rice

Bayer Pays $750 Million To Settle GM Rice Lawsuit

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– Genetic rice lawsuit in St. Louis settled for $750 million (STLtoday, July 2, 2011):

ST. LOUIS • Bayer CropScience agreed here late Friday to pay up to $750 million to farmers in Missouri and four other states to settle lawsuits over contamination of the U.S. rice supply by LibertyLink genetically modified rice in 2006.

“It was a devastating blow to a lot of rice farmers, and I’m tickled to death that we’ve finally reached a settlement where Bayer for the first time has offered to make it right to these farmers,” said St. Louis lawyer Don Downing, who was co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs.

“I think it sends a signal to those who develop genetically modified seeds that they need to keep those seeds very carefully contained until they’re approved for human consumption,” Downing said.

But, he added, “We were very careful all along … not to say that these lawsuits are anti-GMO (genetically-modified organisms) because many of our farmers use GM crops.”

Read moreBayer Pays $750 Million To Settle GM Rice Lawsuit

Former Japanese Government Nuclear Advisor Toshiso Kosako: ‘Come The Harvest Season In The Fall, There Will Be A Chaos’ – Ceiling On Schoolyard Radiation Levels ‘Unacceptable’ – Much More Radiation Threats To Come

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– Radiation Expert Predicts More Threats (Wall Street Journal, JULY 2, 2011):

TOKYO—A former nuclear adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan blasted the government’s handling of the crisis, and predicted more revelations of radiation threats to the public in the coming months.

In his first media interview since resigning his post in protest in April, Toshiso Kosako, one of the country’s leading experts on radiation safety, said Mr. Kan’s government has been slow to test for dangers in the sea and to fish, and has understated certain radiation threats to minimize clean-up costs. In his post, Mr. Kosako’s role was to advise the prime minister on radiation safety.

And while there have been scattered reports of food contamination—of tea leaves and spinach, for example—Mr. Kosako predicted there will be broader discoveries later this year, especially as rice, Japan’s staple, is harvested.

“Come the harvest season in the fall, there will be a chaos,” Mr. Kosako said. “Among the rice harvested, there will certainly be some radiation contamination—though I don’t know at what levels—setting off a scandal. If people stop buying rice from Tohoku … we’ll have a tricky problem.”

Mr. Kosako also said that the way the government has handled the Fukushima Daiichi situation since the March 11 tsunami crippled the reactors has exposed basic flaws in Japanese policy making.

“The government’s decision-making mechanism is opaque,” he said. “It’s never clear what reasons are driving what decisions. This doesn’t look like a democratic society. Japan is increasingly looking like a developing nation in East Asia.”

Read moreFormer Japanese Government Nuclear Advisor Toshiso Kosako: ‘Come The Harvest Season In The Fall, There Will Be A Chaos’ – Ceiling On Schoolyard Radiation Levels ‘Unacceptable’ – Much More Radiation Threats To Come

Chinese Companies Mass Produce Fake Rice Out of Plastic

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Related article:

– Rice Speculators Expect 50 Percent Jump In Price

(NaturalNews) The Chinese food contamination freak show is back in full swing with new reports out of Singapore indicating that certain Chinese companies are now mass producing and selling fake rice to unwitting villagers. According to a report in the Korean-language Weekly Hong Kong, the manufacturers are blending potatoes, sweet potatoes, and plastic industrial resin to produce the imitation rice.

A report in Very Vietnam states that an official from the Chinese Restaurant Association has announced that eating three bowls of this fake rice is the equivalent of eating an entire plastic bag. Consuming such plastic material is obviously a serious health hazard, and officials are allegedly gearing up to conduct an investigation into the factories accused of producing the phony rice.

Read moreChinese Companies Mass Produce Fake Rice Out of Plastic

Rice Speculators Expect 50 Percent Jump In Price

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Analyzing last week’s CFTC Commitment of Trader data continues to confirm our assumption that ever more speculators are honing in on rice as the fulcrum commodity. Jumping to a fresh year high of 6,652, non-commercial net spec contracts are the highest they have been since December 2009, when they hit 6,773, and approaching the record from early 2008.

Yet while the price of rough rice in late 2009 was comparable to recent price levels in the $16 region, the peak from early 2008 was 50% higher, approaching $25. Therefore it is safe to assume that should speculative interest continue surging at the current rate, and if it were to approach the spec exposure of ~8,000 last seen in early 2008, then the price of rice has a long way to go…

(Click on images to enlarge.)

