POVERTY: Corn a big question mark in global food stock equation

JESSICA LEEDER — GLOBAL FOOD REPORTER  Jun. 07, 2011
36 comments Email Print/License Decrease text size Increase text size The latest culprit under surveillance for its role in driving up global grain prices is U.S.-grown corn.



Wheat was the star of last year’s global food price run, set off by a drought in Russia that decimated a chunk of the country’s crop and prompted officials to slam the borders shut to exports; prices shot up by 50 per cent; food riots broke out in Africa and the Middle East; and France, as leader of this year’s G20 meetings, vowed to assemble agriculture ministers to tackle market volatility.

 The latest culprit under surveillance for its role in driving up global grain prices is U.S.-grown corn.
Wheat was the star of last year’s global food price run, set off by a drought in Russia that decimated a chunk of the country’s crop and prompted officials to slam the borders shut to exports; prices shot up by 50 per cent; food riots broke out in Africa and the Middle East; and France, as leader of this year’s G20 meetings, vowed to assemble agriculture ministers to tackle market volatility.
With two weeks to go before the ministers convene, markets are bracing for the release of an influential U.S. agriculture report on Thursday that is expected to shed light on the status of global food stocks and forecast supply and demand for the crucial growing months.
Analysts warn that if the outlook for U.S. corn, which feeds two-thirds of the global market, is anything less than glowing, traders’ reaction to the report could tip off a new period of market volatility.
The explanation for this starts with unusually wet weather in the U.S. corn belt that forced long delays in planting this spring. Although prices dropped this week after a U.S. Department of Agriculture report outlined progress in the field – at least 94 per cent of the world’s largest corn crop has been seeded –worries remain that the delays will translate into lower yields by the end of the season.
The timing is bad: Corn stocks this year have hovered around record lows, and demand for corn to make biofuels is keeping prices high. In April, the USDA said it expected corn stocks to shrink to 18 days’ worth of supply, the tightest spot in more than a decade. The announcement came at a time of a global hunger for more market certainty after last year’s frenzy.
“If we have problems with the corn crop … prices will go up. And that will spill over into wheat,” said Philip Abbott, an agricultural economist at Indiana’s Purdue University. “Wheat would not be as high as it is now were it not for the fact that corn is so high.”
Making matters worse is a drought in Britain, Germany and France – Europe’s largest wheat producers – that is threatening this year’s crop. Although world wheat stocks are in good shape and global production is on pace for a slight increase, “another year of poor production in wheat would certainly be problematic,” Mr. Abbott said.
Not everyone is convinced of the grim outlook. Errol Anderson, a grain and livestock analyst with ProMarket Wire in Calgary, believes corn and wheat are both hovering on the top end of their trading range now. Strong production forecasts for the year and predictions that crude oil prices will sink are bolstering his certainty.
“The world as we see it, because of the slowing economies, runs a risk of deflation by the end of the year,” he said.
However, Mr. Anderson represents a minority. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization said on Tuesday that high and volatile prices are likely to prevail for the rest of the year and into 2012 despite a modest price drop in May.
While high prices are tough to stomach, particularly among the least developed countries, increasing volatility in food commodities has proven tougher for them to withstand over the past year as global food prices reached highs not seen since the infamous shocks of 2008.
The prospect of dampening that volatility set off a world-wide discussion on what, if any, measures should be implemented. G20 agriculture ministers are expected to tackle the subject later this month. The most controversial possibilities include actions to rein in speculative trading in commodity markets and the possible creation of an international agricultural information system to increase transparency around global production, supply and demand.
“Countries have to go through that market and, on a given day, buy their grain,” said Sophia Murphy, a B.C.-based senior adviser for the Institute for Agricultural Trade Policy. “There’s a lot of things affecting the prices they have to pay ... and many of them have little to do with whether there’s a real supply and demand issue,” she said.
Ms. Murphy said she’s encouraged by the prospect of the G20 discussions, but concerned that politics will get in the way of making a real dent in market volatility.
“If countries are being asked to rely on international markets for food security, they need to have some security that food is available,” she said. “All the mechanisms coming out of the G20 are about money. That’s all very well if there’s something to buy. But you can’t use money when the shelves are empty.”

