STWR - Share The World's Resources

18th October 07 - John Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus

According to Suetonius, courtiers once collected special flavors for the famous banquets of the Roman emperors “in every corner of the Empire from the Parthian frontier to the Straits of Gibraltar.” The Chinese emperors, too, demanded a succession of unusual and exotic treats from distant lands opened up by the Silk Road. Today, this tradition still lives on, fitfully, in North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s requests for Czech beer and Italian pizza.

10th October 07 - Sam Burcher, Peopleandplanet.net

The organic food movement has received endorsement from the United Nations leading agency on food and agriculture, the FAO. In a new report, it says that organic farming fights hunger, tackles climate change, and is good for farmers, consumers and the environment.

24th September 07 - Peter Goodchild, EnergyBulletin.net

The decline in the world’s oil supply offers no sudden dramatic event that would appeal to the writer of “apocalyptic” science fiction: no mushroom clouds, no flying saucers, no giant meteorites. The future will be just like today, only tougher. Oil depletion is basically just a matter of overpopulation — too many people and not enough resources.

30th July 07, Eli Clifton, Inter Press Service

A dramatic increase in the production of biofuels has led to rising food prices with serious implications for developing countries reliant on food aid to combat famine.

26th July 07 - F. William Engdahl, Global Research

That bowl of Kellogg’s Cornflakes on the breakfast table, or the portion of pasta or corn tortillas, cheese or meat on the table is going to rise in price over the coming months as sure as the sun rises in the East. Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the new world food price shock, conveniently timed to accompany our current world oil price shock.

Curiously it’s ominously similar in many respects to the early 1970’s when prices for oil and food both exploded by several hundred percent in a matter of months. That mid-1970’s price explosion led President Nixon to ask his old pal, Arthur Burns, then Chairman of the Fed, to find a way to alter the CPI inflation data to take attention away from the rising prices. The result then was the now-commonplace publication of the absurd "core inflation" CPI numbers--sans oil and food. Stephen Roche was the young Fed economist who was assigned the statistical manipulation job by Burns.

It was on the cards. With Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announcing the formation of a new rehabilitation policy for farmers displaced from land acquisitions, it is now official -- farmers have to quit agriculture.