Experts warn of food riots as foreign troops cleared to patrol American cities.

The UN is warning of a food shortage crisis and drawing up plans for food rations which will hit even middle-class suburban populations as inflation and economic uncertainty causes the prices of staple food commodities to skyrocket.

The United Nation’s World Food Programme cautions today that if it doesn’t receive more funding, it will have to halt food aid to developing countries like Mexico and China.

"The WFP crisis talks come as the body sees the emergence of a “new area of hunger” in developing countries where even middle-class, urban people are being “priced out of the food market” because of rising food prices," reports the Financial Times.

The warning coincides with a speech by William Lapp, of US-based consultancy Advanced Economic Solutions, who cautioned that rising agricultural raw material prices would translate this year into sharply higher food inflation.

It also parallels a prediction by Don Coxe, a Chicago-based global portfolio strategist for BMO Financial Group who correctly forecast the fall of the dollar and the rise in price of gold and oil years in advance, who last week spoke of a "global food crisis" which will cause the world to enter into, "A period of food shortages and swiftly rising prices," leading to government embargoes.

With the U.S. on the verge of a recession and, as many analysts have warned, a potential second great depression, those long scoffed at for hoarding vast quantities of storable food may unfortunately be able to say "I told you so" if the dollar continues to deteriorate and people begin to be priced out of the food market.

Global food prices have skyrocketed by as much as 60 per cent in the past year, while UN officials warn of the likelihood of food riots.

"If prices continue to rise, I would not be surprised if we began to see food riots,” said Jacques Diouf, director-general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, last October.

Many see the food shortages, whether real or manufactured, as simply another pretext for the implementation of martial law and the introduction of foreign troops to patrol major U.S. cities.

A recent announcement by Northcom confirmed that U.S. and Canadian troops will be allowed to patrol each other’s countries in the event of a national emergency.

"U.S. Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, and Canadian Air Force Lt.-Gen. Marc Dumais, commander of Canada Command, have signed a Civil Assistance Plan that allows the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a civil emergency," reads a Northcom press release.

Food shortages loom as wheat crop shrinks and prices riseJonathan Leake
THE world is only ten weeks away from running out of wheat supplies after stocks fell to their lowest levels for 50 years.

The crisis has pushed prices to an all-time high and could lead to further hikes in the price of bread, beer, biscuits and other basic foods.

It could also exacerbate serious food shortages in developing countries especially in Africa.

The crisis comes after two successive years of disastrous wheat harvests, which saw production fall from 624m to 600m tonnes, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Experts blame climate change as heatwaves caused a slump in harvests last year in eastern Europe, Canada, Morocco and Australia, all big wheat producers.

Booming populations and a switch to a meat-rich diet in the developing world also mean that about 110m tons of the world’s annual wheat crop is being diverted to feed livestock.

Short term pressures have compounded the problem. Speculative buying by investors gambling on further price rises has further pushed up prices.

Though shortages are often blamed on the use of land for biofuel crops, the main biofuel cereal crop is maize, not wheat. Farmers have brought millions of acres of fallow land into production and the FAO predicts that the shortages could be eliminated within 12 months.



Have your say

As the article pointed out, the main cause for the shortage is bad weather for several years in most of the major wheat production areas in the world. Yes, other crops are competing aggressively for land domestically in the US, but not all of that is driven by biofuels. Some of it is caused by the availability of more efficient new technology in competing crops that isn't available - yet - in wheat. If wheat can gain access to new traits for drought tolerance, herbicide resistance, disease resistance and others, wheat will compete more favorably with those other crops and wheat growers will be able to continue meeting consumer needs. Unless we tie our hands behind our backs by requiring organic production or closing the door to technology, there's enough land to produce food, fuel, feed and fiber for everyone.

Daren Coppock, National Assn of Wheat Growers, Washington, DC

This rather puts an end to the big con of "organic" farming which has a far lower output & is till supported by crazy government cash

j.pitts, Northampton, England

Many scientific studies have shown that biofuel made from any crop are far worse for the environment than using ordinary gasoline and actually speeds global warming. Biofuel production is shrinking the human food supply, causing water shortages, and accelerating topsoil erosion which leads to desertification of the planet. The only biofuels that hold promise are biofuels made from algae or garbage. Unfortunately, those two technologies are still experimental, unproven, and years away from commercial production.

See: "The biofuel hoax is causing a world food crisis!"

[home.att.net]

The fact that the television media in the U.S.A. has ignored the world food crisis and the biofuel hoax is criminal. All of the three major United States presidential candidates are still on the mindless biofuel bandwagon, and until U.S. television ends its silence, I am afraid the biofuel bandwagon to hell will continue.

Christopher Calder, Eugene, U.S.A.