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Is America Headed for a Food Shortage? ~ A new study suggests that
ethanol production could drive up corn prices, leaving U.S. grains and meat
in short supply. By Dawn Stover | June 2007 : A recent study conducted by
the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University
(which receives funding from grocery manufacturers and livestock producers)
reported that U.S. ethanol production could consume more than half of U.S.
corn, wheat and coarse grains by 2012, driving up food prices and causing
shortages. The study estimates that booming ethanol production has already
raised U.S. food prices by $47 per person annually. In Mexico, protests have
already erupted over the high price of corn tortillas, a staple food in the
local diet.
Report - The Demography of Famines: Perspectives from the Past and ...
Most dictionary definitions of ‘famine’ equate it with food scarcity and
widespread hunger. They tend to remain silent on the demographic aspects,
although the extra mortality caused by famines offers one easy and obvious
gauge for ranking famines. By this reckoning, for example, the Great Irish
Famine of the 1840s was the greatest in nineteenth-century Europe. By the
same token, some of the modern famines highlighted in media accounts are
‘small’ by historical standards. Excess mortality, however, is only one
aspect of famine demography. Famines typically reduce births and marriages
too, and the migrations that they often give rise to can both increase and
reduce the death toll. There are differences between how modern famines kill
and how historical famines did so. Modern famines differ too in who they
kill; they tend to more class-specific and they are even more likely to
target males than females than famines in the past. Moreover, famines often
have demographic causes as well as consequences; and the consequences may be
long-term as well as short-term.
The
Famine Foods Database: Plants that are not normally considered as
crops are consumed in times of famine. This botanical-humanistic subject has had
little academic exposure, and provides insight to potential new food sources
that ordinarily would not be considered. Wild! Check it out!
Interpreting
The Irish Famine, 1846-1850 History
of the nineteenth century tragedy includes background material, personal
narratives, and a collection of photos and illustrations. It began with a blight
of the potato crop that left acre upon acre of Irish farmland covered with black
rot. As harvests across Europe failed, the price of food soared.
Subsistence-level Irish farmers found their food stores rotting in their
cellars, the crops they relied on to pay the rent to their British and
Protestant landlords destroyed. Peasants who ate the rotten produce sickened and
entire villages were consumed with cholera and typhus. Parish priests desperate
to provide for their congregations were forced to forsake buying coffins in
order to feed starving families, with the dead going unburied or buried only in
the clothes they wore when they died.
Medieval
Sourcebook: Famine of 1315 In the
year of our Lord 1315, apart from the other hardships with which England was
afflicted, hunger grew in the land.... Meat and eggs began to run out, capons
and fowl could hardly be found, animals died of pest, swine could not be fed
because of the excessive price of fodder. A quarter of wheat or beans or peas
sold for twenty shillings [In 1313 a quarter of wheat sold for five
shillings.], barley for a mark, oats for ten shillings. A quarter of salt
was commonly sold for thirty-five shillings, which in former times was quite
unheard of. The land was so oppressed with want that when the king came to St.
Albans on the feast of St. Laurence [August 10] it was hardly possible to find
bread on sale to supply his immediate household....
USAID
Famine Early Warning System Homepage
The Goal of the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) is to
strengthen the abilities of African countries and regional organizations to
manage risk of food insecurity through the provision of timely and analytical
early warning and vulnerability information
Terminator
seeds There is a technology
available suitably called the
Terminator
technology, which is designed to
genetically
switch off a plant's ability to germinate a second time.
Ethiopian Plant Might Be a Key for
Surviving Famine Drought and
famine have ravaged the North African nation of Ethiopia in each of the past
three decades, but scientists say a foul-tasting plant might be a key to
surviving these kinds of disasters.
A Growing Concern: FAQs A Growing Concern is the first systematic
analysis by agricultural experts documenting the magnitude of the challenge
of protecting the food supply from contamination by crops engineered to
produce drugs and industrial chemicals (known collectively as "pharma
crops"). The experts warn that the food supply is vulnerable to
contamination by pharma crops unless substantial changes are made in the
ways and places these crops are grown and managed.
CIDRAP >> Bioterrorism and Food Safety: Developing an Effective ...
Industries that comprise the US food system from farm to table are
potential targets for bioterrorism and terrorist hoax situations. Terrorists
could create harm through: (1) final product contamination using either
chemicals or biological agents with the intent to kill or cause illness
among consumers, (2) disruption of food distribution systems, (3) damaging
the agricultural economy (which makes up roughly 17% of the gross domestic
product) by introducing devastating crop pathogens or exotic animal diseases
such as foot-and-mouth disease, or (4) hoaxes, which create anxiety and fear
and which could severely impact an area of the food system.
