La vache

"“You know, in Uganda, we have to look for survival of the fittest,” Mugira said once he finished sorting out the confusion. “These ones, they are the fittest,” he went on to say, gesturing toward his Holsteins. In physical terms, there was really no contest between the tough Ankoles and the fussy foreign cattle, which were always hungry and often sick. But the foreigners possessed arguably the single most important adaptive trait for livestock: they made money. Holsteins are lactating behemoths. In an African setting, a good one can produce 20 or 30 times as much milk as an Ankole.

The Food and Agriculture Organization, an agency of the United Nations, recently reported that at least 20 percent of the world’s estimated 7,600 livestock breeds are in danger of extinction. Experts are warning of a potential “meltdown” in global genetic diversity. Yet the plight of the Ankole illustrates the difficulty of balancing the conflicting goals of animal conservation and human prosperity. An estimated 70 percent of the world’s rural poor, some 630 million people, derive a substantial percentage of their income from livestock. Increase the productivity of these animals, development specialists say, and you improve dire living standards. The World Bank recently published a report saying it was time to place farming “afresh at the center of the development agenda.” Highly productive livestock breeds, the World Bank asserts, are playing an important role in alleviating poverty.

“You do have local animals with various kinds of disease resistance and whatever other kinds of things you don’t want to do away with,” said Chris Delgado, an agriculture policy adviser at the World Bank. “But there’s a problem: They are kept by very poor people, and they don’t want to stay poor.”"

This is a fascinating (long) article, (thanks Leila). There is a similar situation unfolding everywhere in the world, and in Lebanon, most of the cows are now Holstein. The local (baladi) cows have all but disappeared. Problem with the Holstein, here as in Uganda, is that they need lots of care and food and water. Small farmers cannot aways afford to feed them as they should, and sometimes do not give them enough to drink. This reduces productivity of the Holstein, and they become a wasted investment. However, when cared for, they produce very well. I wonder what the situation is like now with the price of feed having gone up more than the price of milk (because once again of monospsony, the presence of only a few large buyers who can dictate the price). Is it still worth having improved breeds or has the old baladi variety become more economically efficient? Are there still any baladi cows around?

From dirt to dirt

"It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau.

The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.

Food prices around the world have spiked because of higher oil prices, needed for fertilizer, irrigation and transportation. Prices for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat are also up sharply, and the increasing global demand for biofuels is pressuring food markets as well.

The problem is particularly dire in the Caribbean, where island nations depend on imports and food prices are up 40 percent in places." (Thanks D. and Leila)

This is the article referred to in the next post down (the previous post chronologically). Lebanon and the Caribbean have this in common: Great inequality and a near total dependence on food exports, no productive sector and tourism in all its versions. The Lebanese are not yet eating dirt, except political dirt. But things will certainly deteriorate if drastic measures are not taken, as food and fuel prices will only rise. Last Sunday's riots against electricity cuts were triggered by long power cuts in some of the poorest areas of Beirut, and they left 7 dead and tens of wounded. Of course, there are political dimensions to the protest, inequality is a political issue, and it will be taken up by the opposition to put pressure on the government. This should give enough incentive to the government to start acting. In fact, and to my great surprise, the Minister of Economy and Trade, Sami Haddad de la tete de qui je me paye tout le temps, seems to have gotten the message. This article in Al Akhbar reports of an investigation (by the Ministry) that uncovered the dirty game of the flour mills cartel, who had submitted an inflated list of bakeries who should benefit from the subsidies on flour, some of which are closed, while others make cakes and not Arabic bread (the only subsidized bread). Apparently the Ministry will now subsidize the bakeries directly without going through the mills. That's a step in the right direction, but I have a small question that may seem irrelevant: Those people who have presented fake lists and who have swindled the state and stolen tens of millions of $, will they be taken to court? I know I shouldn't expect too much, but after all, its my money they have stolen.

Good blog and poem

My friend Leila keeps sending me links to this very good blog but I haven't posted any yet. Here's a nice post reflecting on the the connection between first-world behavior and the starving, dirt-eating Haitians (as Leila put it). But what caught my attention is this poem by Jacques Prevert posted in the comments section by sentientbeing23. I used to love this poem in French, and this translation is excellent.

LATE RISING by Jaques Prevert

Terrible
is the soft sound of a hardboiled egg
cracking on a zinc counter
and terrible is that sound
when it moves in the memory
of a man who is hungry
Terrible also is the head of a man
the head of a man hungry
when he looks at six o'clock in the morning
in a smart shop window and sees
a head the color of dust
But it is not his head he sees
in the window of 'Chez Potin'
he doesn't give a damn
for the head of a man
he doesn't think at all
he dreams
imagining another head
calf's-head for instance
with vinegar sauce
head of anything edible
and slowly he moves his jaws
slowly slowly
grinds his teeth for the world
stands him on his head
without giving him any comeback
so he counts on his fingers one two three
one two three
that makes three days he has been empty
and it's stupid to go on saying It can't
go on It can't go on because
it does
Three days
three nights
without eating
and behind those windows
paté de fois gras wine preserves
dead fish protected by their boxes
boxes in turn protected by windows
these in turn watched by the police
police protected in turn by fear
How many guards for six sardines . . .
Then he comes to the lunch counter
coffee-with-cream buttered toast
and he begins to flounder
and in the middle of his head
blizzard of words
muddle of words
sardines fed
hardboiled eggs coffee-with-cream
coffee black rum food
coffee-with-cream
coffee-with-cream
coffee crime black blood
A respectable man in his own neighborhood
had his throat cut in broad daylight
the dastardly assassin stole from him
two bits that is to say
exactly the price of a black coffee
two slices of buttered toast
an a nickel left to tip the waiter
Terrible
is the soft sound of a hardboiled egg
cracking on a zinc counter
and terrible is that sound when it moves
in the memory
of a man who is hungry.

Meat guzzlers

"The two commodities share a great deal: Like oil, meat is subsidized by the federal government. Like oil, meat is subject to accelerating demand as nations become wealthier, and this, in turn, sends prices higher. Finally — like oil — meat is something people are encouraged to consume less of, as the toll exacted by industrial production increases, and becomes increasingly visible." (Thanks Leila)

Creative capitalism

"In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the software tycoon plans to call for a "creative capitalism" that uses market forces to address poor-country needs that he feels are being ignored.

Mr. Gates isn't abandoning his belief in capitalism as the best economic system. But in an interview with the Journal last week at his Microsoft office in Redmond, Wash., Mr. Gates said that he has grown impatient with the shortcomings of capitalism. He said he has seen those failings first-hand on trips for Microsoft to places like the South African slum of Soweto, and discussed them with dozens of experts on disease and poverty. He has voraciously read about those failings in books that propose new approaches to narrowing the gap between rich and poor.

In particular, he said, he's troubled that advances in technology, health care and education tend to help the rich and bypass the poor. "The rate of improvement for the third that is better off is pretty rapid," he said. "The part that's unsatisfactory is for the bottom third -- two billion of six billion." (Thanks Fawaz)

More from Gates at Davos. Epiphanies.

Radical realignment

"The system was so successful that people came to believe in what former US president Ronald Reagan called the magic of the marketplace and I call market fundamentalism. Fundamentalists believe that markets tend towards equilibrium and the common interest is best served by allowing participants to pursue their self-interest. It is an obvious misconception, because it was the intervention of the authorities that prevented financial markets from breaking down, not the markets themselves. Nevertheless, market fundamentalism emerged as the dominant ideology in the 1980s, when financial markets started to become globalised and the US started to run a current account deficit.

Although a recession in the developed world is now more or less inevitable, China, India and some of the oil-producing countries are in a very strong countertrend. So, the current financial crisis is less likely to cause a global recession than a radical realignment of the global economy, with a relative decline of the US and the rise of China and other countries in the developing world.

The danger is that the resulting political tensions, including US protectionism, may disrupt the global economy and plunge the world into recession or worse."

From an article by G. Soros in the FT. (Thanks Fawaz)

Seeds for solidarity

http://palestinesolidarityproject.org/seed/

SEED Project

SEED (Sustainable Environmental and Economic Development) is a project focusing on developing environmentally-sustainable perma-culture projects in

Palestine as a way for Palestinian activists to provide themselves with food and income.

How It Works:

Our pilot project is a greenhouse in Beit Ommar. Palestinian, Israeli, and International activists are building a greenhouse to grow organic fruits and vegetables that will be maintained by Palestinian PSP activists as a way to provide their families with income so that they may continue to be engage in their non-violent resistance to Israeli Occupation. Israeli environmental activists are joining the Palestinians and sharing information about water preservation and greenhouse design.

We want a new, creative, and sustainable way for the many full-time activists to be able to both provide for their families and continue their activist work. We recognize that many Palestinians are unable to be full-time organizers and activists because they need to focus on getting jobs. We want a way for us to work together to generate food and income as an integral aspect of PSP.

Our goal is to develop expertise in building greenhouses and other permaculture projects that focus on bio-remediation and water-preservation within Palestinian communities so that SEED will be developed in other areas of Palestine.

International volunteers are welcome!!!

Throughout the year, but particularly this summer, international volunteers will join Palestinian activists in the first ‘harvest’! We will have information sessions on sustainable permaculture and greenhouses particular to this environment and, more importantly, will be giving internationals the opportunity to work side by side with Palestinian farmers.

Housing for the duration of your stay in Beit Ommar is free. Please contact us for more information.

Support this Project

If you would like to support this important project, please consider donating to the Palestine Solidarity Project by visiting our donations page.

This was send to me by Marcy so I am assuming it is a politically clean project.

Bad Samaritans

"Bad Samaritans

By Ha-Joon Chang

Bloomsbury Press, 288 pages

His new book is a discursive, well-written account of what he calls the “Bad Samaritans,” “people in the rich countries who preach free markets and free trade to the poor countries in order to capture larger shares of the latter’s markets and preempt the emergence of possible competitors. They are saying ‘do as we say, not as we did’ and act as Bad Samaritans, taking advantage of others who are in trouble.” “Bad Samaritans” is intended for a literate audience of generalists and eschews the sort of exotica that peppers most economic writing these days—there is not a single simultaneous equation in the book and many of Chang’s examples are taken from his own experiences as a South Korean born in 1963.

