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rowanlim
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Joined: 02 Mar 2008
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Location: Malaysia
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 Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 5:47 am Post subject: Food Crisis |
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Looks like the food crisis is coming hard & fast
In Malaysia
| Quote: | Large local corporations should look at ways to tap their land resources for food crop production to complement the Government's strategy to stockpile food and to counter rising global food prices.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said that striving for self-sufficiency with regard to the nation�s food supply is a priority following the recent global food crisis and increasing price of specific commodities.
�We must address these issues or it will have a negative impact on our rakyat (citizens),� he said in his speech when officiating the Amanah Saham Malaysia Week celebrations held at the Melaka International Trade Centre here on Sunday.
For a start, he said that Permodalan Nasional Berhad could hold discussions with its related companies to identify viable crops and how best to utilise its land for investment in food production.
�Apart from palm oil and rubber, there are other areas in the agriculture sector that could be considered for food crop production,� he said, adding that such economic activities could also result in investment returns for the companies in the future via exporting of their produce.
Abdullah reiterated the RM4bil food security plan is aimed not only at alleviating food shortages but also at increasing production output to ease farmer's burdened by the rising cost of fertilisers. |
In USA
| Quote: | THE SKYROCKETING commodity prices that have made the Farm Belt one of the most prosperous regions of the United States have had a rather different impact on large areas of the developing world. Foodstuffs have gone up 41 percent in price since October 2007, pushing many people over the line from poverty into privation or even hunger. The Food and Agriculture Organization, a branch of the United Nations, has identified 36 "crisis" countries, 21 of which are in Africa. The World Food Program, another U.N. agency, estimates that it will need $500 million on top of what donor nations have already pledged to fill what the WFP calls a global "food gap."
The United States must do its part. Even before the spike in commodity prices, the fiscal 2008 food aid budget of $1.2 billion was proving inadequate. President Bush asked for a $350 million supplemental appropriation in October, to cover help for Darfur and other critically needy areas. But Congress has not yet approved that request. Meanwhile, the U.S. Agency for International Development, which administers U.S. food aid, has accumulated a $120 million food budget deficit, which could grow to $200 million by the end of the fiscal year. Congress should swiftly approve the president's supplemental request, adding as much money as possible to offset recent price increases -- as Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (Pa.) and six other Democratic senators, including Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), have proposed. The alternative is selective cutbacks in aid to hungry regions, a kind of nutritional triage unworthy of the richest agricultural nation in human history.
But increasing current spending is only a short-term solution. Higher food prices appear to be here to stay, and U.S. policy must adjust accordingly. Congress must dramatically improve the efficiency of existing programs. An April 2007 report by the Government Accountability Office showed that transportation and other overhead costs now consume 65 percent of U.S. food aid dollars. This is partly attributable to higher fuel prices and U.S. laws requiring that most grain shipments go out on relatively expensive U.S.-flagged cargo vessels. And why does so much food have to travel the high seas in the first place? Because U.S. law requires that the government buy all food donations from U.S. producers.
One cost-cutting measure, supported by many economists and by relief organizations such as CARE, would be to permit the U.S. government to buy at least some of the grain it donates from farmers nearer to famine zones -- to buy, say, South African or Ethiopian wheat and ship it to the hungry elsewhere in Africa. Both the European Union and Canada have recently authorized such "local and regional purchases," with broadly successful results. President Bush has called for allowing as much as 25 percent of the U.S. food aid budget to be used this way.
Lawmakers in the House and Senate rejected his proposal, refusing to include it in their respective versions of the farm bill, which are pending before a House-Senate conference committee. The Senate Agriculture Committee did substitute a $25 million pilot program; even that tepid measure didn't make it into the final Senate bill. With food prices and food needs on the rise, Congress cannot afford business as usual. House and Senate conferees should adopt the president's proposal in the farm bill. |
Source
In Bangladesh
| Quote: | There is a simple enough way of judging how serious Bangladesh's food crisis has become this year - it is to count the changing number of people queuing up to buy government-subsidised rice each day.
As the weeks have passed and the sun above Dhaka has become stronger, so the queues are now forming earlier, and more and more people are joining them.