U.S. corn crop
81 million : Approximate acres worth of corn harvested in the United States last year, the largest portion of which was used in livestock feed.
$66.7-billion  : Total value of the U.S. crop in 2010.
20 : Percentage of the crop that is exported.
50 million : Tonnes of corn the United States placed on the export market in the 2009-2010 fiscal year.
16 million : Tonnes of corn produced for the foreign market by Argentina, the next-largest exporter, in the same year.
15.9 million : Tonnes of the grain bought by Japan, the world’s largest importer.
40% of total corn grown in the world that U.S. production represents.

China, Brazil, Mexico : Other top producers.
More than 30% of the U.S. corn crop that is used for making ethanol.
Other products made with the grain : starch, cooking oil, flour, Bourbon whisky

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/americas/corn-a-big-question-mark-in-global-food-stock-equation/article2051121/

MALNUTRITION: Argentina’s Battle With Malnutrition

Daniel Macmillen : 23 April 2011
In the early days of February, Argentina was rocked by tragic news from the northern provinces of Chaco and Salta. One of the decade’s heaviest droughts had led to a devastating food crisis, with tens of thousands of people severely affected by the shortages. By the 11th of February, nine people in the province of Salta alone had died from nutritional deficiencies, including seven children. Indigenous communities in northern Chaco, Argentina’s poorest province, abandoned by meagre local government assistance, were forced to turn to eating tree roots. So how can such a shocking humanitarian issue occur in a nation which produces an amount of food ten times higher than that needed by its own population?
There are a variety of causes that have conditioned the nutritional crisis. On a primary level, malnutrition is no new-comer to Argentina and experienced a recent substantial increase after Argentina’s infamous economic crisis of 2001. The disastrous period left millions of Argentines in extreme poverty and hundreds of thousands of children deeply exposed to the danger of undernourishment. Economic issues aside, an underdeveloped rural healthcare system, a lack of educational awareness, widespread poverty and destitution have also contributed to the problem. It is no surprises then that the most heavily affected areas by malnutrition are Argentina’s northern indigenous communities who live profoundly detached from educational and medical centres.
More than a million Argentines suffer from malnutrition, and recurrent high-profile cases such as the recent deaths in Salta have brought attention to the need for drastic political involvement. The national government have undertaken a variety of measures to try and grapple with the problem, including the Universal Child Assignment Plan, which seeks to give a monthly sum of around 220 pesos (US$ 55) per child to working families under the poverty line. However, recent looks at the initiative by a prominent Argentine social think tank have shown that the plan does little to help secluded communities to access food, creating only an increase in family income without correcting the key nutritional deficit or improving access to food supplies. Calls have been made for more focused and specialized political policies, especially by Abel Albino, one of the most well-known and outspoken activists for the food crisis. What is needed however is much more concrete infrastructural action; emergency relief funds must be made more efficient in administering food supplies and education must be recognized as a fundamental tool in raising awareness on the problem to many communities who are deeply under-informed of the fatal dangers of malnutrition.
Raising consciousness on the issue is also essential; the “silent extermination” suffered by many of the indigenous communities is frequently overlooked in the political arena; however, there is hope that the recent tragedies may shed light onto the desperate need of development in the area. The food crisis is by all means not a problem only endemic to northern Argentina. According to recent UN statistics, malnutrition affects approximately 53 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the growing number of environmental disasters and distorted weather patterns leave many rural communities in the region exposed to potential future food crises. A recent medical study observed that only 2% of Latin American medical centres have the appropriate facilities for dealing with patients of malnutrition. Despite all these obstacles, there have been recent improvements. Since Argentina’s economic meltdown in 2001, when more an average of 30 people died of malnutrition every day, the rate has been steadily decreasing to a rate of four deaths a day. But in the country which was once known as the “breadbasket of the world”, the recurrence of hunger and malnutrition is simply inadmissible.
http://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/104-104/5720-argentinas-battle-with-malnutrition

MALNUTRITION: Argentine aborigine children die of malnutrition and poor sanitary conditions

February 6th 2011
An Argentine incumbent governor from the northern province of Salta admitted in a television interview that at least five children died of malnutrition last year and so far this year another case has been registered. Cases involve mostly the indigenous population.


