[Research]: Food Speculation.

The following is a bit of research clearly indicating that economic liberalism in practice - in the form of speculation in food prices - leads to starvation and misery for the most impoverished people on the planet.



Economic Times August 8 2008: "Speculation behind global commodity price rise."

PRI August 9 2008: "Orchestrating Famine – a Must-Read Backgrounder on the Food Crisis."

The Guardian January 24, 2011: "Food Speculation: 'People Die from Hunger While Banks Make a Killing on Food'"

The Guardian, Feburary 05, 2011: "How Banks and Investors are Starving The Third World."

Foreign Policy, April 27, 2011: "How Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis."

Al Jazeera English, May 09, 2011: "Glencore: Profiteering from hunger and chaos."

CNN: As food speculators make money, the world's poorest suffer.

Danwatch (23/09/2011): Banker har ingen politik for fødevarespekulation.

Oxfam International Report (October 2011): "Not a Game: Speculation vs Food Security".

Monthly Review (Jan. 2012): Food as a Commodity.

Fødevarespekulanternes hazardspil med andres liv.

I en forhåbentlig opsigtsvækkende artikel i den britiske avis The Guardian kunne man i går læse en forstyrrende artikel om hvordan fødevarespekulanter spiller hazard med fattige menneskers liv.

Just under three years ago, people in the village of Gumbi in western Malawi went unexpectedly hungry. Not like Europeans do if they miss a meal or two, but that deep, gnawing hunger that prevents sleep and dulls the senses when there has been no food for weeks.

Oddly, there had been no drought, the usual cause of malnutrition and hunger in southern Africa, and there was plenty of food in the markets. For no obvious reason the price of staple foods such as maize and rice nearly doubled in a few months. Unusually, too, there was no evidence that the local merchants were hoarding food. It was the same story in 100 other developing countries. There were food riots in more than 20 countries and governments had to ban food exports and subsidise staples heavily.

The explanation offered by the UN and food experts was that a "perfect storm" of natural and human factors had combined to hyper-inflate prices. US farmers, UN agencies said, had taken millions of acres of land out of production to grow biofuels for vehicles, oil and fertiliser prices had risen steeply, the Chinese were shifting to meat-eating from a vegetarian diet, and climate-change linked droughts were affecting major crop-growing areas. The UN said that an extra 75m people became malnourished because of the price rises.

But a new theory is emerging among traders and economists. The same banks, hedge funds and financiers whose speculation on the global money markets caused the sub-prime mortgage crisis are thought to be causing food prices to yo-yo and inflate. The charge against them is that by taking advantage of the deregulation of global commodity markets they are making billions from speculating on food and causing misery around the world.

As food prices soar again to beyond 2008 levels, it becomes clear that everyone is now being affected. Food prices are now rising by up to 10% a year in Britain and Europe. What is more, says the UN, prices can be expected to rise at least 40% in the next decade.

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