The shops are little more than bamboo and sheet-metal sheds set up on patches of waste ground, and the men working in them are soldiers of the Bangladesh Rifles.
This unit's normal job is to guard the country's borders.
But for months now it has been helping preserve the country's stability by selling cheap food to the poor. The rice they sell is three-quarters of the market price.
New shoppers
The shoppers are no longer just rickshaw pullers and day-labourers, as they were in January, but government workers, security guards and teachers.
Instead of two orderly queues, one of men, the other of women, there are now often four queues, and a scrum of frustrated people at the front.
"The price rise has been really hard on the people of Bangladesh," Milon Das, a primary school teacher, said.
"Though I am a teacher, my salary is low, and I cannot afford rice at the normal markets. This is our country's biggest problem."
The price of a kilogramme of coarse rice, the staple food of Bangladesh's poor, has more than doubled over the past 12 months, to about $0.60 (30p).
By contrast, workers' wages have not changed.
Economic pressures
The owners of Bangladesh's garment factories, the backbone of the economy, are especially reluctant to raise wages, so as to keep the country competitive with China.
Their clothes are exported to many of the West's largest brands, such as Levis, Tesco, Carrefour and H&M.
Local problems, such as worse than average floods and the devastating Cyclone Sidr last year, have compounded global supply problems to push prices up.
The military-backed government has blamed speculators for making the situation worse, but many Bangladeshis think the authorities have been slow to handle it effectively.
At the government-run food shop in front of the American Embassy, many people told me they had responded to the price rise in three ways.
Firstly they had cut one meal a day out of their diets.
Secondly, they had stopped eating meat, fish and eggs.
And last, they had stopped saving money.
Food, they estimated, consumed more than half their earnings. Rent took up almost all the rest.
Social unrest
A former government minister has predicted social unrest if this situation worsens.
One of the shoppers agrees.
"There will be chaos, there will be demonstrations, there will be muggings, there will be hijackings, there will be strikes," Mohammed Akhtar Hossein, who works as a security guard at a luxury block of flats, said.
"If people don't have food in their stomachs they will go out into the streets to take whatever they can because they have to survive."
But salvation is not far away - by the end of April, Bangladesh's most important rice harvest, called Boro, is due.
Bumper crop
The government expects a bumper crop, so its effort now is to get enough food onto the market to last until then.
"This is the critical period; the period when the government really has to offload all it has got," says Dr K A S Murshid, of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies.
"The government says it has 100,000 tonnes, but I would have preferred something like 200,000 tonnes."
But despite the short-term relief the Boro harvest should bring, experts agree that the long-term trend of food price rises in Bangladesh will continue.
"A country like Bangladesh, which imports both food and oil, is on the losing side," says Dr Sajjad Zohir, of Dhaka's Economic Research Group.
"I would call the price changes, which followed the high price of oil, as a crime against humanity," he added. |
Source 
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Last edited by rowanlim on Wed May 07, 2008 5:43 am; edited 3 times in total |
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ash
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| Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 8:01 am Post subject: |
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~sigh~  Really dont hope it would be serious... and im sure we human are so advanced...sure there are many efficient ways to overcome this crisis...  
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rowanlim
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| Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 8:14 am Post subject: |
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Thailand has a unique way of dealing with this:
| Quote: | Thai PM urges countrymen to eat less rice, export more
Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej Sunday urged Thais to eat less rice so as to allow farmers to export more.
The prime minister noted that farmers could sell their rice at double the price last year on the export market, so Thais should make the sacrifice of eating less of their staple food, the Bangkok Post online service reported.
Samak, who earlier this year advised consumers to eat more chicken as the best means of countering rising pork prices, offered his unique solution to Thailand's artificial rice shortage on his Sunday talk show.
Thailand has been the world's leading rice exporter since the mid-1960s, and is well-placed this year to take advantage of a doubling in world rice prices caused by export bans in Vietnam and India, the second and third largest rice exporters.
Thai exporters, however, are having trouble meeting orders because of mass hoarding of rice among rich farmers, millers and speculators.
The vast majority of Thailand's rice farmers are poor, own small plots of land with no storage facilities and face huge debts from moneylenders for the fertilisers they use to grow paddy.
