Global rice prices.

meester

Hungerdunger wrote: »

Personally I think there's something quite distasteful about seeking to profit from a situation which is likely to lead to mass starvation among the poorest people on the planet.

And indeed cause it. The current fad in agriculture funds has the inevitable effect of increasing prices. Simple economics - more money chasing an asset, higher prices.

Recently in the UK it was house prices.

Now the world's poor are the target.

'It has become a haven for financial investors fleeing from paper assets tainted by subprime mortgages and other toxic credit products. The influx of buyers drives prices and makes food unaffordable for the world’s poor.
“Fund money flowing into agriculture has boosted prices,” Standard Chartered Bank food commodities analyst Abah Ofon told the media. “It’s fashionable. This is the year of agricultural commodities.”'

PauliPauli

meester wrote: »

And indeed cause it. The current fad in agriculture funds has the inevitable effect of increasing prices. Simple economics - more money chasing an asset, higher prices.

Recently in the UK it was house prices.

Now the world's poor are the target.

'It has become a haven for financial investors fleeing from paper assets tainted by subprime mortgages and other toxic credit products. The influx of buyers drives prices and makes food unaffordable for the world’s poor.
“Fund money flowing into agriculture has boosted prices,” Standard Chartered Bank food commodities analyst Abah Ofon told the media. “It’s fashionable. This is the year of agricultural commodities.”'

I totally agree, its scandalous that when you look at any news stories on the food price rises, they concentrate on the weather and biofuels issue. I personally will not invest in these commodities out of principal !!

Sykes82

Due to last years unseasonal weather Cereal prices are also way up. Wheat in particular is trading at £180/tonne in the domestic market (up from 65-70 a year ago). This has already had an impact on bread prices and is likley to affect crop rotations this year. Slightly off topic!

harryhound

meester wrote: »

I lived in Indonesia in a rural area. Do the maths. How much do you think you would pay for a tractor to plough your field? If you owned 1000 hectares, then yes, you have machinery and low-paid workers to operate them, but most agriculture is subsistence level.

The idea of a world population that has increasing demand for finite fossil fuel resources is easy to understand. The concept of us running out of rice is rather less so.

The UK is densely populated, but our tiny agricultural industry can provide much of our food needs

I think that is the point I am making. How do we get out of the bind of tiny farms with farmers hardly able to grow enough to feed themselves, let alone the unemployable day wage labourers, their grandfather used to employ. The only "capital" they can generate is half a dozen unhealthy children, they hope will look after them in their old age.
I'm not sure a tractor is much use on a muddy terraced paddy field; in China some peasants have an engine on top of a single wheel (an internal combustion version of a pogo stick). This can be fitted to the front of other two "wheeled" items and swivelled through a large arc to act as steering. You can take the whole family to market at about 20MPH with such a gizmo.:D

We might have a population now of 6,500,000,000 but there are about 800,000,000 living in hopeless poverty - a world record?
I cannot see how this is sustainable?

There has been one huge fuss about the UK migration figures of 200,000 or so per year; any body want to make space for the 200,000 a day. Any volunteers to share out 365 day's worth amongst the rich countries?

Harry,

meester wrote: »

It's easy for middle class Westerners to be snooty about mass-produced food, but intensive farming feeds the developed world extremely well, and could do so in the developing world as well.

Organic vegi box anyone, after sea levels have risen 1.5 meters by the end of the century?

PauliPauli

Sykes82 wrote: »

Due to last years unseasonal weather Cereal prices are also way up. Wheat in particular is trading at £180/tonne in the domestic market (up from 65-70 a year ago). This has already had an impact on bread prices and is likley to affect crop rotations this year. Slightly off topic!

I don't think its off topic ... "perhaps need to create an ethical investment forum" ..

undoubtedly bad harvests had had a impact, same as biofuels, cost of oil, rush to these commodities etc... finding out how much each of these factors in must be near impossible (but their is def a silence in the media on "the rush to these commodoties effect").

My common sense instinct would say that investing in these commodities must exasperate the situation, unless a particular fund can specify that it only invests in certain areas/locations (probably for lower returns) ... ethics always costs

Pauli

harryhound

PauliPauli wrote: »

I totally agree, its scandalous that when you look at any news stories on the food price rises, they concentrate on the weather and biofuels issue. I personally will not invest in these commodities out of principal !!

PauliPauli wrote: »

I don't think its off topic ... "perhaps need to create an ethical investment forum" ..

undoubtedly bad harvests had had a impact, same as biofuels, cost of oil, rush to these commodities etc... finding out how much each of these factors in must be near impossible (but their is def a silence in the media on "the rush to these commodoties effect").

