HowardFood and Free Trade
Real Crash- Looking at the Financial System and the War Drive:
Ever see the rain? Will there be food?
In the Northern Hemisphere, the harvest season is now drawing to a close, continuing below-need production of grains and other staple commodities, and loss of agriculture capacity. This year's production of all kinds of grains is below that of 2008, and animal protein supplies are in decline. This food/farm crisis is all part of the general monetary chaos, and worldwide breakdown of the physical economy. The dairy sector, especially, is being decimated. The real question is, what is more important, having food to feed people, or the free trade doctrines of the British Empire and the World Trade Organization?
From the Great Plains to the Deep South, late-season rains have caused terrible harvest conditions. As of Oct. 31, only 25% of the U.S. corn crop was harvested; normally, nearly three times that volume, over 71%, is harvested by then. This year, the two biggest corn states, Iowa and Illinois, had only 18% and 19%, respectively, harvested by Halloween.
However, under the prevailing World Trade Organization (WTO) tenets of "free trade," any emergency aid (not just offers of unpayable U.S. Department of Agriculture loan "opportunities") is taboo, as is any ongoing provision for floor prices for farm commodities, parity pricing for farmers, and similar policies that would provide for national food security, by ensuring the productivity of domestic, high-tech family farming. In just a ten-day period, the corn futures price (for December delivery) bounced from $4.13 a bushel on Oct. 23, down to $3.59 on Nov. 2, with wild daily swings between. Soybean futures went from $8.78 on Oct. 5 to $10.06 on Nov. 2, also with wild daily swings, for example, by 44 cents on Nov. 2.
Should we kill people due to free trade dogma? Is that Nazi, I ask, Congress and Pres. Obama?
