Solutions to the Global Food Crisis

Friday, June 20, 2008 by: Mark Sircus Ac., OMD
Tags: food supply, health news, Natural News

(NewsTarget) Today we actually have several converging crisis and the news sounds bad but have you noticed how they manage to package everything in the media? Things are worsening on almost every front yet they manage to put a good face on events. Items that would have been crushing news only six months ago today are considered small annoyances. The downside is always minimized -- the deception most complete. Manipulation is a fine and powerful art and by its nature serves the dark powers on earth.

By buying with available credit instead of unavailable cash, consumers are not simply postponing the pain of higher prices, but compounding it by adding interest to the cost of everyday purchases.

As America and its dollar continue to fall, the entire international landscape changes and capitalism as a sane system is going to get a full review. Certainly we know already that it is a ruthless system lacking in ecological intelligence. Certainly we do not equate capitalism with empathy or compassion. Inflation has instantly taken on a world wide flavor partly because many currencies are pegged to the dollar. They are being pulled down as the dollar plunges and that plunge will only get uglier as countries unplug their currencies from the dollar denominated system.

Rising food prices are making it harder for schools to cook up ways to give kids the nutrition they need.

"Global inflation has re-emerged as a major threat to the world economy," the International Monetary Fund said last week. Some people wish for a stop to the massive global scramble for resources by a combination of the developed world and the emerging world, because prices will continue to rise until they are so high that some will have to do without. We are going to witness in the most brutal fashion possible the real terror of capitalism as doing without leads to wide scale hunger, malnutrition, starvation, sickness and death. We need some answers and there are some but there is little chance that political people or anyone else is going to embrace drastic changes -- capitalism and consumerism just don't allow for it.

Australia is normally the world's second-largest exporter of grain, but a savage multi-year drought has reduced the wheat crop by 60% and rice production has been completely wiped out.

Ian Angus writes that the food crisis is "The greatest demonstration of the historical failure of the capitalist model." A Senior Editor of Time magazine warned: "The idea of the starving masses driven by their desperation to take to the streets and overthrow the ancient regime has seemed impossibly quaint since capitalism triumphed so decisively in the Cold War. And yet, the headlines of the past month suggest that skyrocketing food prices are threatening the stability of a growing number of governments around the world. When circumstances render it impossible to feed their hungry children, normally passive citizens can very quickly become militants with nothing to lose."

"Everyone wants to eat like an American on this globe but if they do, we're going to need another two or three globes to grow it all." - Daniel W. Basse

Rice prices have risen for the fourth consecutive day, as tight supplies are aggravated by the disaster in Burma's key rice-growing region. Not only have tens of thousands of souls been instantly wiped out by the intensifying weather but a vital rice production and exporting region has been devastated. In Bangladesh in November, one of the strongest cyclones (all but forgotten already) in decades wiped out a million tones of rice and severely damaged the wheat crop.

Rice is the staple food of three billion people

This is bad news for the world's population already reeling from higher food prices. It was only two weeks ago that we saw Brazil ban rice exports, which prompted protests in Peru, Africa, and other countries in Latin America who will now be short 500K tons of rice as Brazil becomes the latest country to ban rice exports. Early this year, India announced that it was suspending most rice exports in order to rebuild its reserves. A few weeks later, Vietnam, whose rice crop was hit by a major insect infestation during the harvest, announced a four-month suspension of exports to ensure that enough would be available for its domestic market. India and Vietnam together normally account for 30% of all rice exports.

The food crisis is "the greatest demonstration of the historical failure of the capitalist model." - Hugo Chavez

Soaring food prices are already pushing millions of people in Asia back into poverty and this is stimulating social unrest and government instability. The global food shortage and soaring cost of staple foods is a "silent tsunami", the U.N. World Food Program said last month, before a food summit hosted by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to discuss the growing crisis. An additional 100 million people, previously not requiring food assistance, are now not able to buy food, said WFP executive director Josette Sheeran in a statement before the meeting.

