An interview with Van Jones in January 2015 explains my connection to the pop singer who passed of late.
Van Jones on closing Silicon Valley's diversity gap https://t.co/APL6m3ip5x via @usatoday
— Nate. (@natemurthy) April 23, 2016
Category Archives: Wealth and Poverty
The Global Food Crisis: more evidence
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The research coming from the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) this month reflects previous concerns I’ve made in earlier articles[1],[2],[3],[4],[5] about the relationships of biofuels and commodities market speculation with food prices and the mechanisms driving these prices upward. Although the evidence doesn’t unequivocally confirm these concerns, this NECSI research paper is a stepping stone toward a general theory of what I’d like to call “ecodynamics”: namely, the study of the interactions of capital flows with natural resources. The abstract of the paper summarizes the fundamental argumentative thread which is worthy of peer-reviewed investigation:
In a previous paper published in September 2011, we constructed for the first time a dynamic model that quantitatively agreed with food prices. Specifically, the model fi t the FAO Food Price Index time series from January 2004 to March 2011, inclusive. The results showed that the dominant causes of price increases during this period were investor speculation and ethanol conversion.
Timothy A. Wise (director of the Research and Policy Program at the Global Development and Environment Institute — Tufts University) posted this very informative article on his “Triple Crisis” weblog (6 March 2012) regarding the NECSI data and food price model. A year earlier, he wrote another succinct piece on food price volatility that initially captured my interest and led me to the NECSI paper mentioned above.
A Possible PhD Economics Thesis
United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization's world food price index from 1990-2012 (accessed 13 March 2012). Observe the coincidence of real and nominal food price peaks with civil unrest.
I used to be fascinated with economics until I started learning about banking and reserve ratios, and that’s when I started to fall asleep in my high school classes. But if I could teach economics my way, I would have started off drawing a production possibilities curve (one of the first graphs we learned) using wheat on the horizontal axis and guns on the vertical axis. And instead of leading my students down an a priori path that preaches free market capitalism, I’d introduce them to worlds where free market capitalism has failed and life has indeed become a matter of choosing between feeding your children or taking up arms.
This is the dire economic reality for the growing number of people living on the economic margins, and I’m concerned about what lurks around the corner of our future. If I’m lucky enough to one day get into a top-notch graduate economics program, I would dedicate all my time and energy looking into relationships between access to healthy food and basic resources and the incidence of civil unrest. There is a more general theory that guides this work however: income inequality has the potential to exacerbate pre-existing economic conditions. This chart that I pulled from the UN FAO makes my point on a very cursory level.
Food and water, to me, are sacred. And so it hurts me on a very profound level knowing there are people in this world being deprived of such basic sacred rights due to S/E/P machinations. Hopefully, if my prayers are answered, I’ll one day have a platform to speak up on these issues in order to raise greater awareness.
Occupy. Disrupt. Rebuild.
“Fewer guns, more solar arrays”
There is a large swath of the business community that continues to push for alternative energy infrastructure projects as the stimulus to getting our nation out of the current economic slump and ridding our dubious involvement in strategic energy resource-rich nation-states such as Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Read full article.
Saleh, al-Ahmar, Arcadia Petroleum and the Civil War in Yemen
Anti-government protesters shout slogans while holding a defaced portrait of Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh during a demonstration demanding his ouster in Sanaa June 4, 2011.
As the violence in Yemen continues to escalate and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) probe reveals more about Arcadia Petroleum’s role in securing oil contracts in Yemen, one cannot help but wonder if there exists a more than just tenuous connection between the two high-profile events.
Bitter tensions between Saleh supporters and his defectors–the Al-Ahmar, Hashed, and Sanha camps–have fueled Yemen’s political crisis:
The CFTC’s recent allegations that Arcadia colluded with Yemeni multibillionaire Hamid al-Ahmar in order to receive uncompetitive oil bids coincides with the fomenting civil conflict in Yemen. A leaked September 2009 State Department cable says that:
an internal government shift in control over the country’s valuable oil exports, meant to open up oil bidding to more international buyers, threatened Arcadia’s sway over Yemen’s exports.