And some other CFTC charts, confirming that spec exposure in grains and softs continues to be near recent all time highs:

Read moreRice Speculators Expect 50 Percent Jump In Price

Commodities: Rice Is Next

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The one commodity which has so far sneaked quietly between the cracks of rampant limit up opens and overnight price surges, just happens to be the most important one: rice.

If the price of rice were to follow the same fate as wheat, not to mention chocolate, and if the world starts getting visuals of what is happening in Egypt transposed a few thousand miles east, smack in the middle of Guangdong province, then not even the Sack Frost dynamic futures lifting duo will be able to do much to instill confidence that the revolution is progressing “better than analyst estimates.”

And it appears that the seeds of rice’s price surge may already have been planted. Bloomberg reports that “U.S. farmers are planting the fewest acres with rice since 1989 just as global demand surpasses production for the first time in four years, driving prices as much as 12 percent higher by December. Plantings in the U.S., the third-biggest shipper, may drop 25 percent this year because growers can earn more from corn and soybeans, according to the median in a Bloomberg survey of nine analysts and farmers.

Rice, the staple food for half the world, declined 4 percent last year, extending a 2.9 percent drop in 2009. The other crops jumped 34 percent or more.” Zero Hedge predicted in October of last year that the next real bubble will be rice. We stand by this prediction, which has so far not been validated presumably due to some quite interesting behind the scenes PM-for-food arrangement between China and one of the very popular US TBTFs. As the chart shows,  rice is poised for an imminent break out.

From Business Week:

“Why would you want to take that risk to plant rice, knowing that your income is going to be way down?” said Terry Hatley, a farmer in Marked Tree, Arkansas, who may not plant any rice this year after growing the crop for more than three decades. “Farming is a business, and you’ve got to look at the economics of it. Now, the economics on rice are very dim.”

Read moreCommodities: Rice Is Next

Wheat Futures At 29 Month High As Developing Country Demand Surges In Aftermath Of Tunisia Revolution

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Dow Jones reports that wheat futures just hit a 29-month highs on “strong global demand.”
Per the newswire, Algeria bought 800,000 tons of milling wheat, with traders estimating the nation’s purchases for January at about 1.8M. Turkey and Jordan bought wheat last week after rising food prices helped fuel unrest in Tunisia.

“They’re saying, ‘Boy we’ve got to eat. We don’t know where wheat is going to be in a month,’ says PFG Best. CBOT March wheat ends up 18 1/4c at $8.56 1/2 a bushel, while KCBT March climbs 22 1/2c to $9.40 and MGE March jumps 21c to $9.77.

The chart shows the UBS Bloomberg constant maturity Wheat index which confirms the vicious loop of what surging prices and geopolitical instability means to wheat prices.

The higher the prices, the greater the scramble by developing (and soon developed) countries to acquire as much wheat as possible and hoard it, hoping to avoid Tunisia’s fate, which of course will lead to even greater price surges. And all of this ignores the impact of the Goblin in Chief, whose money printing fetish has earned him, in our books, the adjective ‘genocidal’.

Once China figures out what is going on, and rice prices finally explode as we fully expect they will, the world will figure out just why…The only silver lining – soon farming will be the most profitable profession in the world. And as bankers only go where the money is, Bernanke’s strategy may in fact lead to the first net natural outflow of bankers from Wall Street in history.

Read moreWheat Futures At 29 Month High As Developing Country Demand Surges In Aftermath Of Tunisia Revolution

Philippines May Lose 600,000 Tons of Rice From Supertyphoon

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Super Typhoon Megi satellite photo

Oct. 18 (Bloomberg) — The Philippines, the world’s biggest rice buyer, may lose 600,000 metric tons of the crop as Supertyphoon Megi, the strongest to hit the nation this year, strikes some of the nation’s biggest producing areas, a government official said. Rice futures advanced.

“Once the typhoon hits those areas, the crop will be affected,” Agriculture Undersecretary Antonio Fleta said in a phone interview from Manila. “Even if farmers harvest the damaged rice, they’d have a hard time drying the grain. There may not be much left to sell.”

About 157,000 hectares of land planted to rice in Cagayan and Isabela provinces may be in the path of the typhoon, Fleta said. Megi has sustained winds of 270 kilometers (168 miles) per hour, the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center said, making it a Category 5 storm capable of catastrophic damage.