Ha-Joon Chang’s life is conterminous with his country’s advance from being one of the poorest on Earth—with a 1961 yearly income of $82 per person, less than half the $179 per capital income in Ghana at that time—to the manufacturing powerhouse of today, with a 2004 per capita income of $13,980. South Korea did not get there by following the advice of the Bad Samaritans. Chang’s prologue contains a wonderful account of how post-Korean War trade restrictions and governmental supervision fostered such projects as POSCO (Pohang Iron and Steel Co.), which began life as a state-owned enterprise that was refused support from the World Bank in a country without any iron ore or coking coal and with a prohibition on trade with China. Now privatized, POSCO is the world’s third largest steel company. This was also the period in which Samsung subsidized its infant electronics subsidiaries for over a decade with money made in textiles and sugar refining. Today Samsung dominates flat-panel TVs and cell phones in much of East Asia and the world. "

Please read the (long) review. Another one by dear Kirsten. Very pertinent to the next post... Looks like a great book.

Concerns over food and trade and miles

"The concern over carbon emissions is legitimate. But the "food miles" (or "air-miles") argument has three flaws. First, the total carbon emissions associated with the import of organic foods is very small - even tiny - so a halt to certification would have almost zero practical effect.

Second, local transport (especially on European roads) is a major source of carbon emissions, in addition to the costs of congestion and accidents; this includes the vehicles of shoppers (including consumers of organic foods). The combined effect here far outstrips the airfreight emissions of - for example - beans from Kenyan farmers tightly packed into the hold of a plane.

Third, the estimate of carbon emissions should take into account the entire production chain. It may be intuitive to think that distance travelled is an indicator for environmental damage, but other indicators must be factored in to an analysis: the lower-energy intensity of production in the tropics and southern hemisphere, for example. "

Sent to me by dear Kirsten, this article raises an important issue, albeit incompletely. I have discussed this same issue in an earlier post, and I will just pose the problem again, because I still do not have a satisfactory answer: Is carbon cost the only reason why we should question export-oriented farming, even if it is organic? How about the fact that export favors large investors who create monopolies. Even in the case of small farmers, the fact that middle men are needed for export and for all the associated bureaucratic complications favors monopsonies. All of these reduce the profits of farmers and tends to make them more like wage laborers on their own lands. Moreover, there is another issue: the invisible hand of the market. Organic food, made to satisfy the delicate taste buds and immune systems of the people of the North is often out of the reach of the people of the South who grow it. They end up eating the worst, unclean and unhealthy polluted and contaminated produce they cannot sell abroad, while they export the best of the land to Europe. This is an aberration and a terrible one, but it is intrinsic to free trade and free markets. This is the case in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia where organic production is a capital intensive operation and where produce is packed and inspected and flown from the farm without reaching the local markets. I raised this objection with some French people in a recent seminar about farming and trade, and their answer was that if the prices obtained from selling abroad are better, then producers (traders in reality) would sell abroad. This is of course perfectly true, but it does not take into account that "abroad" is also where there are organized markets, where there is a good financial infrastructure, where there are better year-round prices for such products; and most importantly, it is where people are richer. This means that Europeans, who have higher purchasing power and a more organized market structure compete for African food with Africans who have a low purchasing power and weak commercial structures. No wonder the traders would rather sell to the Europeans, leaving the worst for the locals. Sometimes this unfair competition for food is called "Fair Trade".

But I really like San Francisco in the fall

"Ian Roberts and Fiona Godlee published an editorial in the British Medical Journal on the "carbon footprint of medical conferences." They determined that flights destined for the annual conferences of the European Respiratory Society and the American Thoracic Society put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than do 110,000 Chadians or 11,000 Indians in an entire year. The problem does not end with medical researchers. Scholars of all stripes travel to meet, greet, and, in one of our more ironic roles, preach the gospel of sustainability." (Thanks D.)

Cola

"There is good evidence that cola beverages can increase the risk of kidney problems, more so than noncola sodas."

I have blogged about cola beverages earlier. I recently heard a talk by my dear friend Martine Padilla a nutritionist and food economist, about the change in diets around the Mediterranean. Obesity is on the rise everywhere, but more so in poor countries (Egypt came first) and affecting poor people more than the rich, as the rich are more aware of nutritional issues and can afford the higher price tag of "healthier" food. In the Northern Mediterranean countries (France, Italy, Greece, Spain) diets are becoming increasingly Anglo-Saxon with more meat and more animal fats. In the countries of the southern Mediterranean (North Africa), cereals are still the main source of calories, but these countries are experiencing a tremendous surge in the consumption of sugar in foods but mostly in drinks. Martine gave the example of people who now drink cola beverages instead of the traditional drinks to accompany couscous. In Lebanon, people drink cola with everything, and in Ramadan, many muslim break the fast with cola and the traditional licorice root juice (sous) has almost disappeared. Cola with manoucheh, with shawarma, with most street foods, in extra large bottles.

Sssshushi- dont tell

"“No one should eat a meal of tuna with mercury levels like those found in the restaurant samples more than about once every three weeks," said Dr. Michael Gochfeld, professor of environmental and occupational medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Piscataway, N.J."

Il les Gate

"At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr. Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, intends to announce $306 million in grants that aim to provide the rural poor with better seeds, healthier soil and access to new markets for their crops, the foundation said Thursday. Three-quarters of the world’s poorest people live in the countryside. The grants to be announced Friday by the foundation will bring its total for agriculture to $660 million, and it says it will increase the total to $900 million by next year.

Rather than see the benefits of projects captured by better-off farmers, as in some past projects, the nonprofit groups receiving Gates foundation grants will focus on poor women because studies have found that they are more likely to use gains in income to educate their children and improve their families’ well-being.

Instead of counting on free markets to generate opportunities spontaneously, the nonprofit groups managing some of the grants will intervene to help farmers form groups to sell goods in bulk and provide them with access to the agronomic advice, processing facilities and transportation they need to take advantage of growing markets for products like milk and coffee." (Thanks Anna and D.)

Not counting on the free market... a first in development work

Badael-Alternatives

Today's issue of Badael-Alternatives in Al-Akhbar: My editorial on "Competitive advantage", an article I have compiled on the increase in world food prices and how this can be an opportunity for some developing countries. Marianna Yazbeck writes two articles this week: one on wild plant salads of this season, and the other on capers, and Rana Hayek on Aspartame. Check the nice caricature by Makhlouf from Egypt, a newcomer to our team.

Inverted quarantine

"After some reflection, I decided to call this kind of response to environmental awareness "inverted quarantine." In traditional quarantine, infected individuals are confined, separated from the rest of the community, which is still healthy. But here, in the case of bottled water, organic foods, etc., the dyadic opposition at the heart of the logic of traditional quarantine — diseased individual/healthy community — is inverted. The dyadic opposition is now: diseased conditions/healthy individuals. The environment is toxic, illness inducing. The threat is not discrete, is not just here or there, not just these persons and not others, so it's not possible to separate off the threat, to contain it, quarantine it. Danger is everywhere. How are healthy individuals to protect themselves? They can do so only by isolating themselves from their disease-inducing surroundings, by erecting some sort of barrier or enclosure and withdrawing behind it or inside it. Hence, inverted quarantine.

Billions of gallons of bottled water; water filters in millions of homes; organic-food consumption growing 20 percent a year; organic food on sale at Wal-Mart. The inverted-quarantine response to toxics in our environment is now a mainstream, mass phenomenon.

Just because something is a mass phenomenon, though, doesn't mean it is important or warrants concern. So what if we see individualistic, consumeristic behavior in response to environmental threat? Isn't that just what we would expect in a culture that emphasizes individual responsibility and equates consumption with the good life?

Here is why we should be concerned, in fact alarmed: Inverted-quarantine products do not work nearly well enough to actually protect those who put their faith in them. But consumers believe they work. That belief, in turn, tends to decrease our collective will to truly confront serious environmental issues." (Thanks D)

Very interesting article by Andrew Szsaz in the CHE. To read all

Long update from Gaza

Agricultural Development Association (PARC)-Gaza

P.O. Box; 225
Tel: +972 (or 970) 8 2805042
Fax: + 972 (or 970) 8 2805039
adming@palnet.com, www.pal-arc.org

No Chance for a Smile in Gaza!

The Agricultural Situation is a Mess.

January.2008

Throughout modern history, agriculture was a main source of living and income for a large segment of the people of Gaza Strip. It represents a major economic activity in Gaza. Citrus fruits, olives, almond, vegetables, strawberries and flowers and field crops are common there. However, nowadays, the agricultural sector encounters many destructive factors and other problems that lead to it to diminish, deteriorate and collapse. For instance, due to the large increase in population there has been an on-going construction of buildings on the agricultural land, a matter which decreases the farming areas in Gaza Strip. Then, add to this, the Israeli military activities in the green fields in the same area. Moreover, there is the reality that the buffer zone was a strip of land of more or less than 300 meters that runs around the Gaza Strip border with Israel. Nowadays, this buffer zone land strip has been widened -- by the Israeli army -- into area that ranges between 1000-1500 meters. This area constitutes almost 30% of the arable land and water resources. Landowners and farmers of those arable lands cannot, by any means, reach their lands. Thus, they lost the advantage of cultivating it or raising any productive animals on it, while there is a dire need for more agricultural lands. Their land's size is unstable and their water resources used are not safe.

With a population of 1500000 citizens in Gaza Strip, there is a total of around 70000 farmers including 30000 farm workers and laborers. There is 80% of the population under poverty line; they live with international aid from UNRWA and other international & local NGOs. Unemployment rate has reached to 35%. It is also true that 40% of the population have totally lost their financial incomes, 50% lost half of their financial incomes, and that 35% of the population suffer from malnutrition and anemia. The direct and indirect losses in the agricultural sector in Gaza amount to one million dollars per day.

Recently, the agricultural sector in the Gaza Strip (An area of approximately 175000 dunums) received tough blows and inflected wide scale damages in all its parts; it was no wonder that there was no exception for the farming areas. It was obvious that there was a deliberate policy to demolish the infrastructure of the agricultural sector in a way that was hard for the poor farmers to recover their business and rehabilitate their farms and greenhouses (Approximately 50000 dunums have been totally damaged). In addition to those losses, the inconsiderate results of the military land incursions inflected heavy losses upon the small scale and marginalized and poor farmers; sadly, the Palestinian farmers in Gaza Strip paralyzed from rehabilitating their lands. Rehabilitation of land and sustaining plantation need financial capabilities, time and collective efforts that those poor farmers may not endure or afford. Moreover, the damage has knocked down those seasonal and daily framers who work for per diem wages. Nowadays, there are more unemployed farmers than at any other time before, and there is a lower standard of living and malnutrition among the whole population. Those farmers have been forced to return to the long lines of Gaza's unemployed. To many of those farmers, agriculture is the only option they have. There are dozens of hundreds of domestic farmers and laborers who lost their jobs.