 Salta province governor Jose Manuel Urtubey

“Child malnutrition is a latent dramatic situation in the province of Salta” said Governor Jose Manuel Urtubey, although he explained conditions had improved compared to three years ago when “over thirty children died of hunger or malnutrition annually”.
The latest claims of children’s deaths were revealed by a non government organization, NGO, and rapidly hit the press headlines with the support from medical staff and relatives. They included the case of an 18 month toddler and a three year girl whose deaths were diagnosed as ‘infections’, however a third case involving another 18 month toddler revealed the truth: “sceptic shock caused by malnutrition”.
The Salta press and later the Buenos Aires media reported testimonies from the father of the dead toddler who crudely said that “when I returned from the woods my children were asking for food but I had nothing to give them. There are some days when we manage to have a meal and days when we don’t. When Leandro died, on that day we had had nothing to eat”.
Following the uproar and that of the three year old girl who was repeatedly sent back from hospital on five occasions Salta sanitary authorities reacted and according to some parents “four children in serious malnutrition condition were accepted in hospital and taken care by a nutritionist and nurses”.
Salta to the north of Argentina and next to Bolivia has a 1.2 million population with a significant number of indigenous communities much exposed to mal-nutrition, diseases and abandonment. Tourism and agriculture are Salta’s main industries and per capita income is half the national average.
“We have control over 100.000 children in those communities, but the latest situation indicates that our efforts are insufficient and there must be more vulnerable population which has no access to aid or support mechanisms”, admitted Urtubey.
The situation becomes worse in summer months when schools shut down and children are deprived of at least a hot meal a day provided by the kitchen school. This added to the increase in food prices plus the fact that kitchen schools in indigenous communities are not granted more than the equivalent of 250 US dollars per month. The summer heat and unreliable water sources have turned child diarrhoea and vomits endemic.
http://en.mercopress.com/2011/02/06/argentine-aborigine-children-die-of-malnutrition-and-poor-sanitary-conditions

MALNUTRITION: Argentine farmers halt grain sales

17 Jan 2011 Strike over export curbs rekindles a dispute that helped drive global grains prices to record highs three years ago.


Soybean group Acsoja has estimated that production would fall by 13 per cent as a result of water shortages [EPA]
Argentine farmers have halted sales of wheat, corn and soy in a strike over export curbs, rekindling a dispute that helped drive global grains prices to record highs three years ago.
The seven-day protest by growers, which started on Monday, could fuel supply concerns just as dry weather linked to the weather phenomena La Nina worsens the outlook for soy and corn production.
Farmers in Argentina, one of the world's biggest food suppliers, have been at odds with the government for years over export curbs aimed at taming inflation and guaranteeing affordable supplies of everyday staples.
They say the system of wheat and corn export quotas lets millers and exporters pay farmers low prices, and have urged the government to scrap the caps.
"These distortive, interventionist measures have been repeated for several harvests in recent years," Hugo Biolcati, leader of the Argentine Rural Society, said when the country's four farming groups announced the strike last week.
The protest is bad news for Christina Fernandez, the president, nine months from the October election in which she is widely expected to seek re-election.
The wave of farmer strikes that began in March 2008 over a tax hike on soy exports battered her popularity, hit Argentine asset prices and disrupted grains shipments at the height of the soy harvest.
However, the impact of this week's protest on grains prices will likely be muted because soy and corn harvesting has yet to begin.