Half of the planted areas in the two provinces are ready for harvest and the rest are in the reproductive stage, leaving them susceptible to damage, Fleta said.

Damage to Philippine crops would come amid production losses in other countries, further curbing the global harvest and potentially sustaining a rally in prices.

Rough-rice futures have surged 43 percent from this year’s low of $9.55 per 100 pounds on June 30 as flooding in Pakistan and dry weather in the U.S. cut harvests. The contract for November delivery advanced for a fifth consecutive day today, gaining 0.3 percent to $13.655 on the Chicago Board of Trade at 12:10 p.m. Singapore time.

Read morePhilippines May Lose 600,000 Tons of Rice From Supertyphoon

US: Rice Farmer Awarded $500,000 In GM Rice Trial

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greenpeace_gm_rice_protest_rotterdam_harbour
Greenpeace activists protest on a barge containing contaminated illegal GM rice shipped from the US in the harbour of Rotterdam.

The people don’t want GM food and protest all around the world against it.

And this is the result?:

– GMO Alert: US Attempting Global Censorship of GMO Food Labeling

GM food has to be stopped NOW:

– Bayer AG admits GMO contamination out of control

What more can the people do to make their voices heard?

bayer_logo

ST. LOUIS (CN) – A federal jury awarded a rice farmer $500,000 for his claim that genetically modified rice contaminated his crop. It was the third of five “bellwether” trials involving hundreds of lawsuits that farmers have filed against Bayer CropScience.

The complaints are the result of an August 2006 announcement that LibertyLink, a herbicide-resistant rice, had somehow been released from testing facilities. The rice had not yet been approved for sale for human consumption, causing rice futures to plunge.

Read moreUS: Rice Farmer Awarded $500,000 In GM Rice Trial

Greenpeace Investigation: GM Rice Contamination In China’s Emergency Grain Stores

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China’s ban on GM rice questioned as environmental activists discover unapproved transgenic products at two grain sources

greenpeace_gm-rice-contamination-in-chinas-emergency-grain-stores
A Chinese rice farmer in the Hunan province of China. (Getty Images)

China’s state grain reserves have been contaminated by illegal, genetically modified rice, according to an investigation by Greenpeace.

The environmental group says it has found tainted samples at two rice processing enterprises that source their products from the strategic food reserve.

It is feared the transgenic products, which have not been approved as safe for public consumption, will spread nationwide because the reserves sell food and distribute emergency supplies during floods, droughts and other disasters.

The affected rice is believed to have originated in Hubei province – a centre of grain production and the site of field tests for strains containing the Bt63 gene, which repels insects.

Earlier this year, Greenpeace activists said they had found batches of genetically modified rice seeds in Hubei and its neighbouring province, Hunan.

They also found illegal GM rice on sale at Wal-Mart and Zhongbai supermarkets.

Read moreGreenpeace Investigation: GM Rice Contamination In China’s Emergency Grain Stores

World’s hungry ‘close to one billion’

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The food crisis has pushed the world’s number of hungry people to almost 1bn, prompting a “serious setback” to global efforts to reduce mass starvation, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation said on Tuesday.

“The ongoing financial and economic crisis could tip even more people into hunger and poverty,” the FAO added.

The Rome-based organization said that a preliminary estimate showed the number of undernourished rose this year by 40m to about 963m people, after rising 75m in 2007. Before the food crisis, there were about 848m chronically hungry people in 2003-05.

“High food prices are driving millions of people into food insecurity, worsening conditions for many who were already food-insecure, and threatening long-term global food security,” the FAO said in its report The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008.

Read moreWorld’s hungry ‘close to one billion’

The silent tsunami

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Hunger now afflicts almost a billion people in 60 countries … and kills 25,000 a day. A special report by Rob Edwards to explain the background to our Christmas appeal

A SILENT tsunami of hunger is engulfing the world, afflicting nearly a billion people in 60 countries and killing 25,000 men, women and children every day. The global food crisis, triggered by high prices, shortages and bad weather, is deepening as the world’s economy moves into recession. Millions more people are now facing poverty, starvation, disease and death.

The World Bank is predicting that 967 million people will now go hungry in 2008, 44 million more than in 2007. That means that almost one in every six people on the planet is not getting enough food to stay healthy.