The reality that those farms and agricultural areas belong to the private sector makes it hard for its business owners to find some authority to compensate them for any losses they suffer. Undoubtedly, these tragic circumstances and awful situations of the farmers and their families and lands have lead to deteriorate the standard of living in the farming areas as a whole. Therefore, the socio-economic situation suffers from those financial and material losses without having any real opportunity for rising again and compensating their losses and returning to their farms.

Al-Fakkari village can be seen as one live example of the whole agricultural areas in Gaza Strip. In that village, there is some 6000 people living on an area of arable land of 7200 square dunums (A dunum is an area of 1000 square meters.) The vast majority of the citizens are farmers. Approximately 40% of village's land is cultivated with olive tress, different kinds of citrus, and almond, and 60% of it is cultivated with various types of vegetables such as cucumber and tomatoes, potatoes, peace, crops and fruits like watermelon, figs and grapes. There are other plants of wild life in the village. That village is located to the east of the border town of Rafah and adjacent to the 1984 truce border with Israel.

In January 2008 Israel fulfilled several military run over and land incursions flattening small plants and destroying old and high plants. Each time, the Israeli tanks took routs on the vegetable fields destroying greenhouses and all what is green in their own way. Israeli bulldozers opened wide roads on the agricultural fields causing massive damages to the agricultural sector. They bulldozed the crust of the land, the irrigation system, telephone lines and electricity posts, plus other infrastructure. Approximately 25% of the Gaza Strip farmers' plantations have been either uprooted or destroyed by the Israeli military activities.

One of the sad examples came from a witness by Mr. Essayyed Said al-Amor (73 years old) as he mentioned that in 1951 he planted twenty seven olive trees in his land, and he took care of them as if they were his children. In January 2008 in one of the Israeli incursions, the Israeli bulldozers uprooted those trees! Also, he added that when he was forced to flee from his birthplace in the Negev desert 1948, he brought with him an ever green sycamore tree to plant it in al-Fukkari village. That tree was also uprooted by the same Israeli bulldozer. That event made the old man cry like a child who cries for losing his toy! He said that the event caused a deep scar in him and inflected a psychological damage as well. Last week's military land incursion has left an area of approximately two square kilometers of farms as barren as the desert!

The damages in the farmers' cultivable lands, assets and properties have become irrecoverable with the strict Israeli cordon on Gaza Strip. Life needs are running out and there are no supplies for the agricultural sector. What Israel permits into Gaza Strip are the basic needs of life such as floor, sugar, beans, cooking oil, basic medical supplies. (Cf. In 1993 Karni or al-Mintar cross point was built to the east of Gaza city for an approximation of 800 lorries, to pass through into Gaza Strip per day, and for Gaza products to be exported from it. Nowadays, it opens occasionally).

This dire situation added salt to injury. In those days, the farmers are stuck between a stone and a hard rock. On the one hand, the Israeli army activities destroyed their assets, fields and greenhouses, while on the other hand they received no supplies to rebuild their destructed fields. By all means, the current situation meant a total economic collapse in the Gaza Strip. As a result of the current situation, the standard of living has sharply gone down and the level of poverty has terribly gone up from bad to worse. Life of the Palestinian farmer has turned to an unstable one. The majority of the farmers in Gaza Strip live days of mixed feelings between dream and hope on one side, and fear and anxiety on the other. They dream of a fruitful agricultural product of their plantations, and hope of a promising future, but also they feel fearful of the foggy current situation and anxious of the Israeli tanks to run over their plantations turning it into a mess in an hour or two. They do not have a third alternative.

It is no wonder that the agriculture is no longer a profession that minimizes the level of poverty and improves their standard of living, but rather, it is maximizing the scope of the hard situation. In addition to that, products of vegetables, fruits and crops are no longer as available in the local markets as they used to be. It is no longer as inexpensive as it used to be. The Palestinian farmer in Gaza cannot meet the rapid demand for food as the cost of agricultural production has risen to a high level and the requirements of the filed, and agriculture, are unavailable! In simple words, the Palestinian farmer faces an uncertain future due to the Israeli closures, policies, incursions, siege and restrictions! On the contrary to all what the peace agreements mentioned, it is noticeable that minimizing production costs cannot be achieved, and raising quantity and quality productivity cannot be met and there are no genuine chances for modernizing marketing services and infrastructure.

In the last six months or so, due to the closure of border checkpoints to Gaza, the Palestinians are longer capable of easily cultivating their lands. Different kinds of saplings, pesticides and fertilizers are no longer available and they are not permitted into Gaza. Plastic sheets for greenhouses and hoses for irrigation are no longer available. Accordingly, a large number of the farmers found themselves forced to plant their lands with wheat and barley instead of the vegetables because they are easier to grow and they do not need the same care, fertilizers and pesticides. But again, this situation means a retreat from qualitative production and an escape from the hardships on their path. This situation means that those farmers will not be able to be themselves and raise their families or create any employment opportunities. They are no longer in a situation of lucrative agribusiness that yields exporting some kinds of farming products (e.g. strawberry and flowers) to Europe and Japan. In the past, those farmers used to produce something for the local community and other percentage of their production for export, but the reality is that the Palestinians have actually lost hopes of improving their agriculture and investing on it. They are not expecting to grow to where they can play a key role in creating development for their communities.

Moreover, the Palestinians loss of the initiative on their land has also destroyed most of the opportunities of other supportive productive projects like cow raising, livestock, diary farms and milk processing plants. Thus, part of diary production projects has turned to be next to impossible.

Having said this, without any doubt, it has become obvious that the future of agriculture in Gaza Strip is ambiguous. The Palestinians will not have sovereignty over their agriculture with restricted access to their land, water resources, open markets and supportive institutions. They have no real hopes of regional and international trade and business. They have no chances for competing with the Israeli and Egyptian farmers plus that the continuous Israeli closures of the border in the face of needs for agriculture jeopardises the agriculture, economy and life of Gaza farming sector.

After all this mess, it is unfortunate that the sector of agriculture in the Gaza Strip is on the verge of collapsing. It needs serious efforts and financial support to be saved and to come back to live. Those efforts must be accompanied by Israel stopping its military policies and practices against this sector which constitutes a nerve of life for the people in Gaza Strip.

Starting from the reality that agriculture is one of the necessary options for living in Gaza Strip, and in its relentless efforts and non-stop attempts to create job opportunities and support other development projects, PARC implements strategic intervention plan to achieve relief (Helping poor and young farmers and women, and needy families) and developmental objectives (Marketing poor farmers agricultural outputs). Its intervention can be seen in main programs orchestrated as follows:

First: From Poor Farmers to Poor Families :

In this project, PARC seeks to help both the farmers and the needy families by buying the products of the poor farmers to set up food baskets and distribute it to the poor and needy families in the community for free. In this approach, usually the food basket contains both fresh food (Farm products) and processed food (Feta cheese, olives, olive oil, kokoss, dried herbs, etc.). The source of the fresh food is the poor farmer whereas the source of the processed food is the working woman.

This project has been in function for more than four years. There are direct beneficiaries as well as indirect beneficiaries in this program. Approximately 6000 families receive those direct aids yearly.

Whereas there are at least 15000 families as indirect beneficiaries from other activities . They receive support from PARC in terms of loans for agricultural needs and livestock projects, land rehabilitation, and other services .

Second: Rehabilitation of Destroyed Agricultural Lands of Farmers:

In this intervention program, PARC supports harmed farmers by providing them with agricultural inputs, seeds, seedlings, fertilizers and pesticides according to given available material, and as much as PARC can afford.

Third: Household Economy (Family gardens and livestock):

In its endeavor to support the community, PARC helps by facilitating for those farmers to plant home gardens and help them found front and back gardens when possible. PARC supports those poor farmers by providing them with seeds, farming inputs and expertise, and by helping them with loans and expertise. In this regard, women receive a wide attention as they raise diary animals and husbandry. Also, PARC stands for those who like to create an urban agriculture in their homes. It provides them with agricultural inputs and expertise for creating home gardens and enhancing food security at family level.

Fourth: Agricultural Filed Job Creation:

PARC creates yearly hundreds of job opportunities for unemployed farmers and other workers in the filed of agriculture according to its available capabilities, circumstances and needs of farmers. In this regard, women are given attention and offered working opportunities.

Fifth: Advocacy and Lobbying:

PARC attempts its best in advocating the cause of the farmers in their hard times. This endeavor is performed at all levels, locally, regionally and internationally. PARC attempts shedding light on the agricultural problems and rights, access to lands, inputs and outputs movement. PARC always brings the cause of the farmers to the light and attempts to secure international awareness of their situation as it really is.

PARC is very much concerned with keeping the scope open for those farmers whose production quantitvely and qualitatively reaches to levels of export, and to open new horizons for them. PARC believes that those farmers must enjoy the freedom of exporting the production of their farms.

Hungry planet

I blogged earlier about "What the planet eats" but here's the site and the photos: have a look, it is dramatic. (Thanks Rania)

Who benefits?

"I will not be eating cloned meat. The reason has nothing to do with my personal health or safety. I think the clearest way to understand the problem with cloning is to consider a broader question: Who benefits from it? Proponents will say that the consumer does, because we will get higher quality, more consistent foods from cloned animals. But the real beneficiaries are the nation’s large meatpacking companies — the kind that would like it best if chickens grew in the shape of nuggets. Anyone who really cares about food — its different tastes, textures and delights — is more interested in diversity than uniformity." (Thanks D.)

The roof

"Not to be outdone, wheat, coffee, hogs, rice, fruit juice, cotton and corn prices have risen considerably. Grains like wheat, rice and corn -- especially the wheat -- have scaled new heights. Whereas in the 1990s wheat was selling at about US$2.35 a bushel, its price now is about US$4.60 a bushel.

All of this is happening because of the rising populations in China and India and worldwide vagaries of the weather. Moreover China and India now have cash to pay for their grain purchases.

India set a new record for wheat production in 2006-07 at 76 million tons. But India is still importing wheat. The reason is that India is rebuilding its buffer stock, which had been depleted over two previous bad seasons. Domestic production is not enough to rebuild the stock in one year, so imports are necessary.

China is in a similar situation, although its statistics of production and consumption are not reliable. This is driving wheat prices up and allowing exporting nations to reap big rewards.

In the long run, strategic factors may force India and China to take a more serious look at increased mineral production, but the immediate future is less rosy. The same is true of agriculture. As China has polluted its environment and land, and India has not aggressively dealt with land reform and subsidies, foodstuff imports by both will continue. This will continue to drive up food prices all over the world.

What the world should worry about today is the future food supply. Rising populations will demand food, which can only be grown in fields irrigated with clean water and supplied with other input. If water is polluted and land is in short supply, the population will starve. Food and water wars will begin. This scenario, no matter how unpleasant, looks possible in 50 years when the world's population reaches 10 billion.

