On Sat, 20 Nov 2010 09:26:41 -0600, jim
wrote:
Bruce wrote:
On Sat, 20 Nov 2010 07:47:48 -0600, jim
wrote:
Steve Lusardi wrote:
Worst of all, ethanol use as fuels raises the price of corn and other
grains across the market place denying food to the poor across the world.
Hogwash.
The US ethanol boom is the best thing that has happened to the poor acoss the world. The fact is, that the vast majority of the
Worlds poor live in 3rd world rural economies. And do you know what the vast majority of the poor do for a living? They grow grain.
And for the last 60 they have been turned into "the poor across the world" because of US predatory Ag policies that has destroyed
their livelihood. Even India and China which today have booming economies, the majority of the citizens still live on farms and
still grow grain for a living. The current rising world grain prices represent the first opportunity since WWII for millions of the
worlds citizens to raise themselves out subsistence poverty.
It's not as if anything good has been done with corn in the past. What isn't used as part of a foreign policy to prop up 3rd world
dictatorships and destroy the livelihood of the millions who are living in rural economies is used mostly to produce vast
quantities of animal fat in cows, pigs and chickens. I mean look around The US population is suffering from an epidemic of obesity,
heart desease and diabetes. There are millions of tons of corn sweetners peddled to US children in schools. That is the status-quo.
And yes ethanol is a very definite threat to that status-quo, but you have to be a pervert with a twisted sense of morality to
think that people should be morally outraged by that.
-jim
I think that you should review your sources of information as in Asia,
while a large number of people are engaged in growing cereal grains
they are not growing corn and the cereal grain, rice, is far too
valuable as human food to be used for fuel and I use valuable in the
sense of generating cash, rather then any philosophical meaning. In
fact, in Thailand corn on the cob is sold almost as a "goody" right
along side the candy and cookies and to the best of my knowledge no
Thai recipes use corn in any form for food.
And, by the way, the rice growers of Asia have not been hurt by the
U.S.' agricultural policies as y'all don't grow good eating rice.
China and India are the two largest producers of rice in the world,
however they also consume the majority of their crops internally and
Thailand is the largest exporter of rice with about twice the sales of
the next largest and a little over three times that of the U.S..
Figures for the top rice exporters a
Thailand, 10 million tons (34.5% of global rice exports)
India, 4.8 million tons (16.5%)
Vietnam, 4.1 million tons (14.1%)
United States, 3.1 million tons (10.6%)
Pakistan, 1.8 million tons (6.3%)
And what has that got to do with anything I said?
I responded to this statement:
"Worst of all, ethanol use as fuels raises the price
of corn and other grains across the market place
denying food to the poor across the world."
So what is it you are trying to say? Are you saying US corn is irrelevant to world grain prices? The US ethanol market has no effect on
Thailand's rice farmers?
http://www.indexmundi.com/commoditie...ice&months=120
This article says it better than I can:
http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/r...genceMar10.pdf
The fact that US predatory farm exports keep millions of poor farmers poor is only half the story. The other half of the story is about
the millions that are forced out of the beseiged rural economy into shantytown slums that surround 3rd world cities.
I was responding to your thesis that American farm subsidizes were
causing a burden on the poor farmers, just as you say above. I was
pointing out that in Asia, with it's population of approximately
3,880,000,000 that it just isn't true.
The "slums that surround 3rd world cities" in Asia, which is largely
all 3rd world, are hardly due to the U.S. farm exports. In fact the
U.S. imports a substantial amount of farm products FROM these poor,
impoverished countries.
Your reference, above, isn't true, at least in the S.E. Asia nations
where the price of rice is controlled by the government and
surprisingly enough, very much in favor of the rice growers, to the
great dismay of the city folks.
Try
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-1...-exporter.html
for a report on rice prices from less political viewpoint.
When you make a statement that is totally wrong for some 40% of the
world's population it cast some doubts on the veracity of your entire
thesis.
Cheers,
Bruce