Hello all, Priya here. Thank you Brett, Will and everyone for looking after this post so lovingly overnight.
Chloe suggested a story about child protection that you can read below.
WORLD HUNGER
I was thinking about food prices and world hunger. It’s back. All those wannabe beauty queens who wanted to eradicate world hunger will look on with horror.
Prices are going up, and basic staples are beyond the means of more and more people worldwide, althought he brunt of it is in poorer nations.
This week world leaders meet to discuss the problem in Rome. The fact that Robert Mugabe is there has upset some people. But the real talking point is what are we going to do to avert catastrophe?
Some of you commenting on this blog say that if these leaders had been doing their jobs properly in the first place we wouldn’t be in this mess…
The United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, is expected to recommend a variety of measures, including easing farming taxes and lifting export bans. He will also ask the United States and other nations to phase out subsidies for food-based biofuels which have been used to encourage farmers to grow crops for energy use, rather than for human consumption.
So what poverty campaigners have been demanding all along – no subsidies for Western farmers – may finally be taken up. Or will it?
So what shall we ask today?
What do you think should be done?
Is it time to go vegetarian unless you can slaughter your own animal?
Should we be feeding animals grain when there are shortages?
Is genetically modified food the answer? Or are we handing the keys to our food security to the big corporations?
Is it time to go back to subsistence farming – feed ourselves before we export food? Would this work? What about countries that don’t grow enough of their own food? Or are the dollars easrned from export vital for developing the country and making it stronger in the long term?
Or, are there just too many of us on the planet?
IS THIS TAKING CHILD PROTECTION TOO FAR?
Fingerprint scanners are being used at two Kent nursery schools to check the identity of parents.
Springfield Lodge Day Nursery, which has sites in Dartford and Swanscombe, is scanning the prints each time parents drop off their children.
Linda Berryman, the owner of the nursery, said the measures were for the “safety and security” of the children.
But the charity Kidscape, which aims to protect children from harm, described the measure as “paranoid and overkill”.
Michelle Elliot, director, said it gave the wrong message to youngsters.
She said in reality of the 11 million children in the UK, on average seven to 10 were abducted and murdered each year.
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BBC World Have Your Say 
Chloe,
I am here on and off until late. I will be wasting Tax payers dollars anyway, Might as well put it to good use. I won’t be able to guarantee the level of attention as I do when home, but better then nothing. I am sure some other will help out too. I still have right though.
Alright, whats on everyones mind today and in the news? 🙂
One thing that struck me is Mugabe and the level of criticism he has received for attending the UN food summit.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jV0AtOAzpcD1-066wrGXd03oRX5w
How do you feel about your leaders and leaders of other countries which engage in such events that are often contradictory to their policy or the history of their policy either directly or indirectly?
How do you feel about Mugabe and his attendance to this summit?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7431216.stm
This is another story I was looking at. When is it the right time to leave the dead where they fell or is it up to later generations to still go and look for the remains of those fallen?
I think that Mugabe should have been arrested at that summit and put on trial, Brett!
I have found that I can make any wordpress account I want (though I don’t know how yet), and I could not help at all as a mod as loong as we have a pre-school dino computer. The settings wouldn’t even let me log in to wordpress from here. I’d still like to know how to register so that I can try to reserve a preferred ID. Any help, links, etc. will be appreciated. My apologies again to WHYS staff.
@ Shirley
http://wordpress.com/
Go to that link and set up a new account. You will be given the option of creating a blog or not, you just click that you don’t want a blog just yet.
If I were you I would also get the latest Internet Explorer or Firefox, wordpress is best used with Firefox.
Will, I’ve been there. What is the link to register for a new account? Thank you.
