Feeding America?
This is part two of my series on how the wasteful, destructive agriculture polices of the last 8-12 years — also known as “Make Money By Not Feeding America” — has affected the cost of the food we purchase. Part One is here.
In Part One, I spoke of wheat and how in the rush to grow corn for ethanol, it’s being pushed aside – which drives up prices at the mills, which then drives up the price at the retail level.
Today: Corn.
In the rush to find cleaner alternatives to fossil fuels for our vehicles, ethanol was latched onto by the Bush administration. As a result nearly a quarter of all corn grown is being diverted from human and animal food stocks and heading for ethanol plants.
As we see with wheat, prices are going up. In this case, the price rise is first seen as the price-per-bushel – the amount the corn farmer is paid. That drives up costs at the farm and farm-factory level – where it’s used as feedstock cattle and poultry. Then prices rise again at the retail level. We’ve seen a huge rise in the cost of eggs, meat, and milk and other dairy products as a result.
Meanwhile…back at the farm, it’s difficult to turn away from devoting your corn to ethanol production with prices per bushel on the rise.
From the Washington Post, via MSNBC: [my emphasis throughout]
Across the country, ethanol plants are swallowing more and more of the nation’s corn crop. This year, about a quarter of U.S. corn will go to feeding ethanol plants instead of poultry or livestock. That has helped farmers like Johnson, but it has boosted demand — and prices — for corn at the same time global grain demand is growing.
And it has linked food and fuel prices just as oil is rising to new records, pulling up the price of anything that can be poured into a gasoline tank. “The price of grain is now directly tied to the price of oil,” says Lester Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute, a Washington research group. “We used to have a grain economy and a fuel economy. But now they’re beginning to fuse.”
Oh, and thank your Democratic Congress too.
Rising food prices have given Congress and the White House a sudden case of legislative indigestion. In 2005, the Republican-led Congress and President Bush backed a bill that required widespread ethanol use in motor fuels. Just four months ago, the Democratic-led Congress passed and Bush signed energy legislation that boosted the mandate for minimum corn-based ethanol use to 15 billion gallons, about 10 percent of motor fuel, by 2015. It was one of the most popular parts of the bill, appealing to farm-state lawmakers and to those worried about energy security and eager to substitute a home-grown energy source for a portion of U.S. petroleum imports. To help things along, motor-fuel blenders receive a 51 cent subsidy for every gallon of corn-based ethanol used through the end of 2010; this year, production could reach 8 billion gallons.
There’s just one problem…well, several problems:
Although ethanol was once promoted as a way to slow climate change, a study published in Science magazine Feb. 29 concluded that greenhouse-gas emissions from corn and even cellulosic ethanol “exceed or match those from fossil fuels and therefore produce no greenhouse benefits.” By encouraging an expansion of acreage, the study added, the use of U.S. cropland for ethanol could make climate conditions dramatically worse. And the runoff from increased use of fertilizers on expanded acreage would compound damage to waterways all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.
Development specialists have also joined the fray. “While many are worrying about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs, and it is getting more and more difficult every day,” World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick said in a recent speech.
And, the future for food prices isn’t looking too good:
Two leading oil pipeline companies are exploring the feasibility of building a $3 billion ethanol pipeline, the first of its kind, to link Iowa and other parts of the Midwest with motor-fuel markets in the East. It would carry 3.65 billion gallons a year and give another industry a vested interest in maintaining high ethanol output. Because of this domestic demand, Iowa’s exports of corn are expected to shrink to less than half of current levels in the next couple of years. Nationwide, corn stockpiles are dwindling.
[snip]
… Iowa produces more eggs, 13.5 billion, than any other state. And chickens, like capons, mostly eat corn feed. The Charles City ethanol plant alone consumes three-quarters as much corn as the entire Iowa egg industry.
[snip]
“We don’t have to make fuel out of corn and soybeans, but we do have to feed animals,” says Kevin Vinchattle, executive director of the Iowa Egg Council. “We’re going to be right there bidding for feedstocks and making sure that we have the highest-quality feed available. We just don’t have an alternative.”
What we really need in this country is a responsible, sustainable, non-destructive, non-wasteful agriculture policy. We absolutely do need to support our family farmers. But, we should only support those family farmers who are contributing to the feeding of America.
It is time to end the subsidies to corporate entities that run factory farms, the owners of said corporate entities, and those whose product is going for any use other than feed or food.