Children’s growth is being stunted, immune systems are being destroyed and fatal diseases like diarrhoea, measles and malaria are spreading.

“This is a tragic loss of human and economic potential”, says a report from the World Bank.

Irreparable damage is being done to the health, life and prospects of hundreds of millions of people, it warns. “This is not only a crisis now, but a time bomb for the future.”

The World Bank also estimates that 2008 has pushed 100 million more people into serious poverty, making it more difficult for them to afford life’s essentials. Some 2.3 billion people worldwide have to manage on less than the equivalent of £1.35 a day.

Read moreThe silent tsunami

Huge rise in the price of food

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Supermarket food prices are soaring, with the price of key items rising at several times the rate of inflation, figures show.


The rising cost of the shopping basket

The price of fresh food has risen by 12 per cent since the start of the year, while meat and fish now costs 23 per cent more on average. Meanwhile chicken and ham have risen by 42 and 45 per cent since January, placing the former staples out of many consumers’ price range.

The rises in the price of both basic pasta and basmati rice have also smashed through the 40 per cent barrier.

Even so-called slump proof tinned foods have registered a price rise of 15 per cent – more than three times the Government’s official inflation rate of 4.4 per cent.

Read moreHuge rise in the price of food

Metropolitan Wastewater Ends Up In Urban Agriculture

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Wastewater is most commonly used to produce vegetables and cereals (especially rice), according to this and other IWMI reports, raising concerns about health risks for consumers, particularly of vegetables that are consumed uncooked.

As developing countries confront the first global food crisis since the 1970s as well as unprecedented water scarcity, a new 53-city survey conducted by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) indicates that most of those studied (80 percent) are using untreated or partially treated wastewater for agriculture.

In over 70 percent of the cities studied, more than half of urban agricultural land is irrigated with wastewater that is either raw or diluted in streams.

Read moreMetropolitan Wastewater Ends Up In Urban Agriculture

Australia is suffering one of its worst droughts on record

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Life is hard for wheat and livestock farmers in the south, as they face a possible third year of nearly no rain.

July 12, 2008 POOCHERA, AUSTRALIA — Glen Phillips kneels down, scoops up a handful of dirt and squashes it in his fist to test whether the soil in this dry patch of the Australian Outback is ready to take a crop of wheat.

“It should clump together when you squeeze,” says Phillips, whose family has lived off the land on the edge of the Great Australian Bight since 1949. “That’s how you know it’s good to plant, it’s moist enough to hold the roots.”

He opens his hand and the earth sifts dustily between his fingers. Phillips looks up, lifts his hat slightly and squints into an empty blue sky with no sign of rain.

“We’ll plant anyway,” he says. “We don’t have a choice.”

Australia is suffering one of its worst droughts on record, hurting wheat farming just as the world faces a food crisis. Australia is usually the world’s third or fourth-largest exporter of wheat. But exports dropped 46% from 2005 to 2006, then fell 24% last year.

Most of its exports go to the Middle East and Southeast Asia to make bread and cereals, but the fall in supply has led to soaring prices. A ton of Australian wheat costs $367, compared with $258 in early 2007, an increase poorer countries can ill afford.

Related articles:

– Worsening Drought Threatens Australia’s “Food Bowl”
– Drought devastates Iraq’s wheat crops
– Floods may boost world food prices for years
– Floods wipe out US crops
– The Best Farmland in the U.S. Is Flooded; Most Americans Are Too Stupid to Panic
– The Price Of Food: 2007 – 2008
– The U.S. Has No Remaining Grain Reserves
– Nine meals from anarchy – how Britain is facing a very real food crisis
– Time to Stockpile Food?
– Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.
– UN alert: One-fourth of world’s wheat at risk from new fungus
– THE FOUR HORSEMEN APPROACH – FAMINE IS IN THE AIR
– Philippines: Food Shortage Looms – Arroyo Adviser

“When they pay high prices, they pass on an increase to their poorest people, who can no longer afford it,” says Kunhamboo Kannan, director of agriculture, environment and natural resources at the Asian Development Bank. “Just look at Egypt.” Riots over rising bread prices and shortages have led to at least 10 deaths there this year.

Read moreAustralia is suffering one of its worst droughts on record

China to urgently boost GM crop development

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China has said it must urgently step up the development of genetically modified crops as it faces mounting challenges to feed its 1.3 billion people due to shrinking arable land and climate change.