I’m looking up info on the UN Food Summit and will be reading. Please don’t think me a selfish spammer. Food is still on my brain – my strabewrry plants still have not surfaced after I planted them two or three weeks ago; and I am plotting ways of potting some grasses (clover, mostly) and keeping them in the house. I tried keeping some grass in the house for the cats, and they were so enthusiastic that they nearly killed the grass. I’ll return with real food input soon, inshallah. Sorry. :=)
@ Mugabe
That is kind of like a Klan member in full dress showing up at a black reparations advocacy meeting. Anyway you look at it, organizations like the food summit is the result of people like him and their policies.
@ the dead,
If something productive can be learned, then unearth them. If not, then just drink to them.
Question:
Has anybody ever had their mind changed by an argument they participated in or read on a blog site?
For example, I recently was defending forcible action into Myanmar and Brett made a great argument that changed my perspective. I realized dashing in by force was out of line with other positions I had taken in the past.
@ Shirley
http://wordpress.com/signup/
I change my mind quite a lot, Dwight. Both through debate and my own questionable logic. But I am always open to other peoples opinion – they just fascinate me.
Hello Precious Dwight… May be we can expand your question a little bit… Have you ever met someone who has managed to change your view about a particular group of humans (whether ethnic or religious or anything else)?! As for me, Rabbi David Rosen has managed to change my view of Israelis… Unfortunately in this horrific world, humans like Precious David are considered to be ‘idealistic’ or ‘unrealistic’… With my love… Yours forever, Lubna…
Has Zimbabwe’s agriculture failed because the soil failed, or because the markets (oney) failed?
Some of my findings:
The U.N. Food and Agrucultural Organization (FAO) Summit is described at their website: Numerous [dignitaries] are set to gather…to discuss ways to address hunger and malnutrition in the face of soaring food prices, scarce resources, climate change, increased energy needs and population growth.
…world food security, supply and demand side, policies and market structure…climate change and bioenergy… This article also describes the summit and its aims.
This FAO article states that “over the next 10 years [Agricultural commodity prices] are expected to average well above their mean levels of the past decade…” It attributes the rise to stock levels that “are expected to remain low,” as well as a “demand for agricultural commodities [that] becomes less responsive to price changes.” The treatment of food as money on world markets and the use of food crops for biofuel were also mentioned. The article referred to discussion already taking place. “The way to address rising food prices is…to open up agricultural markets and to free up the productive capacity of farmers…” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría… “Governments can also do more to foster growth and development in poor countries…”
Will, thank you. I will look into that the next time that I get to the library.
Lubna, I wrote you. Have you got anything?
U.N. Food & Agricultural Organization Summit, food prices
Various U.N. leaders are calling for economic measures to ease the food price crisis. An AP article at the Star Tribune says that “The U.N. chief [Ban Ki-Moon] is urging world leaders to ease price controls and other restrictions against agricultural trade…”. Another article says that another U.N. official has called on “[r]ich countries [to] dramatically ramp up their aid for agricultural development to curb rising food prices…” I am not so sure that such measures will provide much relief. The U.N. admits that these measures are temporary, but wouldn’t even that temporary relief likely be dampened by opportunistic prices raises by the corporations that market food? More thought definitely needs to be given to other ways of increasing access to food.
Senegalese President blames the FAO for the world’s food price crisis. The same article cites various scholars who opine that “…rich governments have undercut African farmers through costly agricultural subsidies at home.” This is something that I do not understand at all. I have no idea how subsidies help local farmers who receive them or why they are given. They serve as an incentive, but for what? European bans on genetically modified crops were also referred to as one of the sources of the crisis. I feel that such a claim is absurd. So Monsanto comes out with a GM crop that has a high yield. What good does that do to farmers who then have to buy seed from Monsanto for the rest of ever? Why ever on earth have any of us ever allowed ourselves to become the seed-purchasing slaves of corporations?? Why hasn’t more thought and more energy been spent on finding natural ways of increasing crop productivity? Some scholars feel that Africa needs more large-scale farms. Others disagree, pointing out the potential environmental damage of such farms.