What we also need is a responsible energy plan, because — thanks to the ethanol boom – the two are intertwined.
If You Mess with Farming, You Screw Us All
So, you go into any grocery store, bakery, dessert shop and think, “Holy hell. This stuff’s getting expensive! WTF?”
Naturally, we assume fuel prices have done it all, but part of the price increase is decades of wasteful, destructive agriculture policies. Wheat prices are soaring (yayz for the commodities brokers!) and the number of acres devoted to wheat has dropped by 24 million — or just over 25% since 1981.
From the Washington Post, via MSNBC
U.S. farmers are expected to plant about 64 million acres of wheat this year, down from a high of 88 million in 1981. In Kansas, wheat acreage has declined by a third since the mid-1980s, and nationwide, there is now less wheat in grain bins than at any time since World War II — only about enough to supply the world for four days. This occurs as developing countries with some of the poorest populations are rapidly increasing their wheat imports.
[snip]
U.S. wheat yields per acre have increased little in two decades, partly because commercial seed companies have all but abandoned investments in improved varieties, preferring to focus on the more profitable corn and soybeans. Subtle warming changes in the climate and the recent availability of new plant varieties that thrive in cold, dry conditions have pushed the corn belt north and west.
[snip]
In 1996, Congress gave a strong nudge to these changes by passing legislation allowing wheat growers for the first time to switch to other crops and still collect government subsidies. The result is that farmers received federal wheat payments last year on 15 million acres more than were planted. [my emphasis]
Oh goody. So, Americans – in the form of taxes – are paying farmers not to produce wheat and we’re paying through the nose whenever we buy wheat products because we’re paying farmers not to produce wheat. Lovely.
And this isn’t a problem for America only. Developing nations count on us to supply them with cheap wheat to cushion their own production. Except that other wheat-producing nations are stopping exports in order to conserve their harvests for their citizens. Add in the falling value of the dollar:
The U.S. government stopped holding large stocks of wheat in the 1980s, but the United States, nearly alone among wheat producers, allows countries to shop here even when others have shut off exports.
This free-trade policy resulted in a run on the 2007 U.S. wheat crop this year by foreign buyers taking advantage of the favorable dollar exchange rate to stock up, even as Ukraine, Argentina and Kazakhstan blocked exports.
Those of you who feel smug about driving your ethanol-fueled vehicle? Stop.
The ethanol boom, in particular, is providing strong incentives to keep former wheat acres in corn. Within a year, Braaten will be able to truck his corn to three modern ethanol refineries, one already built and two others near completion. These huge distilleries will need corn from an area about the size of Rhode Island, and many of the acres will come at the expense of such traditional crops as wheat and sugar beets.
And, of course, corn seeds are a money maker for the corporations.
These seeds are protected by patents and licensing agreements, requiring farmers to buy a new batch each year. That produces strong financial incentives for the companies .
[snip]
Even then, there is no assurance that farmers will buy the seed year after year. That is because of the nature of the wheat plant, an unusually complex organism originating in the Middle East thousands of years ago. Unlike hybrid corn, which loses its productivity after the first year, seeds from improved wheat varieties can be saved and replanted for several years without significant loss of yield.
But in the end, under the rule of the Bush Corpos, feeding America is just another way to make a fortune. Unless, of course, you’re the farmer.
Unfortunately for America, few will notice there’s a problem until they’re standing in breadlines.
Sunday Sermon – Greed and Corruption Edition
“I want to know why I’m planning a funeral while George Bush is planning a wedding.”
Anika Lawal, of Maryland, whose daughter, an Army sergeant, was recently killed in Iraq
— in Newsweek
From The Great Iraq Swindle, Rolling Stone: [all emphasis mine]
How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins — he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq.
[snip]
A few months later, in March 2004, your company magically wins a contract from the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to design and build the Baghdad Police College, a facility that’s supposed to house and train at least 4,000 police recruits. But two years and $72 million later, you deliver not a functioning police academy but one of the great engineering clusterfucks of all time, a practically useless pile of rubble so badly constructed that its walls and ceilings are literally caked in shit and piss, a result of subpar plumbing in the upper floors.