My common sense instinct would say that investing in these commodities must exasperate the situation, unless a particular fund can specify that it only invests in certain areas/locations (probably for lower returns) ... ethics always costs

Pauli

But have you written to your MP complaining about 1 or 2 percent of the 17.5 percent tax you pay on purchases being given as subsidies to land owners?

What do you make of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds getting hot and bothered about our feathered friend's habitats being ploughed to grow more food? (or is it petroleum substitute?)

High prices will automatically tend to result in high production and reducing prices, unfortunately there are millions of people who have to be given food, because they have no money to buy their own.

Perhaps we are approaching "the limits to growth".

purch

From the Herald Tribune by Keith Bradsher

DENILIQUIN, Australia: Lindsay Renwick, the mayor of this dusty southern Australian town, remembers the constant whir of the rice mill. "It was our little heartbeat out there, tickety-tick-tickety," he said, imitating the giant fans that dried the rice, "and now it has stopped."

The Deniliquin mill, the largest rice mill in the Southern Hemisphere, once processed enough grain to satisfy the daily needs of 20 million people. But six long years of drought have taken a toll, reducing Australia's rice crop by 98 percent and leading to the mothballing of the mill last December.

Ten thousand miles separate the mill's hushed rows of oversized silos and sheds - beige, gray and now empty - from the riotous streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, but a widening global crisis unites them.

The collapse of Australia's rice production is one of several factors contributing to a doubling of rice prices in the last three months - increases that have led the world's largest exporters to restrict exports severely, spurred panicked hoarding in Hong Kong and the Philippines, and set off violent protests in countries including Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Italy, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, the Philippines, Thailand, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

Drought affects every agricultural industry based here, not just rice - from sheepherding, the other mainstay in this dusty land, to the cultivation of wine grapes, the fastest-growing crop here, with that expansion often coming at the expense of rice.

harryhound

Yesterday, a witness at Westminster (admittedly working in the charitable sector) gave evidence that grain harvests have failed to meet the demand for 3 years running, so it is no surprise that the prices are rising.

Her is a link, to a site complete with an advertiser offering to help you make a 61% return by cashing on on this opportunity.

http://business.theage.com.au/thai-supply-fears-put-rice-price-on-the-boil/20080423-283i.html

Harry.

PS I do wish our American cousins could enter the 18th century and start using the metric system to measure things.
Can I suggest the tonne for commodities such as this, or failing that the "freight tonne" (ie "If it floats we we charge you by the cubic metre"). Then everyone would understand what is happening.

Voyager2002

meester wrote: »

This is the key point. Rice production in developing countries is often grossly inefficient, with a lack of basic fertiliser in many cases, but beyond that the use of back-breaking manual labour. Yields could increase massively with effective infrastructure

In China, however, large-scale over use of fertiliser is causing incredible environmental damage. In some regions farmers are using FOUR TIMES as much fertiliser as would give the maximum harvest for the varieties they are growing (research by IRRI). And the move to intensive, high-yielding rice cultivation increases vulnerability to insect and disease damage, something that is very marked in the Mekong delta (Vietnam's main rice-growing area), one of the regions where I have undertaken research on this topic.

In general, while technology offers many ways to increase the efficiency and profitability of rice production, there are few opportunities to get yields much higher than they are at present. And water shortage will become an increasingly more significant constraint.

Voyager2002

harryhound wrote: »

I think that is the point I am making. How do we get out of the bind of tiny farms with farmers hardly able to grow enough to feed themselves, let alone the unemployable day wage labourers, their grandfather used to employ. The only "capital" they can generate is half a dozen unhealthy children, they hope will look after them in their old age.
I'm not sure a tractor is much use on a muddy terraced paddy field; in China some peasants have an engine on top of a single wheel (an internal combustion version of a pogo stick). This can be fitted to the front of other two "wheeled" items and swivelled through a large arc to act as steering. You can take the whole family to market at about 20MPH with such a gizmo.:D

We might have a population now of 6,500,000,000 but there are about 800,000,000 living in hopeless poverty - a world record?
I cannot see how this is sustainable?

However, these "tiny" farms actually use land more efficiently than do the large-scale mechanised farms. And of course they rely on human or animal power (all organic) rather than on fossil fuels. Of course, they make very inefficient use of human labour, but the people who work on them prefer the modest livelihoods they offer to outright starvation!

Surely the way forward is to find ways to help such small-scale farmers to raise their incomes by working more efficiently (eg with the gadgets used by Chinese peasants) rather than replacing them with the kind of large-scale enterprise you find in California.