I have to admit that I side with the disagree-ers there. Huge monoculture crops whose plants are foreign to the area in which they are grown are devastating the ecology in which they are raised. I was discussing this with my family today when the topic of inadequate rainfall came up. I asked whether there aren’t some plants that naturally require less water, and why we don’t plant them in the dry years. My family responded that we don’t know whether it will be a dry year until the crops have already been planted. Then I realised that if we switched from monoculture crops to multiculture crops, we would be able to plant some crops that could withstand dry spells more easily, as well as crops that need more water than others. Crops that failed could be used for something else, even turned over and allowed to return to the soil to enrich it; and successful crops could be used for food yields.
Our farmers raise huge monoculture crops in large fields; and so much of what they raise is not even intended to end up in our stomachs. Some of it is animal feed. It takes 7 pounds of feed to make one pound of ruminant meat and 2 pounds of feed to make one pound of poultry meat. Some of it will be biofuel. And only some of it will feed us. Such a system insults and angers me. Why can’t we people raise our food more sensibly??
Has anybody ever had their mind changed by an argument they participated in or read on a blog site?
Steve on quite a few occasions has made me see sides of my argument I didn’t think about before and caused me to alter my views.
Other members who have done the same:
Scott M
Will
ZK
VictorK and a few others.
More importantly though, an innumerable number of members have caused me to refine and re-think my positions and arguments. This atmosphere, is an EXCELLENT tool to make you question yourself, your beliefs, your values, and your ideas.
and dwight, thank you for the honors 🙂
i am sorry chloe for the problems and for ros, he should have a plan b for
the world have your say!
dennis
o.c.c.
syracuse, new york
lubna and my friends
i made it to college and had my first day of classes on monday, 2 june 2008!
dennis
o.c.c.
syracuse, new york
“Some scholars feel that Africa needs more large-scale farms. Others disagree, pointing out the potential environmental damage of such farms.”
Some scholars clearly have no idea what it is like to starve and worry about ‘environmental damage’. This is the same mentality the Europeans encouraged when Africa rejected GM food. Easy for them to say when they are not dying of hunger. I have rarely been more disgusted than when our ships had tons of food that Africa wanted to send back because it was GM. I am sorry but when people are literally dying maybe it is time to say….get over it? It is easy for us to pick and choose because of our lifestyle. In addition, we over here (US) eat it, no big deal. I feel the majority of opposition to GM foods stems from a lack of ignorance about genetics.
“This atmosphere, is an EXCELLENT tool to make you question yourself, your beliefs, your values, and your ideas.”
Could not agree more.
Dennis,
I hope you enjoyed your first day of classes. I remember mine fondly (even though it was a long time ago.)
Lubna,
I feel that anytime I spend time with someone who has a different perspective I come away changed. I love learning about different cultures and countries (and other parts of my own country). Sometimes I alter my opinion because of the time spent and sometimes I don’t but I always enjoy the time.
All the best to my WHYS family,
Amy in Beaverton
@ Brett, anyone
Don’t you think that this is only applicable to those who are on at least a level below you to some levels above in the thinking stakes?
I always find that if you try to debate something online with people who are, to say the very least, closed minded – you are on a typing marathon to nowhere. Much as in the real world but there for posterity. Having a hiccough of a bad day means that you will say (type) something that isn’t really your view – then you can come back to it and apologise – but we do see quite a few people who have multiple personalities and really do believe what they say – how do we distinguish, as the reader, between either of them?
I agree the internet is the best tool so far to break down borders between us – but it is those who flame that does put a spoiler into the whole thing.
And why are there so many flamers out there anyway – what is it that they want to really say?
Here’s a bit of a riddle on the day: celebrities often depart the planet in threes, on the same plane, with the dual meaning of the word plane: who are the most influential?
Buddy Holly, Big Bopper, Richie Valens all literally in the same plane. Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Janis Joplin all at the age of 27. I could also argue Stevie Ray Vaughn, Bill Grahm and Selena but that might get a little esoteric and Selena was a full 6 years after the other 2, they were heroes to their people let me just say that.