Newly-approved plans aim to cultivate high-yielding and pest-resistant genetically modified species, the State Council, or cabinet, said in a statement posted on its website late Wednesday

At a meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao, Chinese leaders said the plans were “of strategic significance” in the country’s drive to make its agricultural sector more efficient and competitive internationally, the statement said.

“Departments must fully understand the importance and urgency of this significant project, further improve the programme and waste no time to carry it out,” it said.

It gave no details on which crops should be developed, but analysts said the plans were likely to focus on developing genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, including corn and rice.

China has become a major producer of genetically modified cotton and vegetables such as peppers and tomatoes, but it has yet to begin large-scale production of genetically modified rice, corn and soybeans.

Read moreChina to urgently boost GM crop development

Philippines: Food Shortage Looms – Arroyo Adviser

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Related article (Typhoon Fengshen):
– Fishing industry suffers after ferry tragedy:

“The government suspended all diving operations to recover bodies inside the vessel and banned fishing around the island on Friday after it was revealed the ferry was carrying a highly toxic pesticide.”

“Should the chemicals leak into its pristine waters the impact on local marine life would be devastating, according to marine biologists.”
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ILOILO CITY, Philippines – A “food shortage” looms in the next one to two months after massive floods due to typhoon “Frank” (international codename: Fengshen) devastated farm lands and livestock in the Western Visayas, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s adviser for the region said Sunday.

“We may face a food shortage, that is the extent of the damage from the typhoon,” Presidential Adviser on the Western Visayas Raul Bañas told reporters here after he received a delivery of relief supplies from Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Alexander Yano.

“In our aerial sorties, we saw firsthand how grave the damage is to crops. I think that’s one of the major problems we are facing,” he said.

Bañas said one of the affected provinces, Iloilo, is one of the top three rice-producing provinces in the country.

He said the floods destroyed 22 hectares or rice lands, equivalent to 66,000 metric tons of rice, and “almost wiped out” livestock and fisheries in the region.

In Cadiz town in Negros Occidental, Bañas said the storm destroyed half a billion pesos worth of fishing boats.

Bañas appealed for donations of potable water, saying the water systems destroyed by the storm have not been repaired.

By Joel Guinto
06/29/2008

Source: Inquirer.net

Philippines: Fighting to survive on mountain of trash

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Thousands of Manila’s poorest scavenge for recyclables daily at the city’s main waste disposal site in a smouldering district known as “Smokey Mountain.” Rice price spikes have caused greater hardship.

A spike in rice prices means increased hardship for millions of Filipinos living on less than $2 a day

MANILA – Amid the sprawl and stench of this city’s main dump – its air thick with charcoal and fleas – Redentor Escarcha is beaming.

The sinewy 26-year-old, his skin glistening with sweat, is one of thousands who come here every day to mine the Philippines’ capital’s garbage for recyclables: cans, cardboard, copper cables, anything of value.

It’s only 11 a.m. but Escarcha knows that what he has collected in his sack so far is worth more than 200 pesos (about $4.50). Most days this father of four earns about $3.

He knows the precise value of everything here – and he should. Escarcha is a veteran who has worked this dump for 19 years, ever since he was 7 years old.

He was born here.

“I was just lucky,” he says, explaining how he hit upon a treasure trove of high-quality glass this particular morning.

Lucky?

Yes. In Escarcha’s value system, today is another day he’ll be able to feed his family.

To appreciate the impact of increases in the cost of food in the developing world, you have to appreciate the depths of its poverty.

Here in “Smokey Mountain,” as this dump is known, poverty runs about as deep as it can get.

An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people live on the margins of the landfill.

Read morePhilippines: Fighting to survive on mountain of trash

The Price Of Food: 2007 – 2008

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Related articles:
– The U.S. Has No Remaining Grain Reserves
– Floods wipe out US crops
– Nine meals from anarchy – how Britain is facing a very real food crisis
– Time to Stockpile Food?
– Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.
– UN alert: One-fourth of world’s wheat at risk from new fungus
– THE FOUR HORSEMEN APPROACH – FAMINE IS IN THE AIR

The meat prices will very soon go through the roof too, because the livestock is fed with corn, soybeans and hay. And the prices will continue to rise because of accelerating inflation, the missing bees, flooding and more natural disasters coming. – The Infinite Unknown
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Source: Cattle Network