FDA/CFSAN - Risk Assessment for Food Terrorism and Other
Food ... Even before the September 11th
attacks, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had
developed a strategic plan on biological and chemical terrorism. The CDC
plan identified and ranked several foodborne pathogens as critical agents
for possible terrorist attacks. Among the high-priority biological agents
("Category A" agents) were Bacillus anthracis (anthrax) and Clostridium
botulinum (botulism), both of which are deadly pathogens and may contaminate
food. Most of the foodborne biological agents identified by CDC were
classified as "Category B" agents because they are moderately easy to
disseminate and cause moderate morbidity and low mortality. The Category B
biological agents include Salmonella spp., Shigella dysenteriae, E. coli
O157:H7, and ricin.(5) Notably, several of the pathogens identified by CDC
as critical biological agents also are known to pose a significant threat
due to unintentional contamination of food.(6)
Persistent toxic chemicals in the US food supply* Persistent
organic pollutants (POPs) have spread throughout the global environment to
threaten human health and damage ecosystems, with evidence of POPs
contamination in wildlife, human blood, and breast milk documented
worldwide. Based on data from the US Food and Drug Administration, this
article provides a brief overview of POPs residues in common foods in the
United States food supply. The analysis focuses on 12 chemical compounds now
targeted for an international phase out under the Stockholm Convention on
POPs. The available information indicates that POPs residues are present in
virtually all categories of foods, including baked goods, fruit, vegetables,
meat, poultry, and dairy products. Residues of five or more persistent toxic
chemicals in a single food item are not unusual, with the most commonly
found POPs being the pesticides DDT (and its metabolites, such as DDE) and
dieldrin. Estimated daily doses of dieldrin alone exceed US Environmental
Protection Agency and US Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Control
reference dose for children. Given the widespread occurrence of POPs in the
food supply and the serious health risks associated with even extremely
small levels of exposure, prevention of further food contamination must be a
national health policy priority in every country. Implementation of the
Stockholm Convention will prevent further accumulation of persistent toxic
chemicals in food. Early ratification and rapid implementation of this
treaty should be an urgent priority for all governments.
Global Warming Could Slam Food Supply FRESNO, Calif., Aug. 5, 2006 —
Suppose the dinner on your table last night had cost 20 times what it did?
Or 50 times as much? Scientists say global warming very likely has something
like that in store in the coming decades. The agricultural abundance
Americans have long taken for granted and the low food prices that go with
it, they say, now face a withering enemy — and the recent blows to
California agriculture are a taste of things to come.
What goals might an attack on the agricultural sector serve?
LOOMING FOOD CRISIS {The Guardian, Wednesday August 29 2007} - the surge
in demand for agrofuels such as ethanol is hitting the poor and the
environment. A "perfect storm" of ecological and social factors appears to
be gathering force, threatening vast numbers of people with food shortages
and price rises. The era of cheap food is over. World commodity prices of
sugar, milk and cocoa have all surged, prompting the BIGGEST INCREASE IN
RETAIL FOOD PRICES IN THREE DECADES in some countries.
One in six countries facing food shortage ~ John Vidal and Tim Radford;
Thursday June 30, 2005 - The Guardian: One in six countries in the world
face food shortages this year because of severe droughts that could become
semi-permanent under climate change, UN scientists warned yesterday. The
food and agriculture organization and the US government, both of which
monitor global food shortages, agree that 34 countries are now experiencing
droughts and food shortages and others could join them. Up to 30 million
people will need assistance because of the droughts and other natural
disasters such as the Asian tsunami.
black stem rust, or black rust (plant
disease): {Britannica Online}
description
...rust fungi parasitize either one species of plant (autoecious, or
monoecious, rust) or two distinct species (heteroecious rust). One
heteroecious rust with five spore forms during its life cycle is black stem
rust (Puccinia graminis) of wheat and other cereals and grasses. Other
heteroecious rusts include those that use junipers (red cedar) as one host
and apple, Japanese quince,...
damage to:
barberry
An important feature of the common, or European barberry, B. vulgaris, is
its connection with a serious disease of wheat and some other cereals, known
as black stem rust, caused by the fungus Puccinia graminis. The fungus has
two stages in its life cycle, one on the wheat and the other on the European
barberry and a few related species. If there are no barberry plants growing
in...
cereal crops
In the fungus group known as rust, the chief damage is caused by black rust
(Puccinia graminis). Because this fungus spends part of its life on cereals
and part on the barberry bush, these bushes are often eradicated near wheat
fields as a preventive measure. Black rust causes cereal plants to lose
their green colour and turn yellow. The grain produced is small, shrivelled,
and...
Who's
hungry? And how do we know? Food shortage, poverty, and deprivation: A
UN Report which my or may not be of value.
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