It also put at risk an alliance between Arcadia and its “local agent” in Yemen, tribal leader Hamid al-Ahmar, the cable says. Arcadia, in an interview, denied the allegations in the cable, saying it did not employ al-Ahmar as an agent, although it did work with some of his companies in the oil trading business. The company said it always paid official market prices for Yemen’s export oil.
But even if there might be no real relation whatsoever with Saleh’s refusal to relinquish his power and the “internal government shift in control” of the country’s oil resources, the international community cannot ignore the growing humanitarian crisis in Yemen as violence escalates, water resources deplete, and oil revenue remains misappropriated.
Oxfam America releases new report on food insecurity
"power above all determines who eats and who does not" (Oxfam America 2011)
“Rising food prices are tightening the squeeze on populations already struggling to buy adequate food, demanding radical reform of the global food system, Oxfam has warned.”
Link to BBC article (31 May 2011)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13597657
Key findings of Oxfam report Growing a Better Future:
- Traders: Four global companies control the movement of most of the world’s food. Three companies – Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and Cargill – control an estimated 90 percent of the world’s grain trade. Their activities help drive volatile food prices and they profit from them. In the first quarter of 2008, at the height of a global food price crisis, Cargill’s profits were up 86 percent and the company is now heading for its most profitable year yet on the back of further disruptions to global food supplies.
- India: Despite doubling the size of it economy between 1990 and 2005 the number of hungry people in India increased by 65 million – more than the population of France – because economic development excluded the rural poor and social protection schemes failed to reach them. Today one in four of the world’s hungry people live in India.
- The world’s poorest people now spend up to 80% of their incomes on food – with those in the Philippines spending proportionately four times more than those in the UK, for instance – and more people will be pushed into hunger as food prices climb.
- 5-Point Solution:
- Investing in Small-Scale Food Producers
- Ending Excessive Speculation in Agricultural Commodities
- Modernizing Food Aid
- Stopping Giveaways to the Corn-Ethanol Industry
- Regulating Land and Water Grabs
Speculators Beware!
The United States’ Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) alleges that two firms in 2008 engaged in illegal oil futures speculation. It has taken about three years, but finally some justice will come from this (albeit limited). If only the same charges can be brought against firms that speculated on food commodities will we see retribution for those that were directly affected by the violence that swept the world during the 2007-2008 global food riots.
An Energy Crisis of the Third-World Kind
There has been an international media fanfare circling the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan over the last month since the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, but not all energy disaster coverage is created equal. Perhaps an equal amount of attention has been given to Libya and its oil. But I fear that there are other more neglected disasters which continue to get the silent treatment from the international community.
When Americans or the Western world think of the country of Somalia, what is evoked in their minds? …warlords, famine, piracy, Black Hawk Down? What about nuclear toxic waste?
I first heard about the dumping of toxic and radioactive wastes by European companies off the shores of Somalia from musician K’naan (internationally famous for writing the 2010 World Cup Anthem, “Wavin’ Flag”) as a precursor to the piracy movement in his country, but I merely brushed it aside as a rumor. However, recently, I found a post from a Minnesotan blogger who confirms K’naan’s claims via multiple official independent sources.
Some folks say that silence in the face of violence is often worse than the original crime itself. But some crimes don’t even scratch the surface of the mounting unspoken injustices of the world. As is historically the case, these environmental crimes seem to always implicate the international scramble–heinous or not–for the world’s energy and resources.
Thou shalt not steal
The U.S. treasury has frozen around $USD 32 billion in Libyan assets, meanwhile Republican congressional leaders and the Obama administration are considering to directly support anti-Qaddafi forces. Some sources even say that they are coordinating international allies such as Saudi Arabia by urging them to militarily support the rebels. Sounds like someone’s placing bets.