Currently Yves Saint Laurent and Bo Diddly based on this connection: both were revolutionary artists of their time, surpassing all others in their originality. Examples: Diddly literally made his trademark rectangular guitar, and Laurent invented Hillary Clinton’s pants! The third has to be Sydney Pollack for his groundbreaking style behind the camera. Shooting “Out of Africa” without even building a set practically.
But perhaps you see a different three that really exploded out of this world; if you could pick basically any 3 people with a connection like the ones above.
For Agostinho, who’d a thought it mon! Jamaica bears the Lightning Bolt.
Usain Bolt beats the world record running 100M in 9.72 whew! I’d like to see him on the football field next to Devon Hester in Chicago!
I did also want to mention for Dwight, if possibly you’re a baseball fan. Omar Vizquel, who propelled the Indians to the World Series in ’95, is out here now and he’s just played the game that put him into the records for most games played by at shortstop. The Giants gave him a real good ceremony that included another star of the Indians from that 95 dream team. There’s video on the Giants website but I really just wondered if you were much of a fan of the Indians and/or Omar – he’s a real cool dude. He plays music like crazy and some of it is really good. Being a musician and a drummer I admire a guy who can still keep the beat in the face of all that MLB smut. Omar plays a trap set and I play hand drums but still, I speak Spanish fluently, visited Venezuela when I was 3, played a lot of baseball, we’re kindred spirits!
Perhaps the farmers in Africa and other parts of the world have legitimate complaints. Some experts say that crop contamination from GM plants will wipe out plant diversity and affect food security. A 2002 report from the BBC mentioned the following: [W]ild varieties have become contaminated by laboratory developed plants… “There will also be a drastic reduction in the variety of corn strains in Mexico,” Boone Hallberg told me. Mr Hallberg, a…US educated botanist, has been working with Mexican corn growers for almost four decades. “Until now, when there’s been a virus in other parts of the world, people have been able to come here to find strains resistant to the virus,” he tells me as we walk through his organic corn fields. “GM contamination will change all that. The thousands of varieties here will be lost forever, threatening food security around the world.”
Other concerns with contamination are deformation of natural crops. 2003: More GM Contamination Discovered in Mexico (ETC Group) A study conducted by a coalition of North American civil society organizations finds that cornfields in nine Mexican states…are contaminated with genetically modified (GM) DNA. … Several plants in at least one of the contaminated fields are deformed. Baldemar Mendoza, an indigenous farmer from Oaxaca, [spoke] during a news conference. “The old people of the communities say they have never seen these kinds of deformities.”
And, of course, not every GM contamination results in edible food product.
2006: Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns announces that US commercial supplies of long-grain rice were inadvertently contaminated in 2005 with a genetically modified variety…developed by Bayer CropScience that has not been approved for human consumption. … Washington Post, 8/19/2006
2004: Study Finds US Crops ‘Pervasively’ Contaminated with Genetically Modified DNA
Mellon and Rissler
A study done by the Union of Concerned Scientists finds that traditional US varieties of corn, soybeans, and canola have become widely contaminated with low levels of transgenic genes. … [The study] suggests the possibility that genes not approved for consumption—such as those engineered to produce…plastics…—could…contaminat[e] food crops.
2002: Iowa Corn Contaminated with Genes from ‘Pharma-Crops’
Washington Post
The US Department of Agriculture orders ProdiGene to destroy 155 acres of corn that it believes have been contaminated with genes modified to produce medicine. The GM corn…has not been approved for consumption by humans or livestock…
Zak,
I also would love to see Bolt waiting to receive kick offs next to Devon Hester. Can you imagine the fits that would give a coach….who do you kick away from? My only question would be is can he throw? The Bears really need a QB!
Amy in Beaverton
No doubt Amy, what about Hester, Adrian Peterson of Minnesota, and Bolt in a footrace against defenders! PUT all 3 of those guys on a team and you DON’T NEED A QB!