May

May

Percent

Meat & Dairy

Unit

2007

2008

Change
Ground Chuck Lb 2.766 2.798 1.16%
Ground Beef Lb 2.307 2.313 0.26%
Steak Round, Choice Lb 4.134 4.178 1.06%
Bacon, Sliced Lb 3.651 3.637 -0.38%
Pork Chops Lb 3.194 3.268 2.32%
Chicken Breast Lb 2.312 2.392 3.46%
Turkey, Frozen Lb 1.146 1.258 9.77%
Eggs, Grade A Doz 1.504 1.930 28.32%
Milk, Fresh Gal 3.259 3.760 15.37%
Cheddar Cheese Lb 3.976 4.397 10.59%
Source: ERS/USDA – Retail Prices

Field Crops

Unit

2007

2008

Change
Barley Bu $3.12 $4.76 52.56%
Beans, Dry Edible Cwt $3.08 $5.06 64.29%
Corn Bu $3.49 $5.12 46.70%
Cotton Lb $0.44 $0.61 37.95%
Flaxseed Bu $7.08 $16.60 134.46%
Hay Ton $138.00 $166.00 20.29%
Lentils Cwt $13.20 $32.70 147.73%
Oats Bu $2.49 $3.46 38.96%
Peanuts Lb $0.18 $0.20 12.29%
Peas, Dry Edible Cwt $10.10 $16.40 62.38%
Potatoes Cwt $7.95 $9.21 15.85%
Rice, Rough Cwt $10.00 $15.00 50.00%
Sorghum Cwt $6.49 $9.18 41.45%
Soybeans Bu $7.12 $12.30 72.75%
Sunflower Cwt $16.60 $27.40 65.06%
Wheat Bu $4.88 $8.80 80.33%
Source: USDA/NASS – Ag Prices Received

May

May

Percent

Fruits

Unit

2007

2008

Change
Apples Lb $0.27 $0.34 26.02%
Grapefruit Box $4.49 $5.12 14.03%
Lemons Box $8.14 $20.77 155.16%
Oranges Box $11.12 $6.95 -37.50%
Peaches Ton $820.00 $948.00 15.61%
Pears Ton $651.00 $525.00 -19.35%
Strawberries Cwt $68.60 $66.70 -2.77%
Tangerines Box $17.01 $5.98 -64.84%
Source: USDA/NASS – Ag Prices Received

May

May

Percent

Vegetables

Unit

2007

2008

Change
Asparagus Cwt $91.90 $99.80 8.60%
Broccoli Cwt $26.70 $27.30 2.25%
Carrots Cwt $32.00 $25.50 -20.31%
Cauliflower Cwt $24.90 $37.40 50.20%
Celery Cwt $18.30 $37.70 106.01%
Cucumbers Cwt $28.50 $17.50 -38.60%
Lettuce Cwt $13.60 $16.80 23.53%
Onions Cwt $24.20 $31.70 30.99%
Snap Beans Cwt $38.80 $39.60 2.06%
Sweet Corn Cwt $21.40 $23.10 7.94%
Tomatoes Cwt $35.60 $40.40 13.48%
Source: USDA/NASS – Ag Prices Received
Prepared By: Rob Cook, [email protected]

Ahmadinejad to OPEC: Dump weak dollar

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Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Iran urges the OPEC member states again to convert their cash reserves into a basket of currencies rather than the tumbling US dollar.

Speaking at a ceremony to open the 29th ministerial meeting of the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeated his proposal made about six months ago in a rare summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’s heads of states.

“The fall in the value of US dollar is one of the pressing problems of the world today,” warned the Iranian president at the conference in Isfahan on Tuesday.

He further expressed concern over the adverse effect of the dollar depreciation on the international community, especially energy exporting countries through increasing the price of commodities like wheat, rice and oilseeds. (This could have also been said by Ron Paul or Jim Rogers. – The Infinite Unknown)

Ahmadinejad said he warned six months ago in the summit conference in Riyadh that there were many indications pointing to continued fall in the value of the greenback.

“And we see that this continues to happen and the resources and wealth of OPEC member countries have been hugely damaged.

“I again repeat my previous proposal; we should have a basket of different international hard currencies as the basis or the member countries should come up and produce a new hard currency for petroleum contracts,” he stressed.

“They get our oil and give us a worthless piece of paper,” Ahmadinejad said earlier after the close of the summit in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. (Which is absolutely correct too.)