La Nina effect
Government officials condemned the farmers for calling another strike, even warning of possible flour shortages, although Julian Dominguez, the agriculture minister, acknowledged wheat farmers' problems.
The government is taking steps to ensure mills and exporters paid fixed local wheat prices to farmers and punish those that did not.
Dominguez advocated an even stronger state role in the country's multibillion-dollar grains trade during a weekend newspaper interview.

La Nina
La Nina is a weather phenomena causing abnormal cooling of the central and eastern Pacific.
Generally, La Nina will mean that parts of the world that normally experience dry weather will be drier and parts with wet weather will be wetter.
La Nina translates from Spanish as "The Little Girl" and is meteorologically the opposite of the El Nino.
La Ninas occur on average every three to five years and will typically last for up to 12 months.
"What the grains trade needs in Argentina is the presence of the state in the market - going back to the model of the Federal Grains Agency or National Grains Board, a body made up of the grains exchanges, the state, the co-operatives, that can ensure the market works for farmers," he was quoted as telling Tiempo Argentino newspaper.
Low rainfalls began worrying the agriculture industry in December in response to La Nina diminishing rain over Argentina. Weather fluctuations have helped lift corn and soy prices close to their record highs of 2008 in recent weeks.
Soaring prices are good news for farmers, but the parched soils are worrying farmers across Argentina's famous Pampa plains.
Argentina is the world's leading exporter of soyoil and soymeal and the third-largest global supplier of soybeans. It is also a major wheat supplier and the second-largest corn provider.
Soy exports brought in $12.98bn in 2009, accounting for 23 per cent of total export earnings.
But this year, soybean group Acsoja has estimated that production would fall by 13 per cent as a result of water shortages.
La Nina, which affects weather patterns across the Asia-Pacific region and in particular the amount of rainfall, is threatening to expand drought in the Americas while bringing more devastating rains to Australia, according to the US Climate Prediction Centre.
La Nina-inspired rainfall has pushed Australia into recording its third wettest year on record in 2010 while causing drought in grain-growing areas of the southern US as well as in Brazil and Argentina.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2011/01/20111175129401574.html

POVERTY: Hospital train heals Argentina's poor

By Oscar Laski (AFP) – Nov 28, 2010

 A girl walks along railroad tracks, making her way towards the Children's Hospital Train

LAVALLE, Argentina — Children from this desperately poor village in northern Argentina rushed to welcome a special hospital train rolling into town, their only chance to receive specialized care for a year.

Hundreds of women and children waited in the scorching heat as the Alma Foundation's three-wagon train came to a screeching halt in Lavalle, a village of 2,200 in Santiago del Estero -- one of Argentina's poorest provinces.
"It's great they come here because they take very good care of us. In the village, we don't have specialists, only a general practitioner," said Graciela Rodriguez, 39, surrounded by her three children.
Nancy Lobo, already a grandmother at 40, was overcome with emotion.
"We heard on the radio that the train was arriving. I immediately brought my three-year-old grandson so that he could be examined," she said, pointing to medicine she received for free to treat the child's bronchitis.
Two pediatricians, a generalist, three dentists, a lab technician, a nurse and a team of volunteers were packed in the train compartments, which were also outfitted with X-ray equipment. Most doctors are Argentines.
In all, some 514 children were examined during this visit to Lavalle and nearby Tapso village.
After 30 years and 150 trips, staff of the mobile hospital have examined 75,000 children in Argentina, where the infant mortality rate is 12.1 per 1,000 live births.
From January through October alone, malnutrition killed 206 children in Misiones, a nearby province plagued with endemic poverty whose infant mortality rate is 12.3 per thousand.
Argentina's official infant mortality rate stands at 13.8 per thousand. Malnutrition affects 12.1 percent of children nationwide with the northeastern and northern regions hardest hit, according to Health Ministry figures for 2009.
"We mostly encounter cases of malnutrition that need a follow-up," said Alma hospital train mission coordinator Ana Lia Gil Cataldo, 32.
She explained that staff must often leave their wagons and travel to very remote areas to convince families to bring their children for an exam.
Most adults in this humble village of small houses nestled in an area once known for its soybean farming are unemployed or temporary workers, as work turned to hardwood forest clearing.
There is a clinic in Lavalle. But everyone in this dusty, wind-swept town complains about it.
"My daughter swallowed a coin," said Elba Aguero as she stepped out of a wagon.
"It was blocking her throat and she seemed about to choke, but the clinic officials refused to examine her immediately. So I had to insist to get an ambulance to carry her to Santiago."
For Elba like many others, the train's arrival brings a big sigh of relief.
"It's a wonderful experience that we share for 15 days with people we don't know," said pediatrician Viviane Ramirez, a 28-year-old Bolivian.
"We are active in areas that do not have access to public health facilities and we are able to provide a true medical follow-up."
But the efforts are not without stumbling blocks.
In Rosario, the country's second-largest city, the train was broken into during a stop.
"They stole most of the donations we were transporting," Ramirez said, as she took her consolation from watching the happy children playing around the wagons of the train.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gSSla8hCzY_2kWN194E8RvnlFwOw?docId=CNG.aa68d93683d032809203948d4e74d46e.471