Land used to grow biofuel feedstock is land not available to grow food

Wheat prices have surged to historic highs as bad weather has battered crop after crop around the globe, most recently in India and Canada. Foreign buyers scrambling to lock in supplies have increasingly turned to the United States, which is exporting the grain at record pace. The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a bullish report in February predicting U.S. wheat inventories will total 272 million bushels by the end of May, the lowest in more than five decades and about 7 percent less than expected last month.

Everywhere, the cost of food is rising sharply. Whether the world is in for a long period of continued increases has become one of the most urgent issues of our times.

It's good that we have eyes to see when our kitchen is almost out of food. It does not usually provoke fear, just an impulse to go out and get some more. Many Americans are increasingly using their credit cards to pay for their groceries meaning they are keeping demand up through debt, which further inflates prices. Debt loads are still increasing in the U.S. and it is being speculated that many Americans have reached the point of no return and will wildly use their credit cards because they have no intention of ever paying the debt back.

A destiny is coming though in which millions who have never known a hungry day in their lives will taste the bitterness of hunger. It is just because mankind has not learned through the repetition of history or impact of crisis that this time around the impact will be far more intense then ever before.

"I'm spending the same amount on food but I'm getting less." - Cao Minh Huong, Hanoi

If you have not heard or intuited, the rich are buying up all the food stocks as fast as they can get their hands on it and governments around the world are already putting up barriers to exports. China for example, with well over a trillion dollars of dollar reserves has nothing better to do with its money then buy up world food reserves to feed its hungry billion.

"If you wanted to buy three loaves, now you buy one." - Mr. Ojuku, Nigeria

The last thing China's government wants to face is a hungry public. Last September, David DuByne, who currently teaches Business English in Chongqing, China, noticed a story called "Autumn Grain Harvest Under Severe Threat". In northern China, a drought has hit about 11.5 million hectares (27 million acres) of arable land, according to the Office of the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters. In southern China flood waters have submerged about 9.7 million hectares (21.5 million acres) putting the total submerged and parched dry land at one-sixth of the country's 120 million-hectares (288 million acres) of arable land. Add to this, the damage to half-a-million hectares (1.2 million acres) that have been devoured by rice-plant hoppers in Sichuan Province, and at this time it is not clear whether the drought, flood and insect pests would force Beijing to turn to imports.

"High food prices dismay even relatively well-off Americans -- but they're truly devastating in poor countries, where food often accounts for more than half a family's spending." - Paul Krugman

Around the world, wheat is becoming a precious commodity. In Pakistan, thousands of paramilitary troops have been deployed since January to guard trucks carrying wheat and flour. Malaysia, trying to keep its commodities at home, has made it a crime to export flour and other products without a license.

Horses are starving -- even dying -- in Kentucky, Tennessee, and at least five other Southeastern states. Since last year's drought, the price of hay has doubled -- and even tripled.

Humans resist change so intensely that without a two by four hitting them over the head they will not move to one side or another. Easier just to relax before the TV. It is sad but true that profound answers to humanity's present difficulties will not be met with awake and aware hearts ready to act to change the foundations of civilization. The TV generation is not ready to act; in fact our very capability of acting has been hollowed out by a wide variety of poisons from chemical to electronic. We don't like to think of how our wide exposure to mercury (a nerve poison) to mind and heart closing TV, microwaves and a host of other insults is deadening our very capacity as living beings to act rationally.

There is no shortage of solutions to many of the food problems we as individuals and the world collectively face. Imagine, for instance, if every American home and every home around the world with some lawn or other land space planted an organic garden? The dramatic increase of supply would drive down prices and few would have to go hungry. In Canada the government is already calling for a return of the "Victory Gardens" of the last great war.