The comments by the Iranian president gained backing from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as he said at the same event, “The empire of the dollar has to end.”

Read moreAhmadinejad to OPEC: Dump weak dollar

Biotech giants demand a high price for saving the planet

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Related Articles:
–  Exposed: the great GM crops myth

– The World According to Monsanto – A documentary that Americans won’t ever see

– At stake is no less than control of the world’s food supply.

– BIODIVERSITY: Privatisation Making Seeds Themselves Infertile

Companies accused of ‘profiteering’ as they attempt to patent crop genes

Giant biotech companies are privatising the world’s protection against climate change by filing hundreds of monopoly patents on genes that help crops resist it, a new investigation has concluded.

The study – by the authoritative Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group), based in Ottawa, Canada – has found that nine firms have filed at least 532 patents around the world on about 55 different genes offering protection against heat, drought and floods. If granted, the companies would be given control of crucial natural raw material needed to maintain food supplies in an increasingly hungry world.

Last week, as world leaders met in Rome to discuss the food crisis, GM companies promoted their technologies as the answer to hunger. On Thursday, Monsanto – the biggest and most controversial firm – announced a “commitment” to increase food production, partly by developing crops that need less water.

“Together we must meet the needs for increased food, fibre and energy, while preserving the environment,” said the company’s head, Hugh Grant. “These commitments represent the beginning of a journey that we will expand on and deepen in the years ahead.”

The ETC Group calls this “an opportunistic public relations strategy”, adding: “Monsanto’s business is selling patented seeds for industrial agriculture – not addressing a humanitarian food crisis.”

The report of its investigation shows that Monsanto and BASF – which last year announced a $1.5bn “collaboration” to develop new GM crops, including “ones more tolerant to adverse environmental conditions such as drought” – have between them filed patents for 27 of the 55 genes. Others had been filed by companies such as Bayer, Syngenta and Dow.

The reports says some of the applications are sweeping. One would cover more than 30 crops from oats to oil palms, triticale to tea, and potatoes to perennial grass – “in other words, virtually all food crops”.

It says the “corporate grab on climate-tolerant genes” means that “a handful of transnational companies are now positioned to determine who gets access to key genetic traits and what price they must pay”.

Small farmers in developing countries will be particularly hard hit by such “climate-change profiteering”. Patenting will make the crops expensive and ensure that poor farmers have to buy them every year, by prohibiting them from saving seeds from one harvest to grow for the next.

According to the report, conventional, non-GM breeding techniques are making remarkable progress in developing crops that can tolerate heat, floods and drought. A new Asian rice, due to go on the market next year, can stand being submerged for two weeks without affecting yields, while a new African one flowers early in the morning, escaping the heat of the day.

But, it says, “the patent grab is sucking up money and resources that could be spent on affordable, farmer-based strategies for survival”.

It concludes: “These patented technologies will ultimately concentrate corporate power, drive up costs, inhibit independent research and further undermine the rights of farmers to save and exchange seeds”.

But Croplife, which represents the world’s plant-science industry, retorts; “Patenting is very important. That is how we protect intellectual property and ensure we continue to bring new innovations to the marketplace.” It denies that biotechnology companies are seeking to monopolise world food supplies.

Read moreBiotech giants demand a high price for saving the planet

Big stores start to ration rice purchases

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Supermarket chains have begun rationing rice as the effects of rising prices and disruptions to supply spill over from specialist grocers and suppliers to larger stores.

Netto, the Danish-owned discount store, has been restricting sales of larger bags of rice to one per person in all stores in recent weeks across the UK.

Mike Hinchcliffe, marketing manager for Netto UK, said: “We’re temporarily limiting our larger 10 kg bags of rice to one per customer because, like most other UK supermarkets, we are having to manage and minimise the impact the global rice shortage is having on our suppliers.

“We are experiencing a high demand for rice and have introduced this measure across our 184 UK stores to ensure that all of our customers have a fair opportunity to make their regular rice purchases. Our smaller 1kg packs remain on free sale with no restrictions planned at this time.” It expects the restriction to continue “indefinitely”.

By Lucy Killgren
Published: May 30 2008 23:45 | Last updated: May 30 2008 23:45

Source: Financial Times

U.S. rice farmers want class action against Bayer

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KANSAS CITY, Mo., May 23 (Reuters) – Germany’s Bayer AG (BAYG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research) is battling to keep thousands of U.S. rice farmers from becoming part of a massive class-action lawsuit over the contamination of commercial rice supplies by a Bayer biotech rice not approved for human consumption.