Add Antonio Cromartie even without Bolt this will be the fastest NFL yet next season, so who do you really love anyway, most Oregonians don’t get much past the Ducks and the Beavers. A pretty wild experience was going to Cirque De Solei in the parking lot of the Giants stadium in SF and coming out for intermission to watch OSU in the Emerald Bowl on the jumbotron and from the portwalk on the bay you can see the stadium through big archway gates, they won too, it was a wild rainy night!
Zak,
Was the Cirque De Solei by any chance Corteo? It was here in March and my husband and I went. It was fantastic!
As for sports, I grew up in the Chicago area, so my teams are the Cubs, Bears and Bulls. I went to college in Los Angeles so I my college team is USC. Up here, other than the Beavers, Trail Blazers and Ducks, the Seahawks and Mariners are what people follow.
Our house follows football closely (even our 4 & 8 year old girls) so we can’t wait for the season to start. It will be interesting to see what happens in Chicago with the QB situation. I have never been a Grossman fan but will always stay true to my Bears. I even got a personal letter from Virginia McCaskey when I was in high school. I wrote an essay on a collage application about how the 1985 Bears would be excellent goodwill ambassadors. I had quite the imagination.
Signing off for the night. Sorry for indulging in my football talk. Have a great morning/afternoon/night!
Amy
Perhaps, amongst other prereqs for the next night editor, WHYS; might you please assign someone at least in the Pacific timezone in America. Again no disrespect but it’s late on a school night for our 3 boys on the East Coast, like right now they can barely see this scrawl out of a quarter of one eye while I still have at least one whole eye left. I’d be happy to defer to the lady North first, Amy, might be better suited to moderate as my weeknights are fairly unpredictable, sometimes I work pretty late.
Of course anybody on your side of the pond would be even better; but I do think we in the Pacific timezone have an advantage for moderation in America. Or, maybe I’m just another one of those gloating, smug, Californian revelers, but either way I get to stay up later on school nights.
Cirque De Solei: Kooza. It was similarly fantastic and anybody who gets a chance should see it. What made it especially fun was riding the ferry with all these jazzed Beaver fans, as you would know Amy, they don’t call it Beaverton for nothing! And Maryland wasn’t very well represented so it was worth that I got to the show a half hour late! I can’t say I’ve ever seen more people in China Basin SF than that night, it was truly magical.
Meetings to resolve the food “crisis” are a bit like the blind men analyzing the elephant.
In our increasingly globalized, specialized and interdependent world, balancing and rationalizing needs and production exceeds the human capacity of statemen/politicians.
We need, and quickly, econometric models of national and the global economies.
We know how to do this. The questions involve how much it will cost, who will do it, and who will coordinate it.
A program with a skilled interviewer might get some experts in and sound them out.
Then, ask MIT and Bill Gates!
In effect, the industrial revolution converted fossil fuel into people. People need to eat, and both production and distribution of food have become global, and thus highly sensitive to energy supply. Many formerly agrarian peoples have lost their ability to feed themselves. Curiously here, I’m not speaking of the poor starving lot in under-developed countries, it is people in major cities that are farthest from the source of their victuals. We are just now reaching the top of the first hill (Hubbert’s Peak) on the roller coaster. If our food production does not become much less global as well as much more energy efficient (less dependant upon fossil energy), many (millions) will die as we start our “interesting” trip down the hill. The current food supply problems are in fact fairly trivial. No agricultural issues bar its solution, only political ones. I hate even to think this: If we’re currently having trouble with this first little problem, how are we to cope with the big ones to come?
g
Just read this story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7434193.stm
What is inciting racial hatred and how is what she said possibly doing so?