In short, rapid industrialization of the less developed world has forced up demand for all commodities. This is translating into high prices and prosperity in the resource-producing countries. But there are limits to this prosperity. As the resources run out one by one, these countries will find themselves at the short end of the stick. The immediate tasks, therefore, should be conservation, environmental care and population control."

From: World commodity markets hit the roof, UPI AsiaOnline.

Real estate

"A Palestinian fights in court for a hill his family has held since 1916. But Jewish neighbors say the farm should be theirs."

And God is their estate agent.

Old trade

I found on this blog this quote from Bernard Lewis (p. 178). "Regarding the decline of the Middle East after about the 1500, Lewis writes :

Even the Mediterranean sea trade had been taken over by the Italian cities - without conquest, without pressure, simply by more active and more effective commercial methods. Apart from a few products like sugar and later coffee, Middle Eastern agriculture and industry were no longer able to provide an exportable surplus of commodities, and Middle Eastern traders had to depend increasingly on the transit trade between Europe and the further East."

Fruits of virtue

"The one thing that is in nobody's interest to say is this: fruit just doesn't provide that much nutrition in the first place. If you believe the nutrition industry, every week produces some new superfood, often a fruit: blueberries, pomegranates, acai berries. The fact is that fruit consists of water, sugars (normally about 10%), some vitamin C, and some potassium (thought to be good for controlling blood pressure). And that's kind of it. Pineapple, for example, has only got about 10mg of vitamin C per 100g (which means a 80g standard portion would only have about 12% of RDA) and is mainly water and sugar. In a typical supermarket fruit medley of 150-200g, at least 15g will be sugar, and the other major constituent water. If it's a citrus medley, there will be about 40mg per 100g of vitamin C, if not, there will be about 10-20mg.

In May, the Observer reported that dietitians have become so worried about claims being made for so-called superfoods that they convened a debate on the subject at the Science Museum. It may be claimed that particular exotic berries boost IQ, energy and immunity, but the only science even vaguely backing this up is that they contain folic acid, which does boost brainpower, but is present in many foods. The antioxidants in pomegranate juice, which supposedly fight diseases as different as cancer and arthritis, actually only last in the body for an hour. Wheatgrass, that standby of the trendy juicebar, is said to be rich in detoxifying chlorophyll, but every green vegetable and leaf in the world contains cholorophyll - which is not, in fact, absorbable by our bodies.

The added irony, in the topsy-turvy world of supermarkets, is that rich desserts often cost very little, while fruit, especially organic, fairtrade, and prepared fruit, is marked up. At the Sainsbury's where I got my lunch, I could have had four 100g creme brulees for 44p, two tiramisu for 98p, and six chocolate mousses for 69p - or a grand total of 11.5p each, making those Pink Lady slices, gram for gram, four times more expensive. We are, more or less willingly, paying through the nose for a particularly 21st-century version of virtue. "You're made to feel worthy, and therefore you're made to pay a premium for it," says Sanders. "Supermarkets have a lot to answer for in the obesity debate."

"The way you've got to look at fruit is that it's better to eat fruit than biscuits, cakes and puddings, because there's very little energy value in it and it's not fattening," he says. "A bit of sugar gives you a lift and takes the pangs of hunger away. But it's not full of all sorts of other nutrients as well. That's a myth"

Read the whole Guardian article by Aida Edemariam. (Thanks Rania)

Lebanon's badu

A report on the last of the Lebanese Bedouins living next to Beirut airport by Rana Hayek. Very interesting (In Arabic).

Citizen Moon

A report by Rasha Abu Zeki from Al Akhbar on a workshop organized by UNDP on Socio-economic Citizenship. I didn't go, although it sounded theoretically interesting. Rasha caught the mood of these assemblies of academic specialists very well: she reports about the brow-beating of the young researcher (Jad Chaaban) by the old timers about the quality of his sources, and later, by Antoine Haddad, about what seems to be Jad's "polarized" description of the Lebanese society. Haddad tells him that there are many shades of gray, and that we have enough polarization in Lebanon today. Jad is right however, when a country has all but lost its middle class, and has one of the highest levels of inequality in the world, I think we can safely call it polarized. And who is Antoine Haddad to talk about polarization: he is part of one of the 2 poles, March 14. I've heard him call into talk shows to justify the government. Anyway, the reason I didn't go (besides the fact that I don't have time for a full day of talk), is that I didn't like the line up: many people from the March 14 camp, none from the opposition. Well, when you work for Ban ki, what do you expect?

Smoke

"Tobacco production in Baalback in regression". Could it have anything to do with "Hash production in Baalback increases"?

I like this cartoon

(Thanks Rania)

If you're interested in carbon trading, check the comment by sarap on this post.

Embargo

"Israeli food manufacturers sold NIS 50.2 billion worth of food products in 2007, up 4.5 from 2006, the Manufacturers Association of Israel reported Tuesday. Local sales jumped 4% to NIS 46.8b. and exports increased 17% to $830 million, it said.

Meanwhile, food sales to the Palestinian Authority in 2007 were down 30% from 2006, falling to NIS 300m., the report said. Annual food sales to the PA were NIS 600m. before the outbreak of hostilities in October 2000, the association said."

British cuisine

""The results show there's a world of people who cannot deny themselves that hamburger or extra piece of pizza, but probably make themselves feel better by washing it down with a diet cola."

In terms of fast food, 45 percent of Britons agreed with the statement "I like the taste of fast food too much to give it up" ahead of 44 percent for Americans and Canadians at 37 percent.

The French, long proud of their reputation for high-class cuisine, strongly disagree: 81 percent rejected the statement, followed by 75 percent of Singaporeans and 73 percent of people from Hong Kong and Romania."

To crown it all

The flour mills of Lebanon got what they wanted: the government will sell 44 thousand tons of the strategic reserve of wheat at $225 a ton, while the international price is, according to the mills, over $400 per ton. This subsidy is supposed to only serve the production of Arabic bread, and not croissants or cakes. Last week there were troubles because "Al Taj" (The Crown) mill, which does not produce flour destines for Arabic bread but which is owned by someone close to the government, received subsidized wheat. So does this article say.

Potato year

Lebanon celebrates the International Potato year. I'm blogging because it includes some interesting statistics about potato production in Lebanon (it's a major crop and is also exported, but a water guzzler), and a to-do list if the government wants to improve the sector. These should become part of the national policy.

Master plan

What happened to the Master Plan (le schema directeur) for Lebanon? Abdel Haleem fadlallah asks in the Economic page of Al Akhbar (the best Arabic newspaper on the planet).

"It looks like the removal of the masterplan from the list of priorities of the regime is due to this regime's intention to avoid questions that could challenge the ideological basis of the dominant economic policies of Lebanon. The masterplan addresses the following issues among others: What will be Lebanon's economic role in the region? Will it construct its economic future on the basis of specialization or diversity? How can we move from a vision of balanced development based on grants and donations to one based on the division of labor and the distribution of employment opportunities?"

Read the rest (in Arabic)

Cloned democracy

"Cloned piglets with jellyfish genes (available as a starter or a main course). Given the choice, what would you rather eat? A steak from a Belted Galloway that had spent the best part of a fulfilling life nibbling grass and licking fence posts in the Scottish Borders - or eating the exact same beast, from the exact same place only this one started life as a clone produced by laboratory scientists?

Which would you plump for? In America this is a choice consumers might soon be able to make. The US Food and Drug Administration this week declared cloned food is fit for human consumption. But, who'd want to eat it?

For over three years the FDA has declared cloned meat safe. If you have the time, the FDA say the thousand page draft risk assessment document will now prove to you just how safe it is. Cloned meat may well be a genetic match for its natural relative, it may even taste the same. However, as the Wichita Eagle put it there is a significant "ick" factor at work here."
(Thanks Karim)

I've blogged about this issue a while ago. I figure that a lot of the US meat is going to be cloned soon. This will be the food of the poor. The rich will be able to afford the premium paid for "all natural". Capital wins on both counts. Isn't that amazing? Lebanon is of course more "democratic" as in the absence of any food labeling regulations, both rich and poor eat the same thing. Who said we could learn democracy from the US? In fact, the poor, especially those with rural roots or in rural areas, still eat better. Yesterday I had a great breakfast in my village: beid baladi (local free range eggs) fried in olive oil and kishk from my cousin's cows and his wheat and markouk bread (but I think the flour might have been mixed with Russian wheat flour, which is probably OK). Seriously, I sometimes feel I'm a tool with my work of natural and healthy foods, promoting "premium food" for those who can afford it. That's why our main work should be on popularizing healthy, natural eating.

Can they? Will they?

"After years of falling prices, food suddenly has everyone's attention. Record prices for wheat have led to riots in Morocco, India and Mexico. Governments are halting grain exports to protect domestic food supplies and aid organisations are issuing new appeals for the world's poor.

Developing nations are expecting to be hardest hit by food price inflation, especially net food importers. That includes most of the African continent, and those with high numbers relying on food aid can expect more people to be 'pushed over the edge', says Peter Smerdon, public affairs officer for the World Food Programme in Nairobi.

But the same countries are also the places with most potential to benefit. Two thirds of Africa's population already works in agriculture. As investors from the rest of the world buy into agricultural commodities for the first time, African governments should also be seeing new value in the sector."

Future foods

"Foods of the first kind:

These are the grains and vegetable proteins that form the basis of every traditional cuisine in the world. If you live in Asia, it’s mostly rice and soybeans. In Latin America, corn tortillas and beans. In the Middle East, lentils and wheat.

Tudge argues that — for mostly geopolitical reasons — every country (indeed every region) should be self-sufficient in these crops that are locally adapted, storable and provide the calories and protein people need to stay alive. He also argues that meals based primarily on these foods can be healthy and tasty."

From a nice food blog: Ellis Hollow

I like the idea that Lebanon should be self sufficient in lentils and wheat.

Oil crisis

"According to the F.A.O., food riots have erupted in recent months in Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

“The urban poor, the rural landless and small and marginal farmers stand to lose,” said He Changchui, the agency’s chief representative for Asia and the Pacific.

A startling change is unfolding in the world’s food markets. Soaring fuel prices have altered the equation for growing food and transporting it across the globe. Huge demand for biofuels has created tension between using land to produce fuel and using it for food.

No category of food prices has risen as quickly this winter as so-called edible oils — with sometimes tragic results. When a Carrefour store in Chongqing, China, announced a limited-time cooking oil promotion in November, a stampede of would-be buyers left 3 people dead and 31 injured." (Thanks Leila and D.)

Hreeseh from LA

Hreeseh makes it into the LA times. Nice picture, thanks D.!