In hearings this week in federal court in St. Louis, Missouri, lawyers representing rice farmers said about 7,000 long-grain producers in Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas should be allowed to seek unspecified damages against Bayer for contamination that was uncovered in August 2006.

Farmers suffered extensive losses, both from a plunge in rice prices, and in a drop in export business as Japan and the European Union moved to restrict U.S. rice from crossing their borders.

Many farmers also were not able to plant a crop the following year because of seed shortages tied to the contamination, and had to undertake costly clean-up efforts, according to plaintiffs’ attorneys.

Bayer is fighting the class-action move, and both sides are now awaiting a ruling from U.S. District Judge Catherine D. Perry .

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How Japan Helped Ease the Rice Crisis

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Prices quickly fell on Tokyo’s call to tap into its huge reserves. But how did the stash get so big, and why does rice-rich Japan import the staple?

With prices now falling, the global rice crisis seems to be subsiding. That’s thanks in part to a policy announcement by a Japanese bureaucrat. On May 19, Japan’s Deputy Agriculture Minister, Toshiro Shirasu, said that Tokyo would release some of its massive stockpile of rice to the Philippines, selling 50,000 tons “as soon as possible” and releasing another 200,000 tons as food aid. The first shipment could reach the Philippines by late summer. Shirasu also left open the possibility of using more of its reserves to help other countries in need.

To understand Japan’s role in deflating the rice market, it helps to visit the warehouses rimming Tokyo Bay. It’s here in temperature-controlled buildings that Japan keeps millions of 30-kilogram vinyl bags of rice that it imports every year. Tokyo doesn’t need rice from the outside world: The country’s heavily subsidized farmers produce more than enough to feed the country’s 127 million people. Yet every year since 1995, Tokyo has bought hundreds of thousands of metric tons of rice from the U.S., Thailand, Vietnam, China, and Australia.

A Rice Imbalance

Why does Japan buy rice it doesn’t need or want? In order to follow World Trade Organization rules, which date to 1995 and are aimed at opening the country’s rice market. The U.S. fought for years to end Japanese rice protectionism, and getting Tokyo to agree to import rice from the U.S. and elsewhere was long a goal of American trade policy. But while the Japanese have been buying rice from farms in China and California for more than a decade, almost no imports ever end up on dinner plates in Japan. Instead the imported rice is sent as food aid to North Korea, added to beer and rice cakes, or mixed with other grains to feed pigs and chickens. Or it just sits in storage for years. As of last October, Japan’s warehouses were bulging with 2.6 million tons of surplus rice, including 1.5 million tons of imported rice, 900,000 tons of it American medium-grain rice.

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Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

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There is a time for food, and a time for ethical appraisals. This was the case even before Bertolt Brecht gave life to that expression in Die Driegroschen Oper. The time for a reasoned, coherent understanding for the growing food crisis is not just overdue, but seemingly past. Robert Zoellick of the World Bank, an organization often dedicated to flouting, rather than achieving its claimed goal of poverty reduction, stated the problem in Davos in January this year. ‘Hunger and malnutrition are the forgotten Millennium Development Goal.’

Global food prices have gone through the roof, terrifying the 3 billion or so people who live off less than $2 a day. This should terrify everybody else. In November, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization reported that food prices had suffered a 18 percent inflation in China, 13 percent in Indonesia and Pakistan, and 10 percent or more in Latin America, Russia and India. The devil in the detail is even more distressing: a doubling in the price of wheat, a twenty percent increase in the price of rice, an increase by half in maize prices.

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Burma exports rice as cyclone victims starve

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Children standing amid the debris of their village, which was destroyed by the cyclone, near the township of Kunyangon, Burma. Photograph: Adam Dean/EPA

Burma is still exporting rice even as it tries to curb the influx of international donations of food bound for the starving survivors of the cyclone that killed up to 116,000 people.

Sacks of rice destined for Bangladesh were being loaded on to a ship at the Thilawa container port at the mouth of the Yangon River at the end of last week, even though Burma’s ‘rice bowl’ region was devastated by the deadly storm a week ago.

The Burmese regime, which has a monopoly on the country’s rice exports, said it planned to meet all its contractual commitments.

Read moreBurma exports rice as cyclone victims starve