1.) Comment is on a religion
2.) She is not calling for anyone to do anything merely commenting on something that is actually happening
Shirley, I wish your BBC article had stated what gene exactly they found ‘contaminated’ the natural corn. I also, unfortunately, could not open your other links (404 errors). I just do not see what the big deal is with GM. The only things I think should be avoided:
1.) ONLY plant genetic should be used (no animal genes in particular, except for pure science research and those plants should be immediately destroyed upon completion of experiment)
2.) Check any new proteins (new gene products) introduced by splicing for allergies
3.) No antibiotic resistance genes as markers
If the genes introduced are safe elsewhere they will be safe in the other plant, you are simply taking a gene from one source of plant to another. Theoretically, many of these modifications could come about naturally it would simply take much more time. Do you guys have a solid genetics understanding? I still do not really get the anti-GM stance. Environmental contamination should play second fiddle to people dying of starvation, at least in my mind. If, for example, you are in a drought hit area of Africa with famine spreading, why would you refuse drought resistant GM crops which could save many people? I guess I also do not understand how, if these plants do not reproduce (as I have seen many claim, hence the idea that they would be dependent on companies like Monsanto) how they can contaminate anything.
Tino, the bottom line is that in the case of Mexico and other similar situations, it’s their food; and if they don’t want their food to be tainted with certain genes that have been produced in labs, then why not leave them at their will?
@ GM restrictions
-There is some serious confusion in the remark between so-called “terminator” GM strains (apparently still in development) and all the other GM strains. At this point, GM is generally “forever”.
-Testing for allergies is being done: on us all, in vivo. Just as Microsoft does with Windows, the product released to the public is the last and largest round of Beta testing.
GM is not necessary to get enough food to feed us all, but local food-growing practices do need to be upgraded where yields can be much improved even without petroleum based farming.
It was leapt into by people with a reductionistic technical mindframe (any soybean is as nutritious as any other soybean, milk is the same nutritionally as yogurt ).
@ globalization & food shortages
The 100 year anomaly of low energy prices due to the consumption of our petroleum supplies has distorted all agricultural functions far more than a few trade rules. We are bumping up against peak production, and in the near future against peak oil, and maybe against low-carbon rules somewhere in there as well. We do need to preserve and support local agricultural collective memory in the form of skilled practitioners in every locale, because in 10 or 20 years we may have to be eating mostly locally grown food.
“-Testing for allergies is being done: on us all, in vivo. Just as Microsoft does with Windows, the product released to the public is the last and largest round of Beta testing.”
Click to access allergiesGMfoods.pdf
Read it and increase understanding. They are not testing on humans and quite frankly the notion is ridiculous. Specifically read the part where Bt proteins spliced into the plant are sprayed on organic food right now. What is the big deal? As it says, 1-3 genes (thus ~1-3 proteins) are introduced. Especially for things like drought resistance and flooding (they made a rice strain that can survive for 2 weeks under water, that is of HUGE significance: http://www.scidev.net/en/news/scientists-create-floodresistant-rice.html) For the rice plant, we are talking one gene which ALREADY EXISTS IN OTHER STRAINS: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v442/n7103/full/nature04920.html
They simply splice it into others and that is the sole change. Please explain to me what the problem is, at least with this particular one which will save an estimated $1 billion dollars worth of rice which obviously feeds a lot of people. (I can grant you being against some GM foods, but the anti-people invariably are against everything GM for no good reason). If the artical stub is too technical I will gladly explain anything to you.
“Tino, the bottom line is that in the case of Mexico and other similar situations, it’s their food; and if they don’t want their food to be tainted with certain genes that have been produced in labs, then why not leave them at their will?”
I completely agree that places with the luxury of choice should be allowed to exercise that power. I disagree with the people who try to push their views onto others who are starving to death. Do you really think people in Africa would have turned back GM food if it wasn’t for the European mindset? Once again, people literally died because of that view – born of the luxury of choice.
artical = article
Would like to point out it is theoretically possible to create that rice plant through artifical selection. It is simply much easier and faster to do it through biotech (also, it can be transferred to strains that naturally produce higher yields which is of obvious benefit, the nature article indicates that the plant – as it should since only 1 gene changes – retains all of its previous characteristics).