32

I like it so I'm blogging in full. Thanks Marcy

THE NEW YORK TIMES

What's Your Consumption Factor?

By JARED DIAMOND
Published: January 2, 2008
Los Angeles

TO mathematicians, 32 is an interesting number: it's 2 raised to the fifth
power, 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2. To economists, 32 is even more
special, because it measures the difference in lifestyles between the first
world and the developing world. The average rates at which people consume
resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and
greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western
Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world. That
factor of 32 has big consequences.

To understand them, consider our concern with world population. Today, there
are more than 6.5 billion people, and that number may grow to around 9
billion within this half-century. Several decades ago, many people
considered rising population to be the main challenge facing humanity. Now
we realize that it matters only insofar as people consume and produce.

If most of the world's 6.5 billion people were in cold storage and not
metabolizing or consuming, they would create no resource problem. What
really matters is total world consumption, the sum of all local
consumptions, which is the product of local population times the local per
capita consumption rate.

The estimated one billion people who live in developed countries have a
relative per capita consumption rate of 32. Most of the world's other 5.5
billion people constitute the developing world, with relative per capita
consumption rates below 32, mostly down toward 1.

The population especially of the developing world is growing, and some
people remain fixated on this. They note that populations of countries like
Kenya are growing rapidly, and they say that's a big problem. Yes, it is a
problem for Kenya's more than 30 million people, but it's not a burden on
the whole world, because Kenyans consume so little. (Their relative per
capita rate is 1.) A real problem for the world is that each of us 300
million Americans consumes as much as 32 Kenyans. With 10 times the
population, the United States consumes 320 times more resources than Kenya
does.

People in the third world are aware of this difference in per capita
consumption, although most of them couldn't specify that it's by a factor of
32. When they believe their chances of catching up to be hopeless, they
sometimes get frustrated and angry, and some become terrorists, or tolerate
or support terrorists. Since Sept. 11, 2001, it has become clear that the
oceans that once protected the United States no longer do so. There will be
more terrorist attacks against us and Europe, and perhaps against Japan and
Australia, as long as that factorial difference of 32 in consumption rates
persists.

People who consume little want to enjoy the high-consumption lifestyle.
Governments of developing countries make an increase in living standards a
primary goal of national policy. And tens of millions of people in the
developing world seek the first-world lifestyle on their own, by emigrating,
especially to the United States and Western Europe, Japan and Australia.
Each such transfer of a person to a high-consumption country raises world
consumption rates, even though most immigrants don't succeed immediately in
multiplying their consumption by 32.

Among the developing countries that are seeking to increase per capita
consumption rates at home, China stands out. It has the world's fastest
growing economy, and there are 1.3 billion Chinese, four times the United
States population. The world is already running out of resources, and it
will do so even sooner if China achieves American-level consumption rates.
Already, China is competing with us for oil and metals on world markets.

Per capita consumption rates in China are still about 11 times below ours,
but let's suppose they rise to our level. Let's also make things easy by
imagining that nothing else happens to increase world consumption - that is,
no other country increases its consumption, all national populations
(including China's) remain unchanged and immigration ceases. China's
catching up alone would roughly double world consumption rates. Oil
consumption would increase by 106 percent, for instance, and world metal
consumption by 94 percent.


If India as well as China were to catch up, world consumption rates would
triple. If the whole developing world were suddenly to catch up, world rates
would increase elevenfold. It would be as if the world population ballooned
to 72 billion people (retaining present consumption rates).

Some optimists claim that we could support a world with nine billion people
But I haven't met anyone crazy enough to claim that we could support 72
billion. Yet we often promise developing countries that if they will only
adopt good policies - for example, institute honest government and a
free-market economy - they, too, will be able to enjoy a first-world
lifestyle. This promise is impossible, a cruel hoax: we are having
difficulty supporting a first-world lifestyle even now for only one billion
people.

We Americans may think of China's growing consumption as a problem. But the
Chinese are only reaching for the consumption rate we already have. To tell
them not to try would be futile.

The only approach that China and other developing countries will accept is
to aim to make consumption rates and living standards more equal around the
world. But the world doesn't have enough resources to allow for raising
China's consumption rates, let alone those of the rest of the world, to our
levels. Does this mean we're headed for disaster?

No, we could have a stable outcome in which all countries converge on
consumption rates considerably below the current highest levels. Americans
might object: there is no way we would sacrifice our living standards for
the benefit of people in the rest of the world. Nevertheless, whether we get
there willingly or not, we shall soon have lower consumption rates, because
our present rates are unsustainable.

Real sacrifice wouldn't be required, however, because living standards are
not tightly coupled to consumption rates. Much American consumption is
wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life. For example,
per capita oil consumption in Western Europe is about half of ours, yet
Western Europe's standard of living is higher by any reasonable criterion,
including life expectancy, health, infant mortality, access to medical care,
financial security after retirement, vacation time, quality of public
schools and support for the arts. Ask yourself whether Americans' wasteful
use of gasoline contributes positively to any of those measures.

Other aspects of our consumption are wasteful, too. Most of the world's
fisheries are still operated non-sustainably, and many have already
collapsed or fallen to low yields - even though we know how to manage them
in such a way as to preserve the environment and the fish supply. If we were
to operate all fisheries sustainably, we could extract fish from the oceans
at maximum historical rates and carry on indefinitely.

The same is true of forests: we already know how to log them sustainably,
and if we did so worldwide, we could extract enough timber to meet the
world's wood and paper needs. Yet most forests are managed non-sustainably,
with decreasing yields.

Just as it is certain that within most of our lifetimes we'll be consuming
less than we do now, it is also certain that per capita consumption rates in
many developing countries will one day be more nearly equal to ours. These
are desirable trends, not horrible prospects. In fact, we already know how
to encourage the trends; the main thing lacking has been political will

Fortunately, in the last year there have been encouraging signs. Australia
held a recent election in which a large majority of voters reversed the
head-in-the-sand political course their government had followed for a
decade; the new government immediately supported the Kyoto Protocol on
cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Also in the last year, concern about climate change has increased greatly in
the United States. Even in China, vigorous arguments about environmental
policy are taking place, and public protests recently halted construction of
a huge chemical plant near the center of Xiamen. Hence I am cautiously
optimistic. The world has serious consumption problems, but we can solve
them if we choose to do so.


Jared Diamond, a professor of geography at the University of California, Los
Angeles, is the author of "Collapse" and "Guns, Germs and Steel."

Kiva

Marcy sent me this, which was sent to her by Paul. Looks really nice.

"You should see about getting some of the non-profits working with the nahr al bared refugees to sign up so they can get small loans. The way it works is an NGO or local non-profit represents the person that needs the loan and then users on the website can loan the money directly to the person via the NGO or non-profit... most the people that apply for a loan usually get the full amount loaned to them within 24 hours. Its really cool! People from Nahr al Bared that are trying to reopen their business or start a new business could get small loans. anywho check it out. www.kiva.org"

Wheat again, the crisis escalates

Pakistan is running short of flour which is needed to make bread.

A government decision in early 2007 to export a half-million tonnes of Pakistani wheat, after it over-projected the national harvest, has contributed to the shortfall.

This is prompting fears of further instability in the country.

To cover the shortfall the government has resorted to importing wheat from Australia and Russia at 70% higher prices.

It is now being criticised for not preventing the looming crisis.

Pakistan is a nation of more than 160 million people who consume 22 million tonnes of wheat every year.

Part of the reason for this crisis is due to frequent power cuts that have badly affected industrial production of milling wheat into flour.

This has been coupled with the ongoing political turmoil in the country that has caused logistical difficulties.

Flour shortages have caused riots in Pakistan in the past and sensitivities run high whenever there are shortages.

The crisis has now prompted the government to increase security at the mills and secure the country's vital food supplies.

It has deployed rangers and other paramilitary forces to guard mills and storehouses that hold stockpiles of wheat. (Thanks D.)

Liberating Iraq

The Bush effect

"The cultivation of opium poppies whose product is turned into heroin is spreading rapidly across Iraq as farmers find they can no longer make a living through growing traditional crops.

Afghan with experience in planting poppies have been helping farmers switch to producing opium in fertile parts of Diyala province, once famous for its oranges and pomegranates, north- east of Baghdad." (Thanks Helena)

Hreeseh

The first day of the Hejira new year marks the beginning of `Ashoura, ten days of mourning in remembrance of Imam Hussein, son of Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib, whose followers founded Shi'ism. It culminates on the tens day with passion plays to reenact the massacre of Hussein and his followers by Yazid Ibn Mu`awiya, the founder of the Umayyad dynasty. The `Ashoura play is a bloody and messy affair with much chest beating. The ten days of `Ashoura are also the occasion for making and distributing hreeseh, a stew of meat and wheat cooked in large pots right in the streets. Passers-by are handed plates to eat and remember the soul of Hussein. It is made in the villages, but also in the Shi'a neighborhoods of Beirut. Rana Hayek reports on hreeseh in `Ashoura in Beirut's Khandak al Ghameek neighborhood, with photo.

Consumers association

The excellent Rasha Abu Zeki from Al-Akhbar asks: is there a place for consumers associations in Lebanon? Rasha is very young and has excellent analytical skills and class consciousness. She starts the article with an interview with Prof. Nahawand al Kadri from the Lebanese University on the individualism in Lebanese society and how this prevents collective action (modern Lebanon was bad enough, so post-modern Lebanon, je ne vous dit pas). She then talks about Lebanon's consumers association which is being sued by everyone it criticizes (and it is very mild), and is NOT protected by the state (as it should be). The state does not recognize that its duty is to care for its citizen, the least it could do is protect civil society when it tries to do that. If the consumer's association was claiming to be protecting Lebanon against Sassanid invasion, I'm sure the state would have looked very positively at it. And some donors too.

Badael-Alternatives

Today's issue of Badael-Alternatives in Al-Akhbar: a very interesting main article by Usama al-Khalidi on Science and Technology in the Arab World, and on the difference between doing science and creating technology. My editorial on "Technology for the poor?". Rana Hayek's article on Generic Drugs. My article on carob molasses (Dibs el kharroub), a traditional sweet from Lebanon. And we welcome Mariana Yazbeck writing on red anemones in World of Plants "Alam al A`shab". Mariana is a botanist living in the US and she will be in charge of the plants section in Badael. Ahlan Mariana.

Soda'ts what it is...

From a site called mercola.com, sent to me by A. who should know something about this.


Do you want to be healthy? Drinking soda is bad for your health in so many ways; science can’t even state all the consequences. Here’s what happens in your body when you assault it with a Coke:

Within the first 10 minutes, 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. This is 100 percent of your recommended daily intake, and the only reason you don’t vomit as a result of the overwhelming sweetness is because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor.