POVERTY: Argentina's experience

When Argentinians watch the news today and see the terrible things that are happening in Greece, we cannot but say, “Hey!! This is EXACTLY like Argentina in December 2001 and beginning of 2002…!”. Then too, Argentina underwent its worst systemic banking, public debt and monetary collapse which led to social turmoil, mad violence, rioting, and social war. The turmoil was so bad, that it forced then president Fernando de la Rúa’s government to resign, especially because of his notorious pro-banker cartel economy minister, Domingo Cavallo, generating a political vacuum that led to Argentina having 5 (five!!) presidents in that terrible last week of December 2001.
What triggered social chaos in Argentina was the attempt by president De la Rúa to implement the grossly unjust austerity measures imposed by the IMF that required, as usual, utmost sacrifice from the people – more taxes, less social spending, “balanced budgets”, zero deficit spending, amongst other anti-social measures – which led to a fall of almost 40% in Argentina’s GDP.
Half of all Argentinians fell below the poverty line (most were never to make it back to the traditional Argentina middle class), private banks were allowed to legally retain everybody’s savings, US dollar deposits were arbitrarily changed into Pesos at whatever rate of exchange the government and bankers decided (the dollar was devalued 300% from one peso to the dollar, to 4 pesos the dollar in just weeks) and yet…. Not one bank fell!!! Indeed, since then they’re all back in “business as usual”, however the poor and impoverished are today totally out of business…
Throughout 25 years of successive caretaker governments in Argentina, the IMF-led Global Banking Cartel artificially generated a basically illegal – or at best, illegitimate – Sovereign Debt that grew so huge, that it ended up collapsing the entire financial and economic system. That was no coincidence. It was part of a highly complex model, engineered to control entire countries, through a cycle having sequential stages and identifiable parts that has one basic overriding goal: when the finance economy is fueled to run in an artificial “growth mode”, the bulk of all profits are privatized into the hands of their “friends”, managers and operators. However, when the whole scheme – like all Ponzi schemes - reaches its climax and total collapse is at hand, they revert the process and then socialize all losses. (See video “Global Financial Collapse”, Parts 1 and 2, below.)
That’s what Mr. Cavallo - a Rockefeller protégé - achieved, ensuring that the Argentine people bore all the losses, whilst the international banksters took all the profits. The mainstream media – both global and local – willingly obliged; The New York Times went so far as to suggest that the entire Patagonian region (i.e., the 5 southern provinces of Argentina accounting for 35% of Argentina’s territory and having immeasurable energy, mining, foodstuff, water resource wealth), should secede from the rest of the country as a way of “resolving our foreign debt woes…”
http://beforeitsnews.com/news/44/819/Argentina_to_Greece:_Default_and_Poverty_Ahead,_Our_Sympathies_to_You.html