PROGRESO WEEKLY
May 15 - 21, 2008
The alimentary crisis and Latin America
http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=464&Itemid=1
A real crisis or a conspiracy?
By Eduardo Dimas
Read Spanish Version
'Control the oil and you'll control the nations; control the food and you'll
control the people.' -- Henry Kissinger (1970)
I've known that phrase from Kissinger for a good many years. I confess that
until now I had not given it much importance. It is an absolute truth,
almost an axiom, that could become a terrible reality.
The alimentary crisis is real. The price of foodstuffs climbs and climbs.
The reserves drop. The same happens with oil, which places many nations and
peoples who do not produce food or oil in a desperate situation. Is this the
result of a set of random events that coincide in time, or is it the effect
of a plan for world domination?
If we guide ourselves by Kissinger's words, it seems to be the latter rather
than the former. And that leads us to ask ourselves other questions. Was the
idea of increasing the production of ethanol (launched by George W. Bush in
March 2007) by utilizing the basic grains for the feeding of humans and
animals also a coincidence?
It is well known that in order to produce one liter of alcohol for use in
car engines, 1.2 liters of fuel oil must be sacrificed. In other words, more
fuel than the fuel produced. In addition to the fact that ethanol has become
good business for the Bush family, Bush's acolytes, and the oligarchies of
several countries, isn't this a way to provoke a greater shortage of food?
Is it by happenstance that the big corporations that trade in food and many
investors are speculating with the price of grains, knowing that speculation
can lead to the deaths of millions of human beings? According to the United
Nations, every five seconds a child dies of hunger or the diseases that
accompany hunger.
Was it pure coincidence that the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the
World Bank (WB) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) promoted in the
so-called Third World the production of food for export, instead of
guaranteeing the production of crops that might guarantee food to the people
who grow them? In that way, they left the poorest nations at the mercy of
world-market prices.
At present, 78 nations in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean have
a deficit in their basic food baskets, as a result of the high prices of
food and the abandonment of traditional crops.
In 37 of those nations, the situation is particularly difficult. Already
there have been demonstrations and the looting of grocery stores and
supermarkets. Also repression and death. Lest you've forgotten, hunger is
the worst counselor.
Some countries have rationed rice; others, corn and wheat. The big Asian
producers of rice, such as Thailand and Vietnam, have reduced their exports
to guarantee domestic consumption. About 43 percent of the production of
corn is used for the feeding of animals. Experts say that about 20 percent
of the world's harvest of corn will be used for the production of ethanol.
What's left for human beings?
Is all this fortuitous or the result of a plan to dominate nations through
hunger? Rice is the basic food for 3 billion people. Corn is a staple for
about 600 million people. Wheat, for hundreds of millions. In Peru, the Army
is making potato bread to try to reduce the demand for wheat among the
population.
In Haiti, a mixture of mud, salt and vegetable oil is the basic food of
hundreds of thousands of people. The mud is not free. It costs 5 cents a
biscuit, and causes abdominal pain and carries parasites and other diseases.
Haiti, one of the world's poorest countries, produced almost all the rice it
needed before the neoliberal rules of the IMF and the WB were forced upon
it. Every year, it requires 400,000 tons. It produces barely 40,000; the
rest has to be imported. At the current prices, it is no wonder that its
people have to eat mud biscuits.
The big producers of food, such as the United States and the European Union,
along with Lula's Brazil, say the shortage of grain is caused by an increase
in consumption in China, India and other Asian countries. No doubt, that can
cause a slight increase in the prices. If that's so, why use grains for the
production of ethanol? It is food, and it's denied to millions of human
beings.
It is true that the prices of crude oil also affect the cost of production
and transportation of foodstuffs. But who is to blame for the fact that the
instability of the markets -- derived from the situation in Iraq, the
threats to Venezuela, and a possible attack on Iran -- leads to speculation?
What country with less than 5 percent of the world's population daily
consumes about 25 percent of the crude oil produced in the world?
Should Iran be attacked, the price of crude oil could rise to US$200 a
barrel, an unsustainable price even for the most developed economies. A true
tragedy for the poor countries. Some countries, such as the Dominican
Republic, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, are already experiencing
serious difficulties with fuel and food, despite the unselfish aid provided
by the government of Venezuela.
The recent Alimentary Summit held in Managua, summoned by the governments of
the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) and attended by
representatives of 12 countries, including some presidents, was aimed at
uniting the efforts to confront the alimentary crisis that beset mankind.
For most of the attendees, the essence of the alimentary crisis lies in the
unequal distribution of wealth worldwide and, above all, on the neoliberal
economic model imposed by some developed countries upon the rest of the
world in the past 20 years.
Of course, not everyone agreed. President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica
distanced himself from the document, because he's a devotee of "free trade."
Mexico and El Salvador also distanced themselves from a set of proposals
made by the Venezuelan delegation that ended up in an addendum to the Final
Declaration.
Among the Venezuelan proposals was the idea of creating a bank of
agricultural products that would reduce the costs of small and mid-size
producers, and to assign $100 million through the Bank of ALBA to finance
agricultural projects. Also, to create a plan within PetroCaribe to finance
the production of foodstuffs.
So far, awareness has been raised about the gravity of the alimentary
situation and the urgent measures that need to be taken to keep food from
becoming a weapon of war, at least in Latin America. In fact, food already
is a weapon in many parts of the world.
In any case, beware the great corporations that produce and trade in food.
Beware the corporations that produce transgenic seeds, which are imposing
their products throughout the world, to the detriment of natural varieties.
They are already present in many countries in Latin America and the
Caribbean.
Transgenic seeds make the farmer totally dependent on the transnational
corporation that produces them; every year, he must buy the seeds, the
fertilizers and the insecticides. In India, 150,000 cotton farmers have
committed suicide because they could not pay their debts to those
transnationals.
The transnationals are in charge of dominating the food supply and, by
extension, the people, as Henry Kissinger proposed. In a secret document
called National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200), Kissinger drew a
plan of action for the world's population, aiming to control it and reduce
it by hundreds of millions of people by using foodstuffs.
Kissinger wanted to reorganize the worldwide market of food, to destroy
family farms and replace them with large haciendas and factories directed by
the farm transnationals. Something like that has been happening since the
early 1990s in Mexico and other Latin American countries. Don't you think
it's time to take steps to stop it? I leave the answer to you.
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