Thailand produces about 20 million tonnes of rice a year, about eight to nine million tonnes of which is usually exported, with the remainder consumed locally.
The government has a rice stockpile of two million tonnes which it has promised to release on the local market to keep local prices at reasonable levels. Even so, the local price for rice has risen more than 50 percent this year. |
Source
Guess it's time to start dieting, me dad says 
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ash
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| Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 9:39 am Post subject: |
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still i dont think its a good idea... coz if its continuously like that...everyone will be in hunger... 
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rowanlim
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| Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 10:14 am Post subject: |
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Yeah I agree...I think the Thai government is trying to reap some benefits from the upcoming food crisis, they can export more rice...but this is sad for many developing countries, for example in India...
| Quote: | Is India facing a food crisis?
Is India, the world's second most populous nation, facing a food crisis?
This question is vexing policy makers and analysts alike even as creeping inflation - around 7% now - is sending jitters through the Congress party-led ruling coalition.
To be sure, India has not yet experienced riots over rising food prices that have hit other countries like Zimbabwe or Argentina.
But what is worrying everybody is that the current rise in inflation is driven by high food prices.
In the capital, Delhi, milk costs 11% more than last year. Edible oil prices have climbed by a whopping 40% over the same period.
More crucially, rice prices have risen by 20% and prices of certain lentils by 18%. Rice and lentils comprise the staple diet for many Indians.
Tax on the poor
Inflation, economists say, is akin to a tax on the poor since food accounts for a relatively high proportion of their expenses.
All of which is bad news for ruling politicians because the poor in India vote in much larger numbers than the affluent.
Roughly one out of four Indians lives on less than $1 a day and three out of four earn $2 or less.
The rise in food prices, the government says, is an international phenomenon.
But this argument is unlikely to cut much ice with the people.
At the crux of the crisis is the tardy pace at which farm output has been growing in recent years.
The Indian economy has been growing rapidly at an average of 8.5% over the last five years.
This growth has been mainly confined to manufacturing industry and the burgeoning services sector.
Agriculture, on the other hand, has grown by barely 2.5% over the last five years and the trend rate of growth is even lower if the past decade and a half is considered.
Consequently, per capita output of cereals (wheat and rice) at present is more or less at the level that prevailed in the 1970s.
The problem acquires a serious dimension since farming provides livelihood to around 60% of India's 1.1 billion people even though farm produce comprises only 18% of the country's current gross domestic product (GDP).
On the other hand, the services sector - that includes the fast-growing computer software and business process outsourcing industries - constitutes over 55% of GDP with the remainder being taken up by industry.
The crisis in farms is exemplified by the state of the country's cereal stocks.
Vulnerable farmers
Six years ago, the stocks were at record levels.
Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen had said if all the bags of wheat and rice with the state-owned Food Corporation of India were placed end to end, they would go all the way to the moon and back.
Stocks have come down over the past three years because of low production and exports.
The problem has been compounded by the fact that whenever India has imported wheat in recent months, world prices of wheat have shot up.
There is also considerable resentment over the fact that the price of wheat that the government imports is often twice as high as the minimum price the government pay its own farmers for domestically grown wheat.
Indian farmers are particularly vulnerable since 60% per cent of the country's total cropped area is not irrigated.
They are also dependent on the four-month-long monsoon during which period 80% of the year's total rainfall takes place.
The crisis in agriculture has been manifest in the growing incidence of farmers taking their own lives.
At least 10,000 farmers have committed suicide each year over the last decade because of their inability of repay loans taken at usurious rates of interest from local moneylenders.
Populist moves
There has never been an acute shortage of food in India, not even during the infamous famine in Bengal in 1943 in which more than 1.5 million people are estimated to have died of starvation.
The problem then - and now - is entitlement or access to food at affordable prices.
Given the low purchasing power of India's poor, even a small increase in food prices contributes to a sharp fall in real incomes.
The current crisis in Indian agriculture is a consequence of many factors - low rise in farm productivity, unremunerative prices for cultivators, poor food storage facilities resulting in high levels of wastage.
Fragmentation of land holdings and a fall in public investments in rural areas, especially in irrigation facilities, are also to blame.
