may be causing an unusually large number of severe illnesses, health officials said Thursday.

Pestilences

To view dictionary popup window put your cursor on the blue scripture words.

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines•Strongs 3042: limos, lee-mos´; probably from 3007 (through the idea of destitution); a scarcity of food:—dearth, famine, hunger., and pestilences•Strongs 3061: loimos, loy´-mos; of uncertain affinity; a plague (literally, the disease, or figuratively, a pest):—pestilence(-t), and earthquakes, in divers places.”
—Matthew 24:7

The outbreak is the deadliest in modern history to involve E.coli, and appears to be the second- or third-largest in terms of number of ill. The strain behind the outbreak could be a genetic recombination of two different E. coli bacteria that has produced an unusually virulent bug, the World Health Organization said Thursday, citing preliminary genetic sequencing.

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Spanish farmers throw fruit and vegetables outside the German consulate in Valencia, Spain, to protest against the initial accusations by Hamburg authorities that Spanish cucumbers were the source of infection of the E. coli bacteria outbreak.

This particular strain of E. coli—0104H4—is not new, though it’s rare and hasn’t previously been flagged as a human disease before, said Robert Tauxe, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s deputy director of its foodborne, bacterial and myotic disease division. A singular case had been reported in the 1990s in South Korea, Dr. Tauxe said.

According to the World Health Organization, of more than 1,600 people sickened by this E. coli strain, 499 have developed a rare and potentially fatal kidney-failure complication known as hemolytic-uremic syndrome—a complication that can shut down the kidneys and normally occurs in only a small percentage of people sickened during an E. coli outbreak.

“I’ve never seen this array of virulence and antibiotic resistance. It’s a very unique combination,” Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, said of the strain. But he cautioned that it’s not really clear what proportion of people are developing the severe kidney complication, know as HUS, because it’s still unknown how many are actually sick. Some may have milder symptoms and haven’t visited a doctor. “We clearly need more information on how many other people got sick,” he said.

The source of the outbreak, which has hit at least 11 European countries, remained unknown Thursday but officials believe it is some form of produce consumed in northern Germany and are warning people to avoid eating raw lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers.

Nearly all the sick people either live in Germany or recently traveled there. Two people who were sickened are now in the U.S., and both had recently traveled to Hamburg, Germany, where many of the infections occurred.

In Germany, there are typically about 60 cases of HUS a year. Since the beginning of May, Germany has seen at least 470 cases of the disease, according to the Robert Koch Institute, which is funded by the German health ministry. There have been an additional 1,064 less-severe cases of E .coli infections.

As the world’s biggest importer of vegetables, at $6.6 billion in 2010, Germany is particularly vulnerable to food infections, say trade analysts. The U.S. is the world’s second biggest importer, at $6.5 billion in 2010, of which most comes from Mexico.

E. coli infection can cause bloody diarrhea and can result in hemolytic-uremic syndrome, or HUS, the result of a severe infection releasing toxins into the blood, shutting down the kidneys. The toxins caused by this strain can also wreak havoc on the nervous system, causing disorientation and seizures, according to the University Clinic Hamburg-Eppendorf hospital. Treatments being used in the latest outbreak include dialysis, plasma transfusions and an antibody called Soliris(TM) from Alexion Pharmaceuticals in the U.S.—all three of which have shown varied levels of success.

Cases have been reported in Sweden, Denmark, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Spain and Austria, according to the European Centre for Disease Control. The Czech Republic government also reported one case, and WHO reported cases in Switzerland and Norway.

The U.K.’s Health Protection Agency said Thursday that four new illnesses tied to the outbreak have been documented in England, bringing the total number of cases in England to seven.

Although the outbreak of E.coli has been limited mostly to northern Germany, it has the European vegetable industry reeling from public fears about the virus, as well as prompting a diplomatic spat between Spain and Germany about who is to blame for the crisis.

Russia on Thursday banned all fruit and vegetable imports from the E.U., and Spanish politicians continued to call for compensation from Germany, which fingered Spanish cucumbers as the E. coli source last week. Hamburg city health officials said Tuesday that the Spanish cucumbers were not the source, but some health experts noted that pinpointing or exonerating a source is difficult when it comes to produce because it may be linked to one field or harvest, yet perishes quickly.

Germany is the biggest buyer for both Spanish and Dutch vegetables. Spanish officials are unhappy at the perception that their vegetables are to blame.

Spanish farmers dumped 300 kilos of produce on the doorstep of Germany’s Valencia consulate Thursday.

The E.U. described Russia’s decision to ban imports of fresh vegetables from the bloc as “disproportionate.” Frederic Vincent, health and consumer affairs spokesman for the European Commission, said the executive would demand an explanation of the decision from the Russian authorities. No fatalities or infections have been reported in Russia.

The stakes are consequential. The total production value of fruits and vegetables in the EU is $70 billion, and the total economic value of the supply chain is $170 billion, according to Freshfels, a Brussels-based trade group representing the EU fresh produce industry, which doesn’t break down the two categories. Much of the production in the EU is grown within the country, according to Freshfel.