Within 20 minutes, your blood sugar spikes, and your liver responds to the resulting insulin burst by turning massive amounts of sugar into fat.

Within 40 minutes, caffeine absorption is complete; your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, and your livers dumps more sugar into your bloodstream.

Around 45 minutes, your body increases dopamine production, which stimulates the pleasure centers of your brain – a physically identical response to that of heroin, by the way.

After 60 minutes, you’ll start to have a sugar crash.

Sources:

• Nutrition Research Center October 24, 2007

In Lebanon, in Egypt: bread, corruption and riots

"How do you take a broken system that somehow helps feed 80 million people and fix it without causing social disorder? That is a challenge for Egypt at large, and for this little bakery where Muhammad ekes out a living, with a cigarette hanging from his lips and an angry crowd demanding his bread.

Bread, in Egyptian Arabic, is called aish, which literally means life, rather than khobz, the word that other Arab-speakers use. The word reflects the centrality of bread here. This is a culture of bread, not rice, not meat and potatoes, not humus.

Simple, doughy round pockets of bread that look like pita bread but are baladi bread, that is, peasant bread.

"The word, applied to bread, gives this everyday element an almost mystical quality," said Hamdy el-Gazzar, author of "Black Magic," a popular novel recently translated into English. "Egypt's relationship to bread is not one of freedom, but of necessity.

Egypt started subsidizing staples like bread, sugar and tea around World War II. Then when Gamal Abdel Nasser and his military allies overthrew the monarchy, the state leaned heavily on subsidizes to maintain social order and promote a socialist economic model. When the government tried to stop subsidizing bread in 1977, there were riots. Egyptians are generally not known as explosive people, but tell them you are raising the price of bread - of life - and beware."

When neither government nor private sector work, what's the solution?

Poorer

Price increase in Lebanon since July 2006 according to the Consumers Association: 37.4%. Read this good article on yesterday's press conference by the Zouheir Berro the head of the CA, in which he exposes cartels and monopolies and the fake regulating role of government. A similar (but I must say less incendiary-quite appropriate term) article in assafir.

Just 37.4%. I swear it felt much higher. Note that salaries have not increased, and thus that we are all relatively poorer. By at least 37%.

Cooped up

"According to the RSPCA, most of the 855 million meat chickens reared in the UK every year suffer 'unacceptable' conditions in the 40 days it takes to fatten them to be slaughtered and sold for £2.50. 'Cheaper than dogfood,' as Jamie cries. But life is changing for the British chicken. Soon it may be scratching in a meadow or at least in spacious barns supplied with the coloured footballs and hanging toys recommended by the RSPCA to combat boredom.

I don't think I have ever previously mentioned the great chicken crisis. It would be sadistic not to welcome the advent of the 'high-welfare' bird that may now supplant the broilers condemned to poultry hell. Even so, I can't help noticing the similarities between the low-welfare chicken and someone whose predicament I have written about often, the low-welfare prisoner.

As chicken fever took off last week, the announcement that prison suicides in England and Wales increased by 37 per cent in 2007 was rather eclipsed. There were, though, some similarities to the poultry scandal. Campaigners, notably the Howard League, blamed overcrowding for the rise in deaths. A Ministry of Justice spokesman was quoted as disputing this, arguing that cell-sharing is 'a known protective factor against suicide'. In other words, what is bad for caged chickens, who peck and torment one another when crammed into too small a space, is good for humans."

Great piece by Mary Riddell writing for The Observer.

Selfish capitalism is bad for you

"But Selfish Capitalism stokes up relative materialism: unrealistic aspirations and the expectation that they can be fulfilled. It does so to stimulate consumerism in order to increase profits and promote short-term economic growth. Indeed, I maintain that high levels of mental illness are essential to Selfish Capitalism, because needy, miserable people make greedy consumers and can be more easily suckered into perfectionist, competitive workaholism.

With overstimulated aspirations and expectations, the entrepreneurial fantasy society fosters the delusion that anyone can be Alan Sugar or Bill Gates, never mind that the actual likelihood of this occurring has diminished since the 1970s. A Briton turning 20 in 1978 was more likely than one doing so in 1990 to achieve upward mobility through education. Nonetheless, in the Big Brother/ It Could Be You society, great swaths of the population believe they can become rich and famous, and that it is highly desirable. This is most damaging of all - the ideology that material affluence is the key to fulfilment and open to anyone willing to work hard enough. If you don't succeed, there is only one person to blame - never mind that it couldn't be clearer that it's the system's fault, not yours."

Not the American people

Sahar Mandour from Assafir writes in the Youth page: USAID is not the American people. She makes reference to the USAID advertising billboards which have recently invaded all major roads of Lebanon with the caption: From the American People to the Lebanese People or something like that. Her point is that USAID is part of the US government and its policies are aligned with those of the government, and that the US government is not the US people. And she dislikes the US government policies. This is an interesting post as it raises the issue of development aid and the underlying political agendas of the donor countries (all countries).

Pine nuts, the white gold of Lebanon...

Judge Bread

The culmination of the wheat crisis (I have blogged about its imminence too many times to link here, just write "wheat" into the search section) in Lebanon. As expected, the increase in world wheat prices coupled with the hoarding and the dishonesty of the mills cartel and of the bakeries cartel, topped up with the ineptitude of the government (or the "regime" as this article, which has an excellent analysis of the crisis, puts it) and its inability to deal with the issue has led to people taking to the street yesterday, in the southern suburbs, where bread has been making itself rare in the past two days. Read in the same article the description of the meeting that took place between Sami Haddad the able Minister of Economy and Trade (I am resisting the urge to write: Play it again Sam!) and the representatives of the various cartels. Du pur vaudeville. The "regime" eventually caved in and gave the mills and the bakery what they wanted: more subsidies. Our tax and debt money goes to subsidize rich and poor alike. Isn't that mad? Wouldn't it be better to increase the minimum wage and implement the anti cartel laws? Wouldn't it be better to increase the share of local wheat? We will still need to import, but at least bread flour, which is 30-35% of all wheat needs, could be covered locally. Let the cake eaters pay extra duties for imported flour. Many articles in the press today, including this one and this one and a different analysis in this one. for those who want the English version, but link is only valid for 7 days.

And last night my wife went out to get some Arabic bread. Could not find any, so we had French bread instead. It's not cake, but I'm no Louis XVI. Not yet at least.

I dont have the figure for Lebanon

Take a good look at the diet of each country and the cost of what is eaten

in one week.

Germany: The Melander family of Bargteheide
Food expenditure for one week: 375.39 Euros or $500.07


United States: The Revis family of North Carolina Food expenditure for one week $341.98
Italy: The Manzo family of Sicily Food expenditure for one week: 214.36 Euros or $260.11

Mexico: The Casales family of Cuernavaca Food expenditure for one week: 1,862.78 Mexican Pesos or $189.09

Poland: The Sobczynscy family of Konstancin-Jeziorna

Food expenditure for one week: 582.48 Zlotys or $151.27



Egypt: The Ahmed family of Cairo
Food expenditure for one week: 387.85 Egyptian Pounds or $68.53



Ecuador: The Ayme family of Tingo
Food expenditure for one week: $31.55



Bhutan: The Namgay family of Shingkhey Village
Food expenditure for one week: 224.93 ngultrum or $5.03



Chad: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp
Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23

Strike!

Things are getting bad: the cold wave has caused large damages to the farm sector and 4 people in the south and in the north have died from the cold. The price of fuel and the severe electricity rationing, which is usually 18 hours a day (just 6 hours of electricity) but can be 24 hours for many days are behind these deaths. The farm and agricultural unions, including the fishermen's unions appear to be moving on with their general strike, planned for the 24th of January. Their demands: a national unity government that will put agriculture and farming on the agenda, stable subsidies for agricultural products that are part of the strategic food security, the protection of local production in the national and international markets, creation of the national fund for the protection of the agricultural sector from natural disasters, payment for the damages incurred during the July 2006 (Israeli) aggression and for damages due to natural disasters, and inclusion of farmers and fishermen in the social security fund.

Will they go on strike? Will it matter to the regime? Will it change anything?

More please

Abdel Halim Fadlallah gives too much credit to Hasan Nasrallah by attributing to Hizbullah a social equity and economic justice agenda: there is nothing in the actions or in the literature of Hizbullah to indicate that. In an interview a few days ago, Nasrallah said: "If we (the opposition) want one third of the governmental seats (enough to cause it to resign), it is to ensure that there is a Lebanese will to address the principal dossiers: the relationship with Syria and the national defence strategy. It also means that there will be a national economic policy that is independent of the IMF and the World Bank. If they (the current 14 March government) take over power alone, this will be dangerous for the country at more than one level: dangerous for the farmers and the peasants, for the workers and for the productive sectors."

This hardly qualifies for high praise. Or is it that the social justice situation in Lebanon is so bad that this is the best we can get out of the leader of the opposition? A strategy, give us a strategy.

Herbal business

The Minister of Health, the President of the Union of Doctors, the President of the Union of Pharmacists, the Head of the Lebanese Consumers Association held a press conference to denounce the vendors of herbal medicine in Lebanon. Apparently at least 3 death have been attributed to the use of herbal remedies, which are intensively advertised in the local media. The most famous herbal businessman is a guy called Zayn al Atat who has made a fortune and branded his products and opened franchises throughout Lebanon and I think in some Arab countries. After much discussion, the esteemed minister and doctors agreed: there isn't much we can do about it in present day's Lebanon. The Consumers Association guy says there are big commercial interests behind the herbal remedies vendors, and they are possibly protected by politicians. Maha Zaraket who wrote the article asks: "Could Zayn al Atat become Minister of Health?"

Carbon colonialism

"We have been monitoring the EU carbon trading scheme and how it is failing to reduce emissions and we’ve done a lot of field research on the impact of offset projects on Southern communities, helping to shine a more critical light on what is going on with those projects instead of the glossy coverage you get from the companies themselves. People may have been hearing a lot from lobby groups like the US Climate Action Partnership how wonderful carbon trading is, but we have a very different story to tell.

Carbon colonialism is about treating the supposed low cost emissions reductions in Southern countries as a new commodity that can be profitably exploited for the benefit of Northern consumers and companies. What we are also seeing, and Jutta can say more about what is happening in these Southern countries, is that often these projects have a harmful impact on local communities. This fact has been brushed under the carpet so people can keep doing it. We hear very little about these communities and what is happening on the ground, we only hear the positive side. Our experience is that people on the ground are having a very rough time with these projects.

If we are trying to offset emissions with tree planting we would need to look for other planets to plant the trees on.