The government has announced a $15bn waiver of farmer loans and extended a jobs scheme - ensuring 100 days of work in a year entailing manual labour to every family demanding such work at the official minimum wage - to all over the country.
None of these populist initiatives will really work until India's rulers begin giving its ignored farms the importance they deserve. |
Source
As always, economy & food crisis hits poor nations hard. I heard that Malaysia is going to have food stockpiles, encourage us to plant our own vegetables...sigh
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ash
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| Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 2:03 pm Post subject: |
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If Msia really gonna do that, i think te ideas is quite ok compared to Thai  At least thats true that everyone must be responsible to take care of your own food supply (to grow own food is not a bad idea)
Well now i can see that Msia gov contributes some USEFUL ideas at last 
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rowanlim
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| Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 2:06 pm Post subject: |
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| ash wrote: | If Msia really gonna do that, i think te ideas is quite ok compared to Thai At least thats true that everyone must be responsible to take care of your own food supply (to grow own food is not a bad idea)
Well now i can see that Msia gov contributes some USEFUL ideas at last |
Yeah...Now the only thing is to hope that Malaysians will do their part...if the plan is good but not implemented, it's just screwed up right?
So enjoy the delicious food now...it will be a thing of the past in the future
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ash
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| Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 2:14 pm Post subject: |
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| rowanlim wrote: | Yeah...Now the only thing is to hope that Malaysians will do their part...if the plan is good but not implemented, it's just screwed up right?
So enjoy the delicious food now...it will be a thing of the past in the future |
Yup that's right...Citizens must help themselves
Hahahhaha  aiyooo...food food foood~ Just eat as n enjoy now hehehehhehe
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rowanlim
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| Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 9:20 am Post subject: |
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| ash wrote: | Yup that's right...Citizens must help themselves
Hahahhaha aiyooo...food food foood~ Just eat as n enjoy now hehehehhehe |
Yeah true...FOOOD...
On a serious note, I think global warming has something to do with all this food shortage
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ash
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| Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 5:02 pm Post subject: |
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Woww... Thats sound interesting  What about that? but yes i think they are related as well... it's possible
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rowanlim
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| Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 5:12 pm Post subject: |
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Well global warming is causing alot of fluctuations in temperatures, salinity of water, etc. These are factors that affect agriculture, hence affect the production of certain foods. When you add in extreme weather like drought or rain, it affects productivity too
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calebdanvers
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| Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 1:51 pm Post subject: |
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Well well well!!!!
This shud be a wakeup call for us. We shud not waste food. Malaysians are among the most wasteful ppl when it comes to eating. We had been so lucky all this while where we didnt have to worry bout food cuz of its abundance and continuous supply here in Malaysia. Hence, that led us to our wasteful nature. Now, we shud reflect on ourselves whether we have been doing the right thg as the case has been reversed for good.
I personally feel that the situation that's been plaguing us since the last two weeks has its pros and cons.
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Last edited by calebdanvers on Fri May 09, 2008 1:49 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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rowanlim
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| Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 2:20 pm Post subject: |
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^I agree, we truly waste food. Even in UMP, I've seen unfinished food so many times on plates at the cafe. If you're going to take the food, please THINK a little & not just take the whole lot; take what you KNOW you can finish.
| Quote: | Malaysia may ban local rice from being taken out of country due to food shortage fears
Malaysia might ban taking locally grown rice out of the country in a bid to stave off fears of a shortage caused by a global food crisis, a Cabinet minister said Monday.
The measure is aimed at cracking down on shoppers from neighboring Singapore and Thailand who cross over to buy cheaper rice and other food in Malaysia.
"We have to take steps to make sure it doesn't go through our borders because the price difference is quite great between Malaysia and Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia," said Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Shahrir Abdul Samad.
Malaysia is not a rice exporter and imports about 30 percent of its needs, but local rice is cheaper than in neighboring countries. Depending on the quality, some varieties of Thai rice cost twice as much as Malaysian rice in Thailand's retail markets, Shahrir old reporters.
He said there was now no shortage of rice in Malaysia despite a global crisis that has seen the price of Thai rice nearly tripling in the past five months.
Shahrir said the attempt to make rice a controlled item was "not because it is necessary � but you have to try to bring comfort and assurance to the people."