“There has been a huge drop in sales of salad products from any source,” says Alex Lawson, who covers the European vegetable trade for Fresh Produce Journal, a U.K.-based trade publication.

—Jeanne Whalen, Ira Iosebashvili, Stephen Fidler and David Roman contributed to this article.

MINAMISANRIKU, Miyagi Prefecture—When a giant tsunami of more than 10 meters high crashed into the shores of this quiet fishing village Friday, hundreds, if not thousands, of its residents were swept away.

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Earthquakes

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes•Strongs 4578: seismos, sice-mos´; from 4579; a commotion, i.e. (of the air) a gale, (of the ground) an earthquake:—earthquake, tempest.
•Strongs 4579: seio, si´-o; apparently a primary verb; to rock (vibrate, properly, sideways or to and fro), i.e. (generally) to agitate (in any direction; cause to tremble); figuratively, to throw into a tremor (of fear or concern):—move, quake, shake., in divers places.”
—Matthew 24:7

Famines and Troubles

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines•Strongs 3042: limos, lee-mos´; probably from 3007 (through the idea of destitution); a scarcity of food:—dearth, famine, hunger. and troubles•Strongs 5016: tarache, tar-akh-ay´; feminine from 5015; disturbance, i.e. (of water) roiling, or (of a mob) sedition:—trouble(-ing). these are the beginnings of sorrows•Strongs 5604: odin, o-deen´; akin to 3601; a pang or throe, especially of childbirth:—pain, sorrow, travail.
•Strongs 3601: odune, od-oo´-nay; from 1416; grief (as dejecting):—sorrow..”
—Mark 13:8

With hardly a building now standing in the town’s lower basin, Minamisanriku is the focal point of the devastation on Japan’s northeastern coast. Nearly half of its 17,000 residents are missing. Those who aren’t among the 1,000 people already identified as dead are holed up in cold and chaotic evacuation centers.

Concrete foundations are proof that homes once stood in Minamisanriku. The large office buildings that remain standing are hollowed out, except for the piles of debris washed into shattered windows and doorways.

Local residents walk through the rubble, wide-eyed. Sifting through two-story high mounds of metal siding, logs and snapped power lines, they scrutinize their post-apocalyptic landscape for sign of hope.

“They’re probably gone,” 65-year-old Yumiko Yamauchi said of her two older sisters. Her back is slightly hunched, her legs wobbly legs. She uses a golf club with a sawed-off head as an improvised cane.

Together with her son and her two grandchildren, Ms. Yamauchi has already gone to all six of the town’s major evacuation centers in search of her sisters. Her last hope, she says, is to comb the area near where she thinks the house once stood. She sighed. “There is nothing left,” she said. “There is no way they could have survived.”

She said she hasn’t cried. There is a Japanese phrase shoganai, “it can’t be helped.”

“It seems strange to say shoganai with something like this, but that’s just the way I feel. Shoganai,” said Ms. Yamauchi, climbing the steep stairs back up to her house on the mountain, each step supported by her golf-club cane.

On this day in Minamisanriku, where salmon- and seaweed-farming are the staple industries, there were no happy endings.

While 32-year-old Mika Endo was reunited with her mother yesterday, she has also learned that her husband’s parents are probably both dead. Clutching her two-year-old son, Soma, fidgety in the cold, she looks with her mother for family photos in the mud and wreckage of the home where she grew up.

Ms. Endo and her husband identified her father-in-law in one of Minamisanriku’s makeshift morgues. “An acquaintance of mine saw my mother-in-law get washed away,” Ms. Endo recounted. She said the body has yet to be found.

Tomoko Haga, another resident of the area, spent three nights stranded with her elderly in-laws on the second floor of her home in a neighboring town. Exhausted, the 56-year-old Ms. Haga made her way through the debris on her way to the evacuation center to look for her 89-year-old mother and 52-year-old brother.

Her in-laws refused to flee as tsunami warnings sounded, she said. She says the family fled upstairs to avoid the rushing waters. As they waited, stranded, Ms. Haga said she would hear the helicopters of Japan’s Self Defense Forces. She says she waved frantically but they didn’t come.

Eventually, thanks to a neighbor who pleaded with them to find Ms. Haga’s family, the helicopters arrived. Ms. Haga’s parents-in-law were too weak to leave on their own and were airlifted out. Ms. Haga says her blood pressure plunged from the stress of the ordeal, and she went unconscious.

A day later, wearing five sweaters, she is walking amid Minamisanrika’s rubble, looking for her mother and brother, who live a few hundred meters from the water. “I am very, very worried,” she said.

On higher land, the town has turned the Bayside Super Arena, a 900-seat sports and entertainment facility opened in 1998, into the main evacuation center and morgue. The arena’s dim corridors overflow; 800 people shelter here.

In one corner of the lobby area, 200 mostly elderly people wait in line to see a doctor for prescription medicine. The line started gathering hours before the announced medicine-distribution time. One woman collapsed and needed to be wheeled to the infirmary, located in a weightlifting room where exercise machines have been pushed aside to let patients rest on mats.