Through personal offsets, companies are commoditizing peoples desire to do something about climate change. They are taking people’s impetus to do something real and reducing it to a mouse click — another act of consumerism.

One of the reasons why so much emphasis has been put on offsets and carbon trading is not because of the track record in reducing emissions this way, because they have no proven track record in this, but because of the compatibility with the current economic system which is very market oriented and fixated on year upon year growth. We need to address this growth-fixation and its corresponding growth in fossil fuel consumption in order to deal with climate change. There needs to be some movement toward extracting ourselves from the current economic system as it stands."


From the excellent Trans National Institute, on carbon trade. Trade and colonialism and classical, growth-oriented economic system. Again. But this time, it gets even worse: no cheaper products for people from developing countries (the usual excuse for encouraging unbridled trade), just cheaper pollution.

The climate today

D. sent me this useful link for those who need to make up their minds about global warming: a daily climate debate.

Bada'el-Alternatives

Friday Jan 11, Alternatives-Badael page in Al-Akhbar: The (excellent) main article "On pollution, cancer and corporate profits" by my dear friend and comrade Marcy Newman. My editorial: "Trade in poison" on how the Lebanese state has subcontracted agricultural extension to agribusinesses, whose interests lie in selling the largest possible quantity of pesticides to farmers. On the new pesticide law (stalled as many other laws) by Joanna Azar Organic farming in Lebanon: the alternative to pesticides by Rana Hayek. Food traditions: Kishik.

Enjoy!

The sick man of America

Nice article by Niall Ferguson in FT. I'm not sure how valid the analogy between the US and the Ottoman Empire is, but I love historical backdrops.

Excerpts, but read it all.

"Yet, on closer inspection, we are indeed living through a global shift in the balance of power very similar to that which occurred in the 1870s. This is the story of how an over-extended empire sought to cope with an external debt crisis by selling off revenue streams to foreign investors. The empire that suffered these setbacks in the 1870s was the Ottoman empire. Today it is the US.

In the aftermath of the Crimean war, both the sultan in Constantinople and his Egyptian vassal, the khedive, had begun to accumulate huge domestic and foreign debts. Between 1855 and 1875, the Ottoman debt increased by a factor of 28. As a percentage of expenditure, interest payments and amortisation rose from 15 per cent in 1860 to 50 per cent in 1875. The Egyptian case was similar: between 1862 and 1876, the total public debt rose from E£3.3m to E£76m. The 1876 budget showed debt charges accounting for more than half of all expenditure.

The loans had been made for both military and economic reasons: to support the Ottoman military position during and after the Crimean war and to finance railway and canal construction, including the building of the Suez canal, which had opened in 1869. But a dangerously high proportion of the proceeds had been squandered on conspicuous consumption, symbolised by Sultan Abdul Mejid’s luxurious Dolmabahçe palace and the spectacular world premiere of Aïda at the Cairo Opera House in 1871. In the wake of the financial crisis that struck the European and American stock markets in 1873, a Middle Eastern debt crisis was inevit­able. In October 1875 the Ottoman government declared bankruptcy.

The crisis had two distinct financial consequences: the sale of the khedive’s shares in the Suez canal to the British government (for £4m, famously ad­vanced to Disraeli by the Rothschilds) and the hypothecation of certain Ottoman tax revenues for debt service under the auspices of an international Administration of the Ottoman Public Debt, on which European bondholders were represented. The critical point is that the debt crisis necessitated the sale or transfer of Middle Eastern revenue streams to Eur­opeans."

Trouble ahead

Food subsidies soar as wheat hits high

Published: 21 December 2007
Author: Will Hadfield. Staff Writer
London

MEED
Middle East Business Intelligence

"Egypt and Morocco, the region's biggest wheat importers, face rising debts unless cuts are made elsewhere

Egypt and Morocco face soaring bills for food subsidies after the price of wheat reached a record high on international markets in mid-December. Egypt is the largest importer of wheat in the world, while Morocco is the second largest in the region.

Both countries will become more indebted unless they reduce government spending in other areas as neither can afford to let consumers bear the cost of rising wheat prices, according to a senior official at the UN's Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

"They will not let [domestic] wheat prices rise, so I expect them to import what they need, and they will try to finance it through their own export earnings," says Abdolreza Abbassian, secretary for the intergovernmental group on grains at the FAO. "Egypt just makes sure it pays for its food subsidies. It will use aid to jack up those subsidies."

Egypt will import 7.5 million tonnes of wheat between July 2007 and June 2008, making it the world's largest importer of the grain, according to the UN organisation's estimates.

The Egyptian government increased subsidies for the retail price of bread to almost 52 per cent in September, following the steady rise of the price of wheat on international markets since May. As a result, bread subsidies are now thought to cost the government $2.47bn a year.

The price of hard red winter wheat, a benchmark price for the crop, increased from $203 a tonne in May to $332 a tonne in November. Wheat prices have already increased by 19 per cent since the middle of November, after cold weather damaged the harvest in Argentina, which is a key producer.

On 14 December, wheat for delivery in March 2008 reached a record high of $9.80 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade, the world's largest market for agricultural commodities.

Any other disruptions to supply caused by poor weather conditions could result in further price surges, according to the commodities outlook for 2008, issued by investment bank Goldman Sachs.

However, Egypt should be able to get the best prices because of its purchasing power in the market.The General Authority for Supply Commodities, a government agency, buys about 50 per cent of the country's imported wheat, but many in the international commodity markets say the government effectively controls almost all imports.

Morocco's government also risks becoming more indebted after a drought in January and February 2007 caused its production of wheat to collapse from 6.3 million tonnes a year to just 1.5 million tonnes for the 12 months to the end of June 2008.

The FAO forecasts that Morocco's wheat imports will climb from 1.8 million tonnes to 3.5 million tonnes because of the drought. After the drought, the government slashed its import tariff on wheat from 130 per cent to 2.5 per cent.

Only Iran and Syria are net exporters of wheat in the region."

Tribal DNA

Article on Arab Nomads and Bedouins from Middle East Quarterly linking state and society and conflict to tribalism. I have to say however that I don't know enough political science to be able to offer a decent critique of the article. I'm posting it for the food/livestock production aspects. Read in context with previous post "Baduw".

"Maximizing livestock possession is also important. Livestock generate income of offspring, products, and services. They produce milk and meat. Camels offer hair; sheep supply wool, and goats provide underwool, all of which can be spun into yarn or woven into bags and food covers, and goat hair can also be woven into sheets and used as tent roofs. Camels enable distance travel. Sold at market, they supply money to purchase goods not produced locally, such as firearms, brass household goods, tea, and sugar. Their sale also provides funds to buy agricultural land, peasant villages, and urban villas.[1]

There are also important social reasons to maximize livestock possessions. Upon marriage, the husband's family compensates the wife's kin with livestock. Any man with political aspirations should own animals. Slaughter of sheep or goats enables hospitality for guests.[2] Loan or grant of livestock can establish or reinforce alliances with other families and create useful obligations to be repaid in provision of labor or political support.

Tribal success, though, counted in increasing progeny and livestock, strains pasturage, water, and arable land. To accommodate enlarged populations, it becomes necessary to expand tribal resources through geographical expansion, often at the expense of neighboring populations. Alternatively, some tribes may capture herds and seize pastures and water resources through predatory raiding. Such a strategy often appeals to young tribesmen who see it as a quick way to independence and prominence.[3] Either way, tribesmen are ready to fight. Their tribal structure enhances feelings of unity and normalizes antipathy against outsiders. Challenging neighbors over territory and livestock not only feels natural and justified but is also desirable."

Invest in water

"There are still plenty of opportunities for investors to profit from the coming water boom. Right now, many of these firms are small companies that most analysts, let alone the public at large, have never heard of. But some of them will soon be giants. After all, with the global water industry valued at $300bn a year by the UK Trade & Investment ministry, it can't be long until investors finally catch on.

One great water firm that "is yet to hit British investors' radar" is Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction (Korea: 034020), says Edward Lam of Lloyd George Management. [Editor's note: Unfortunately, this stock does not trade in the U.S .] They invested in the company "partly as a water play, but also because it's a great company." The South Korean firm makes desalination plants - indeed, it is "the world's largest maker of plants that purify seawater," says Keejin Koo on Bloomberg. It already has massive plants all over the Middle East and is constantly winning new projects. Alongside its desalination plants it also builds power plants - so as our energy needs grow, it gets a second kick. The company is currently on a forward p/e of 15.9, which is cheap for such a good growth story."

Wall Street is getting on to the water shortages issues: Invest in desalination technology, that's their brief. With droughts expected to worsen, and water usage expected to increase, more fresh water is going to be needed. Disaster capitalism, or how to make a quick buck from tragic events. Do you know that Dubai lives off desalinated water, but that it has to purchase desalination technology? Do you know what this means? It means that if they do not behave, they may be embargoed (not that they have any intention of "not behaving"). And if they are embargoed, they will die from thirst.

Human after all

The armyworms, which are used to test the resistance of corn plants to pests, drink beer — Milwaukee’s Best — as their aphrodisiac of choice. It is chilled and poured into dishes on the bottom of their cages.

“When they drink beer, boy, do they mate and lay eggs,” Dr. Davis said. “And they don’t like light beer.”

Ethically rich

""Green gold" jewellery is a niche in a fast-growing wider market for ethical goods, ranging from day-to-day foodstuffs like tea, coffee and chocolate to designer fashions and travel.

Analysts say global sales of ethical gold jewellery are probably less than one percent of the total $56 billion gold jewellery market based on figures from London-based consultancy GFMS -- and the Fairtrade label is a year or so away.

Although the ethical product is priced at a premium and gold is at record highs, the market has been ballooning. Among a plethora of online offers are companies including one called greenKarat that argues industrial mining methods damage the land and endanger ecosystems, so recycled gold would be better for society." (Thanks D.)

Isn't "ethical gold" an oxymoron?

Climate samba

"Brazil, for instance, should join the European Union (EU) in a "virtuous and responsible alliance," and distance itself from China, the country that now emits the greatest volume of greenhouse gases and has an "irresponsible" attitude to climate, Eduardo Viola, a professor of international relations at the University of Brasilia, told IPS. "

Chicken samba

"São Paulo – The Arab countries buy 30% of Brazilian poultry exports. "It is the most important and traditional market for exports from Brazil. We have been present in the market for more than 35 years now," said to ANBA the president at the Brazilian Poultry Exporters Association (Abef), Christian Lohbauer. In 2007, sales to the Middle East totalled over US$ 1 billion.

The leading importers of Brazilian poultry meat are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and Qatar. According to Lohbauer, the variety of chicken most exported to the Arab market is the 900-grams variety, which is smaller. "Brazil has a special production line for this market. They are also consumers of breaded chicken and other poultry products," he asserted."