Larger crop growth is possible using probiotics on both soil and plant. Putting the probiotic into the soil around the roots bio-activates the soil, it increases the biological activity increasing breakdown of mineral nutrients for the plants. Like repopulating the gut, probiotics can bring dead soil back to life reversing a century of soil depletion and ruin. Plants double their growth, are stronger, resist disease better, meaning they do not need pesticides to thrive. Wayne Blakely, the originator of Remineralization of America is the genius who knows how to grow probiotics for both humans and plants. Just imagine vastly reducing the use of pesticides while simultaneously doubling or even tripling yields.

Spirulina has always been an answer to world hunger as it can be grown even in deserts. The power of this super food makes it an excellent medicine for it replenishes deficient nutrients in the body quickly. It is also protective against radiation exposure among many other things. With a full complement of vitamins and minerals (except for Vitamin C), all the amino acids necessary to supply a complete protein source, and more than adequate amounts of fatty acids (highest source of omega 6 Gamma Linoleic Acid), Spirulina qualifies as one of the most beneficial "superfoods."

Eating less meat helps since it takes about 700 calories' worth of animal feed to produce a 100-calorie piece of beef. This change in diet increases the overall demand for grains. Many vegans have held this truth out for years but talk to any meat eater and tell them to stop and see how far you get. Vegetarianism has many positive benefits, which lose all attractiveness when people go on ego trips about it.

Of course we could stop the biofuel revolution, stop taking food out of millions of bellies to feed the tanks of our cars. There are other new agricultural innovations emerging that also offer promise. It is easy to suggest solutions, implementation is another matter. In the case of our current crisis we are unfortunately going to witness how nasty humans really are, how callous and insensitive we are to the true issues facing humanity. We need to change, our civilization needs changing, our systems and concepts and basic assumptions all need to change. Of course most people still are in denial and wonder what all the fuss is about, never imagining that in hundreds of millions of new bellies hunger is starting to be felt.

The following news, saved for last, is most distasteful. First know that large international corporations at the heart of the grain and agriculture business are making windfall profits on the present crisis. Worse than this is to discover that there is no oil shortage, no reason for biofuels in the U.S., no reason for rising oil prices driving up fertilizer prices, driving transportation costs for foods, etc. Look at this video of Reverend Lindsey Williams, who describes his firsthand experiences on the Alaskan Oil Fields: (http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=33...)

If you want to meet up first hand with the men who control the world, and the men who control them, listen to Williams. He offers another solution to the present food crisis, open up the spigots and let a river of cheap domestic oil flow down from Alaska.

About the author

Mark A. Sircus Ac., OMD, is director of the International Medical Veritas Association (IMVA)http://www.imva.info/. Dr. Sircus was trained in acupuncture and oriental medicine at the Institute of Traditional Medicine in Sante Fe, N.M., and in the School of Traditional Medicine of New England in Boston. He served at the Central Public Hospital of Pochutla, in México, and was awarded the title of doctor of oriental medicine for his work. He was one of the first nationally certified acupuncturists in the United States. Dr. Sircus's IMVA is dedicated to unifying the various disciplines in medicine with the goal of creating a new dawn in healthcare.

He is particularly concerned about the effect vaccinations have on vulnerable infants and is identifying the common thread of many toxic agents that are dramatically threatening present and future generations of children. His book The Terror of Pediatric Medicine is a free e-book one can read. Dr. Sircus is a most prolific and courageous writer and one can read through hundreds of pages on his various web sites.

He has most recently released his Survival Medicine for the 21st Century compendium (2,200 page ebook) and just released the Winning the War Against Cancer book. Dr. Sircus is a pioneer in the area of natural detoxification and chelation of toxic chemicals and heavy metals. He is also a champion of the medicinal value of minerals and is fathering in a new medical approach that uses sea water and different concentrates taken from it for health and healing. Transdermal Magnesium Therapy, his first published work, offers a stunning breakthrough in medicine, an entirely new way to supplement magnesium that naturally increases DHEA levels, brings cellular magnesium levels up quickly, relieves pain, brings down blood pressure and pushes cell physiology in a positive direction. Magnesium chloride delivered transdermally brings a quick release from a broad range of conditions.
International Medical Veritas Association: http://www.imva.info/