For the first time since the earthquake struck, the town got phone service and laid out eight phones. Each person was allowed a single one-minute call.

In the entrance way, officials had a list of 60 deceased. All but three had been identified by the police, using their wallets or other forms of ID. One unidentified body, the list said, was a woman between 40 years old and 60 years old. She was found on the west side of a local retirement home in an apron, carrying a mobile phone with a Snoopy strap.

A couple in their 50s pored over the list. The man looked down the names and then said flatly, “there it is.” He walked over to a young male staff member and said: “We found a name on the list.”

The young man appeared confused. “You found what?” he asked.

The man leaned into his wife, and said: “I found a name of the death list.” He was whisked away to a back room.

The mysterious collapse of honey-bee colonies is becoming a global phenomenon, scientists working for the United Nations have revealed.

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Perplexity

“…upon the earth distress•Strongs 4928: sunoche, soon-okh-ay´; from 4912; restraint, i.e. (figuratively) anxiety: — anguish, distress. of nations, with perplexity•Strongs 640: aporia, ap-or-ee´-a; from the same as 639; a (state of) quandary:—perplexity.
•Strongs 639: aporeo, ap-or-eh´-o; from a compound of 1 (as a negative particle) and the base of 4198; to have no way out, i.e. be at a loss (mentally):— (stand in) doubt, be perplexed….”
—Luke 21:25

Famines and Troubles

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines•Strongs 3042: limos, lee-mos´; probably from 3007 (through the idea of destitution); a scarcity of food:—dearth, famine, hunger. and troubles•Strongs 5016: tarache, tar-akh-ay´; feminine from 5015; disturbance, i.e. (of water) roiling, or (of a mob) sedition:—trouble(-ing). these are the beginnings of sorrows•Strongs 5604: odin, o-deen´; akin to 3601; a pang or throe, especially of childbirth:—pain, sorrow, travail.
•Strongs 3601: odune, od-oo´-nay; from 1416; grief (as dejecting):—sorrow..”
—Mark 13:8

Declines in managed bee colonies, seen increasingly in Europe and the US in the past decade, are also now being observed in China and Japan and there are the first signs of African collapses from Egypt, according to the report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The authors, who include some of the world’s leading honey-bee experts, issue a stark warning about the disappearance of bees, which are increasingly important as crop pollinators around the globe. Without profound changes to the way human beings manage the planet, they say, declines in pollinators needed to feed a growing global population are likely to continue. The scientists warn that a number of factors may now be coming together to hit bee colonies around the world, ranging from declines in flowering plants and the use of damaging insecticides, to the worldwide spread of pests and air pollution. They call for farmers and landowners to be offered incentives to restore pollinator-friendly habitats, including key flowering plants near crop-producing fields and stress that more care needs to be taken in the choice, timing and application of insecticides and other chemicals. While managed hives can be moved out of harm’s way, “wild populations (of pollinators) are completely vulnerable”, says the report.

“The way humanity manages or mismanages its nature-based assets, including pollinators, will in part define our collective future in the 21st century,” said Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director.

“The fact is that of the 100 crop species that provide 90 per cent of the world’s food, over 70 are pollinated by bees.

“Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature.

“Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less, dependent on nature’s services in a world of close to seven billion people.”

Declines in bee colonies date back to the mid 1960s in Europe, but have accelerated since 1998, while in North America, losses of colonies since 2004 have left the continent with fewer managed pollinators than at any time in the past 50 years, says the report.

Now Chinese beekeepers have recently “faced several inexplicable and complex symptoms of colony losses in both species”, the report says. And it has been reported elsewhere that some Chinese farmers have had to resort to pollinating fruit trees by hand because of the lack of insects.

Furthermore, a quarter of beekeepers in Japan “have recently been confronted with sudden losses of their bee colonies”, while in Africa, beekeepers along the Egyptian Nile have been reporting signs of “colony collapse disorder” – although to date there are no other confirmed reports from the rest of the continent.

The report lists a number of factors which may be coming together to cause the decline and they include:

* Habitat degradation, including the loss of flowering plant species that provide food for bees;

* Some insecticides, including the so-called “systemic” insecticides which can migrate to the entire plant as it grows and be taken in by bees in nectar and pollen;

* Parasites and pests, such as the well-known Varroa mite;

* Air pollution, which may be interfering with the ability of bees to find flowering plants and thus food – scents that could travel more than 800 metres in the 1800s now reach less than 200 metres from a plant.

“The transformation of the countryside and rural areas in the past half-century or so has triggered a decline in wild-living bees and other pollinators,” said one of the lead authors, Dr Peter Neumann of the Swiss Bee Research Centre.

“Society is increasingly investing in ‘industrial-scale’ hives and managed colonies to make up the shortfall and going so far as to truck bees around to farms and fields in order to maintain our food supplies.

“A variety of factors are making these man-made colonies vulnerable to decline and collapse. We need to get smarter about how we manage these hives, but perhaps more importantly, we need to better manage the landscape beyond, in order to recover wild bee populations.”