You’ve done such a terrible job, in fact, that when auditors from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction visit the college in the summer of 2006, their report sounds like something out of one of the Saw movies: “We witnessed a light fixture so full of diluted urine and feces that it would not operate,” they write, adding that “the urine was so pervasive that it had permanently stained the ceiling tiles” and that “during our visit, a substance dripped from the ceiling onto an assessment team member’s shirt.” The final report helpfully includes a photo of a sloppy brown splotch on the outstretched arm of the unlucky auditor.
[snip]
For all the creative ways that contractors came up with to waste, mismanage and steal public money in Iraq, the standard remained good old-fashioned fucking up. Take the case of the Basra Children’s Hospital, a much-ballyhooed “do-gooder” project championed by Laura Bush and Condi Rice. […] the Basra Children’s Hospital was a state-of-the-art medical facility set to be built in a town without safe drinking water. “Why build a hospital for kids, when the kids have no clean water?” said Rep. Jim Kolbe, a Republican from Arizona.Bechtel was given $50 million to build the hospital — but a year later, with the price tag soaring to $169 million, the company was pulled off the project without a single bed being ready for use. The government was unfazed: Bechtel, explained USAID spokesman David Snider, was “under a ‘term contract,’ which means their job is over when their money ends.”
The article’s concluding paragraph says it all:
If catastrophic failure is worth billions, where’s the incentive to deliver success? There’s no profit in patriotism, no cost-plus angle on common decency. Sixty years after America liberated Europe, those are just words, and words don’t pay the bills.
Read the whole thing – and keep a bottle of Mylanta handy.
As the article makes clear, the answer to Ms. Lawal’s question – and that of so many others – is spelled M.O.N.E.Y.
There’s money to be made in Iraq — lots of it — and you don’t even need to do a good job or even a fair-to-middling job. BushCo rewards fuckups – mainly because fucking up is all they can manage. (Can anyone name one thing — just one — that this mis-Administration and its cronies and hangers-on haven’t managed to fuck up beyond all repair?)
Just write up a half-assed contract for a rigged award system, and you’ll be rolling in dough while never fulfilling the contract – or doing it so badly that it can’t even be called a half-assed job, so badly it’ll look like a cardboard-and-tarp fort put together by kindergarteners.
And, hell, if you do all that and manage to fuck with the troops – either through piss-poor R&R areas, or contaminated water, or having refrigeration mechanics fixing Humvees or exposing them to unnecessary danger by charging the government for moving empty – but heavily-guarded – trucks back and forth across the desert … all the better.
How many more of our children will die for the great money-maker that is Iraq?
For Felicity
I never thought I’d say this, but I think I’ve actually found a company whose customer service is WORSE than Penelec and Verizon: Charter Communications.
Thankfully, they aren’t anyone I’m stuck doing business with, but Felicity of The Hangover Journals does, and she’s being royally f*cked over by them:
I’m going to reiterate everything that’s happened with me and Charter in this post so I have it all neatly in writing somewhere. […] You know I never ask for links, but I’m asking now. I want this to get around. I want this article to be on the front page of a google search for Charter Communications. I am beyond anger and into a sort of deep, shaking, silent rage.
At some point during the first week of August, Charter turned my internet off. I called them the morning of August 3 to straighten this out. They claimed that my internet had been turned off because I had not paid my bill since May, when I moved. In actual fact, they had been siphoning $55 out of my bank account each month. When I pointed this out, they at first accused me of getting internet at two houses and then said, well, alright, we screwed up and we’ll credit your account at the new house with all the money that we have removed. So that was an hour on the phone and some screaming and one would have thought, well, perils of modern life and all that, right, but it’s over.
Wrong. It was not over. Charter would proceed to turn my internet off again for the same reason on Sunday, August 5: another hour long phone call, same resolution.
And again on Friday, August 10: another hour long phone call with bonus screaming which took place on Sunday, August 12 and ended up with them –
Turning it off again an hour later. On Monday, August 13 I called again and spoke for, yeah, about an hour, with a supervisor named Monica who assured me over and over that it was all taken care of now.
And it was until last night, when they turned it off again and I am even now summoning up my courage to call the assholes again.
Felicity’s asking for links to her post, with the goal of making it the number one site when folks search Google for Charter. Spread the word.
You Have Spoken
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“I don’t have an agenda, I don’t have a program. I’m not a communist or a socialist. I guess I’m a left-libertarian and a populist, and I believe in the Bill of Rights the way some folks believe in the Bible.”
– Molly Ivins, 1944-2007
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