Rice prices have surged amid poor weather in some nations that produce the crop, and due to demand outstripping supply.
Some Asian countries, including India and Vietnam, have been blamed for contributing to the problem by curbing rice exports to guarantee their own supplies.
Malaysia also recently announced plans to boost domestic food security by growing rice on a massive scale in a state on Borneo island and by setting up a a 4 billion ringgit (US$1.3 billion; �1 billion) plan to guarantee food supplies.
Shahrir said earlier that the government may also subsidize rice in the future if necessary.
Although there are no direct subsidies on rice, the government provides farmers with free fertilizer and other concessions to keep the price under control.
The government spent more than 900 million ringgit (US$290 million; �200 million) on such concessions in 2007.
The government spends 4 billion ringgit (US$1.3 billion; �810 million) per year on the food-related subsidies, including directly subsidizing flour, white bread and cooking oil. |
Source
This is from a foreign news source, stay tuned.
| Quote: | Food prices spur inflation
in the first week of April, thousands of people stormed the presidential palace in Haiti, throwing stones and demanding the resignation of President Rene Preval over soaring food prices. In reasonably prosperous Malaysia, the ruling coalition was nearly ousted by voters who cited food and fuel price increases as their main concerns. The us and Japan have begun rationing and the un secretary general Ban Ki Moon has termed the jump in food prices as a �threat to global security�. A World Bank report blamed food price rise as the main reason for skyrocketing inflation all over the world. In India too, the United Progressive Alliance government felt the heat from its allies and opposition over rising food prices that spiked inflation to a three year high of 7.41 per cent in the last week of March.
Food inflation stood at 5.4 per cent in the week ending March 29. The government has banned the export of wheat, rice, pulses and oilseeds. But then food prices are not the only reason for inflation in the country: some of it is also driven by rising steel and metal prices
The government is contemplating a ban on export of these commodities.
Export bans, however, have produced only a marginal effect�inflation came down from 7.4 per cent in the last week of March to around 7.14 per cent�and the government has most often found itself short of answers while having to explain the rise in food prices.
The agriculture minister blamed it on food shortage caused by changing eating habits. More south Indians were eating wheat, he said. Commerce minister Kamal Nath reasoned that more Indians were getting two square meals a day, hence the shortfall in food.
Experts have more tangible reasons. �The government procurement was below target in 2007 despite record production,� said Abhijit Sen, economist and the head of a four-member committee examining the impact of futures trading on agricultural prices. Others blamed the shortfall on hoarding by private players and said that the government must strengthen the public distribution system. Anand Kumar, a social scientist at the Centre of Studies for Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University (jnu), recommended that the Essential Commodities Act be imposed on all large private traders. He was speaking at a meeting called by the United National Progressive Alliance, a coalition of opposition parties, and the left parties on April 19.
Futures trading in agricultural commodities came in for a lot of criticism at the meeting. Such trading has been a contentious issue for some time. In May last year, the government banned futures trading in rice, wheat, urad and tur (lentil varieties), and constituted the four-member Sen committee.
Sen told Down To Earth that the committee�s report, likely to be submitted by April end could not find conclusive evidence to blame future trading for price rise. However, he refused to support futures trading. Media reports suggest dissension in the Sen committee. Other experts are also against futures trading. �This is not the right time to expose foodgrains to future trading. The move will lead to more speculation and further increase food prices,� said Jayati Ghosh, chairperson of the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, jnu |
Source
I foresee a diet in the near future...
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radin87
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| Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 3:42 pm Post subject: |
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well.. Malaysia is supposed not to have this such problem..
it is because we are among the country that produce rice..
But, after 1970.. most of the paddy field has been turned into a plantation (getah & Kelapa sawit). My village in Johor was surrounded by paddy field once. But now it has changed into a plantation. And even worse, that plantation doesn't even produce a thing...
I hope that the government would try to encourage Felda or Felcra to start developed a paddy field all around the country. At least we have enough rice to support our populations... |
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rowanlim
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| Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 4:56 pm Post subject: |
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I heard that they will open some areas in Sarawak for rice-planting...but then today someone told me that rice will be up to RM5 next week, I'm not sure for what quantity though
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