Crisis Looms as Corporations Seize Control of Commodities

By Barbara L. Minton

03/08/08 "NaturalNews" -- - The global food crisis won't go away any time
soon. Capitalism has the average consumer by the belly. Amid growing signs
of famine and outrage, the entire chain of commodities and resources of the
world are now being cornered by giant corporations. Farmland, water,
fertilizer, seed, energy, and most of the basic necessities of life are
falling under corporate control, providing increased wealth and power to the
ruling elite while the rest of humanity struggles.

Commodity scarcity in India was recently reflected in the need to distribute
fertilizer from the police station in Hingoli. Now police have to control
the lines that form outside of dealer outlets, because the dealers won't
open for business otherwise. Without this intervention there would be no
fertilizer for the planting that must take place before the rain comes. In
Akola and Nanded, police involvement is also needed. Agriculture officers
have fled their work places to escape angry farmers. In Karnataka, a farmer
was shot dead during protests, while farmers stormed meetings and set up
road blocks in other districts.

Despite the success of the genetically engineered Bt cotton crops, the trend
in India is now back to soybeans because they cost less to grow and need
less fertilizer than cotton.

And it's not just fertilizer that is scarce. Seeds are also in short supply
which is being blamed on agitation that has interfered with freight train
traffic. However, the shortfall in seeds is 60 percent, a level more
indicative of corporate intervention to drive up prices than the actions of
powerless farmers.

As farmers fume, the Wall Street Journal heralds the whopping 42 percent
jump in the fiscal third quarter profits of huge agriculture giant
Archer-Daniels Midland. This increase includes a sevenfold rise in new
income in units that store, transport and grade grains such as wheat, corn
and soybeans.

The soaring profits of fertilizer maker Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan
are reflected in the parabolic movement of its stock price from a yearly low
of $70.35 to its current price of $238.22 per share. Shares of fertilizer
and animal feed producer Mosaic Corp. have risen from a yearly low of $32.50
to a current price of $159.38.

Similar windfall profits are reported by GMO seed and herbicide king
Monsanto whose last quarterly earnings surged by 45%%.

Some onlookers blame the financial speculators for driving up the prices of
commodities related to agriculture as wealthy investors have piled on
looking to cash in on the rising stock prices. And in many ways, today's
commodity market resembles the dot.com boom seen at the turn of the century,
as well as the housing boom now in the throws of its bust.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission recently held a hearing to
investigate the role that index funds and hedge funds are playing in driving
up the prices of agricultural commodities. Total public fund investment in
corn, soybean, wheat, cattle and hogs has risen by 37 billion dollars since
2006. This figure does not include the huge investments of hedge funds which
don't have to make such disclosure. It also doesn't include the massive
world wide investments in farmland made by the wealthy.

The corporate spin is that these investments are helpful to humanity because
they will ultimately result in increased food production at a time of rising
world demand. They cite the need for increased corporate profits to invest
in and develop new technologies that will help farmers improve productivity.
This is how GMO seeds are being driven down the throats of farmers, who are
told that the modified seeds can squeeze even more yield from each acre of
planting.

India has joined other developing countries in the decision to invest less
in agriculture as advised by the World Bank-IMF, whose agenda has been to
discourage crops for domestic consumption while encouraging production to
spur export driven growth. This advice coupled with corporate sponsored
deregulation has paved the way for corporate control of the farming process
from seed to market. Research and development that was once the domain of
universities has also fallen into corporate control.

Farmers in India are caught in a credit crunch. Even if they are able to get
the needed fertilizer, they will not have the credit to pay for it. With no
increase in farmer income, larger loans are not advanced. The outlook for
the small farmer there is much the same as it was in the U.S. thirty years
ago, during the height of the small farms falling to big agribusiness.

Corporations blame food shortages and rising prices on the people of China
and India whose burgeoning income from manufacturing has allowed the average
worker to increase both the amount and quality of his food consumption. But
for the corporations, the increased demand for food is a guarantee of super
profits to come.

Of course the other commodity you can't get along without is water, which is
now the focus of huge multinational companies seeking to privatize water
world wide, perhaps even patent it as Monsanto did with seeds. The fight
over water may bring chaos, conflict and misery on a scale never seen before
as corporations and governments go so far as to grab the wells from under
people's houses.

And then there's oil. To produce chemical fertilizer you must make use of
fossil fuel. So rising oil prices and rising food prices are joined at the
hip. The behavior of corporations in the oil business has been so egregious
that there is talk of a windfall profits tax here and abroad.

No, the food crisis will not go away anytime soon. North Korea, Burma and
Western Sudan are currently feeling a real threat of starvation while
western governments manipulated by corporations continue to promote the
diversion of food into biofuels to further exacerbate the upward movement in
food prices. Almost all U.S. corn production between 2004 and 2007 has gone
into the production of ethanol. European production of ethanol has more than
tripled during the same period. This has led to a fall off in grains
relative to overall demand which is not a market phenomenon but is the
direct result of the government sponsored, corporate backed programs. This
comes at the expense of people looking for something to eat, particularly
the world's poor who are now effectively priced out of the food market.

Barbara is a school psychologist, a published author in the area of personal
finance, a breast cancer survivor using "alternative" treatments, a born
existentialist, and a student of nature and all things natural.

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