Pre-Condition for Pandemics: World Food Production and Nutrition Levels Collapsing

June 25, 2009 (LPAC) — The world picture of declining food production, chaos in farming, and a new Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) projection of an historic level of 1.02 billion people now going hungry every day, constitutes preconditions for killer pandemics. On a world scale, the absolute volume of staples is either decreasing outright, or barely increasing in 2009 over 2008. For example, wheat. June is the wheat harvest month in the Northern Hemisphere ("Winter" wheat is planted in the Fall), and current estimates are that that the total world wheat harvest for 2009 (both hemispheres) will be in the range of 656 million metric tons, a drop of 29 million from the 2008 crop of 685 mmt.

On June 19, the FAO issued a release titled, "1.02 Billion People Hungry; One Sixth of Humanity Undernourished—More Than Ever Before."

At the center of this food production and nutrition collapse, is the toleration of the practices and thinking of the World Trade Organization. Its premise is that there can be no national sovereignty, and that global "market forces" — the Empire — must prevail, which means even to the point of death. Across the board — from patent rights to food seeds and license-rights to flu vaccines and medicine — the WTO strictures demand life-and-death submission to select cartels and financial powers. "Kill the WTO!" was the call from Lyndon LaRouche a year ago. Now the influenza pandemic makes taking his advice an immediate live-or-die issue.

1.02 Billion People Hungry

The FAO June 19 release stated, "Almost all of the world's undernourished live in developing countries. In Asia and the Pacific, an estimated 642 million people are suffering from chronic hunger; in Sub-Saharan Africa, 265 million; in Latin America and the Caribbean, 53 million; in the near East and North Africa, 42 million; and in developed countries, 15 million in total."

The full FAO report will not be out until October, when its State of Food Insecurity in the World yearly estimate is published, but the agency issued warnings last week, given the scale of the crisis in which the number of hungry (fewer than 1800 calories a day), is increasing at what is an 11% rise this year over 2008.

What's required, is a doubling of wheat production, and of all other staple foods — as put forward in an international mobilization last year this time, led by Helga Zepp LaRouche. But this objective, plus the necessity for a new world production-credit system and other nation-serving measures, are being thwarted by the continued maneuvers of the neo-British Empire financial circles, whose globalism is serving the purpose of furthering malnutrition and disease, in order to impose "population reduction"; that is, genocide. These interests blocked action in 2008 at the FAO June Food Summit in Rome, at the July U.N. Food Task Force meeting, and at every other such venue since.

Now chaos is spreading throughout farming regions and in food supply chains the world over, as "normal" food supply markets have collapsed, and it has become each-against-all. In Africa and parts of Asia, neo-colonial food-export plantations are being set up by Persian Gulf oil kingdoms, British commercial outfits, and other countries, seeking to line up a food supply while the world goes to hell.

Food speculation is even wilder than ever. The Chicago Board of Trade this week reported that wheat futures contracts are completely "oversold." Yesterday, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Investigations issued a 250-page report advising that "limits" must be set on food commodity speculation. But so far, no action.

Grains are not the only crisis staple. World milk production is in turmoil, with capacity being cut from Europe to New Zealand, as farm operations face low prices, but high input costs to maintain their milking herds. The world's largest milk exporting company, Fonterra Cooperative Group, Ltd., is paying New Zealand farmers 12% less for their milk as of May 31, than a year before. U.S. milk production in June is up a marginal 0.1% year on year. In Europe last week, a 500-rig tractorcade hit Brussels to protest the dairy farming decimation.

In Argentina, the head of the National Dairy Farmers Association warned that by the end of 2009, the nation may have to import milk. Dairy farmers are slaughtering their cows, some of them pregnant, to be sold as beef. Last year, milk production dropped from 27 million liters to 25 million. Drought was a factor, but the financial crash is the crisis. The national cattle inventory has been declining since 2006. It was then in the range of 55.4 million head, but by 2010, the estimate is that it will be 47.9 million or below. It is a real threat that Argentina—the legendary land of steak, will be unable to supply itself with beef by 2010.