I remember when I used to live in Yemen in the late 80's, Brazilian frozen chicken was the best we could get.

Meat

So you only eat free-range eggs, and spend the extra on organic sausages. But what's life really like for the animals that end up on your plate? And how can you be sure that the meat in your shopping bag is cruelty-free? Rob Sharp investigates.

Very interesting article on animal welfare. From the Independent's excellent Food and Drinks section.

I like this short "History of Syria".

Biofueling the US elections

"Biofuels are commercially questionable, do not materially advance energy independence, and may not even help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Naturally, Congress wants to mandate them. Why? Well, Iowa caucus voters win; Archer Daniels Midland wins; and special interest contributors to political campaigns win. Bioethanol is just a subsidy boondoggle masquerading as a solution to America's energy problems. But it does help get some politicians elected." (Thanks D.)

Sunday's poem is here, thanks to Karin.

Fast food syria

From Syria, a good article on the changes in food habits and the invasion of fast food, and its relationship with the self image of the youth. Includes a summary of a recent New Scientist article on obesity in Britain. From Al-Hayat.

Hanging the gardens

"Iraq Gets American Seeds of Democracy

Democracy for Iraq meant erasing the "cradle of civilization" for unfettered free market capitalism. Iraq was conquered for its oil but also to make the country a giant free trade paradise. The scheme was diabolical, elaborate and ugly - blitzkrieg "shock and awe," elaborate PsyOps, fear as a weapon, repressive occupation, mass detention and torture, and the fastest, most sweeping country remake in history. It happened in weeks, Iraq no longer exists, the country is a wasteland, its people are devastated, and a blank slate was created for unrestrained corporate pillage on a near- unimaginable scale.

Part of the scheme was for GMO agribusiness giants to have free reign over that part of the economy - to radically transform Iraq's food production system into a model for GMO seeds and plants. One hundred swiftly implemented Bremer laws mandated it, but Iraqis had no say about them as the country is now governed out of Washington and its branch office inside the heavily-fortified Green Zone in the largest US embassy in the world by far.

Bremer laws imposed the harshest ever Chicago School-style "shock therapy" of the kind that devastated countries around the world since first introduced in Chile under Pinochet in 1973. The formula was familiar - mass firings of state employees in the hundreds of thousands; unrestricted imports with no tariffs, duties, inspections or taxes; deregulation; and the largest state liquidation sale and privatization plan since the Soviet Union collapsed.

Corporate taxes were lowered as well from 40% to a flat 15%, and foreign investors could own 100% of Iraqi assets other than oil. They could also repatriate all their profits, had no obligation to reinvest in the country and wouldn't be taxed. They were further given 40 year leases, and the only Saddam era laws remaining were those restricting trade unions and collective bargaining. Foreign transnationals, mainly US ones, swooped in and devoured everything. Iraqis couldn't compete, and the occupation laws assured it.

Consider Bremer Order 81. It covered patents, their duration and stated: "Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety" the edict covered. It gave plant varieties patent holders absolute rights over farmers' using their seeds for 20 years. They'd be genetically engineered, owned by transnationals, and Iraqi farmers using them had to sign an agreement stipulating they'll pay a "technology fee" as well as an annual license fee.

Plant Variety Protection (PVP) was the core of this order. It made seed saving and reuse illegal. Even using "similar" seeds could result in severe fines and imprisonment. GMO seeds got protection to displace 10,000 years of developed plant varieties being sacrificed.

Iraq's fertile valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is ideal for crop planting. Since 8000 BC, farmers used it to develop "rich seeds of almost every variety of wheat used in the world today." They were erased through a GMO modernization and industrialization scheme so agribusiness can get a foothold in the region and supply the world market. While Iraqis suffer and starve, GMO giants run the country's agriculture for export. Iraqi farmers are now agribusiness serfs and are forced to grow products foreign to the native diet like wheat designed for pasta.

Bremer laws mandated it and are inviolable under Article 26 of the US-drafted constitution. It states that the Iraqi government is powerless to change laws a foreign occupier made. To assure it, US-sympathizers are in every ministry with those most trusted in key ones. Engdahl sums up the damage to agriculture: "The forced transformation of Iraq's food production into patented GMO crops is one of the clearest examples of (how) Monsanto and other GMO giants are forcing (these) crops onto an unwilling or unknowing world population." They're infesting the planet with them one country at a time so it's futile trying to undo the damage they cause." (Thanks A.)

The third installment of: Reviewing F. William Engdahl's Seeds of Destruction - Part III. Stephen Lendman. The people's voice.

Food prices index

Assafir has started a monthly food prices index. About time somebody did that. Government, what government? As long as HE the high commissioner does not tell them to compile a price index, they won't do it. Why should they? It might expose speculators, so tightly connected to the political class.

Lebanon news

From Al-Akhbar's excellent economic page, a New Year's bundle: Abdel Halim Fadlallah's article on Growth without welfare, on how the 4 folds economic growth of the world between 1975 and 2007 was matched by a 4 folds increase in unemployment; and how the increase in growth has also been met with a decrease in human welfare. Another article on the unending wheat subsidies saga: the flour mills cartel is holding the government hostage and demanding more subsidies, which implies that the price of bread may suddenly increase by 25%. We also learn that the Lebanese government is asking the World Bank to take charge of the social security fund: great move, the Bank being known for its transparent, human and pro-poor methods.

On a different note, H5N1, the avian flu virus has been found in birds in Haifa, a few km south of the Lebanese border with occupied Palestine. The Lebanese ministry of agriculture has reacted by asking the ministry of finances for a budget of $350,000 to establish a surveillance system in South Lebanon. Lets see when it gets it.

Friends of who?

That's why I dislike some "environmentalists". They are single issue campaigners and claim to be "objective" and "non-political", and that the protection of the environment comes before social justice and the elimination of oppression. Look at this site, Friends of the Earth Middle East. Look their publications on water and see how they deal with the Jordanians, the Palestinians and the Israelis as if they were equal in their policy making power. They are not, FoEME, Israel is the oppressor, and the Palestinians are the victim. No matter how many token Palestinians you get into your silly meetings and your even sillier publications, Israel will still be the oppressor and the Palestinians the victims.

Look at how they have a page called: Israel and Hezbollah War (with no links there, one wonders). Let me set the record straight: it was Israel's war of destruction on Lebanon, encouraged (and planned) by the US and the Global North. The Lebanese Resistance led by Hizbullah gave them a thrashing, but you don't see us bragging about it, do you? (well maybe only a little).

And look how panicky they are about "sharing water". Israel, sharing anything? That would be the day. Look at a couple of posts below in this blog to see how much Israel likes "sharing" water. Israel's plan for sharing water in the Middle East is probably something like that: "Either you give us your water nicely (and we want it cleaned first), or we'll take it by force."

Oh and what I like most: They are the Middle East chapter of Friends of the Earth. So that's the Middle East: the countries that made peace with Israel. Who's the President of FoE? GW?

Donkey

"They may be a rare sight in Britain, but in Israel and the Palestinian Territories working donkeys are still an essential part of daily life. Lucy Fensom, a former British Airways hostess, has dedicated her life to helping these beasts of burden. She has set up Safe Haven for Donkeys in the Holy Land (SHADH), a British-registered charity and the only organisation that cares for working and abandoned donkeys in the area."

Well she's from the country where the queen knows her priorities: There is a Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and just a National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Would they send a donkey to Eton?

Badael-Alternatives

The first issue of 2008. My editorial: Neither government nor opposition are concerned with social justice in Lebanon. Jad Shaaban's article on inequality in lebanon, Ali Darwish's article on the ever elusive MDGs, Rana Hayek on eating antibiotic-stuffed turkey, and a new section: Mawasem, to live by the rhythm of the seasons.

Pire pressure

"The prestigious journal Nature agreed to publish Chapela's findings, Monasterio wanted them quashed, but Chapela refused to comply. As a result, he was intimidated not to do it and threatened with being held responsible for all damages to Mexican agriculture and its economy.

He went ahead, nonetheless, and when his article appeared in the publication on November 29, 2001 the smear campaign against him began and intensified. It was later learned that Monsanto was behind it, and the Washington-based Bivings Group PR firm was hired to discredit his findings and get them retracted." (Thanks A.)

To mark Jose Bove's hunger strike against GMOs in France

This is Palestinian land-2

"Idhna, Southern West Bank, 19 Dec. (AKI) - Source IRIN - "The best thing about Khirbet Qassa was the grazing land. We had open spaces. Now we've become dependent on other people and their land," said Abdel Halim Nattah, a shepherd in the southern West Bank.

Several weeks earlier he and all his fellow villagers, 37 families numbering 272 people, were evacuated by the Israeli military from Qassa and told to find a new home somewhere else.

The Israel Civil Administration said the land the Palestinians were living on was an archeological site under state auspices, and the villagers had been given warnings about the impending evacuation.

"They came at 7:30 in the morning," one villager told IRIN. "We sent away the women, children and sheep. An old man pleaded with the soldiers saying 'we will move ourselves'. They gave us until the next afternoon, and said anyone remaining would be arrested and anything left confiscated."

When the villagers told the soldiers they had nowhere to go, the response was: "That's not our problem. This is state land.""

The land is Palestine

Seven Bedouin flock owners in the Negev who are having trouble making a living have formed a cooperative. "Somebody in the Bedouin Administration once told me that agriculture is for Jews, not for Arabs," said Farhan Shlibi, who is in his 40s. "They don't let us make a living in agriculture and raise flocks. But our goal is to get together and fight this."

From Haaretz. Read it to get a taste of Israeli democracy. And remember that the Bedouins are more integrated in Israel than the other Palestinians. They serve in the army and especially in the frontier guards which is in charge of oppressing other Arabs. Divide and rule, fan internal conflict.

Kenya

"Plant protection experts have stepped up the fight against desert locusts that have, for the first time in 45 years, invaded parts of northern Kenya." As if civil strife wasn't enough.

Concerned

"Israel has reason to be especially concerned by the increase of greenhouse gases - which initiate a chain of events that lead to global warming and rising sea levels - according to a report released by the Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME) at the Bali conference.

The report found that rising sea levels could have severe environmental, economic and political implications for the already-parched Middle East.

Climate change could act as a "threat multiplier," exacerbating water scarcity and tensions over water between nations linked by hydrological resources, geography and shared borders - particularly in Jordan, Gaza and Egypt.

"Poor and vulnerable populations, which exist in significant numbers throughout the region, will likely face the greatest risk," said the report. Rising sea levels would also contaminate the drinking water of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, and displace two to four million Egyptians by 2050, the report said."

From the Jerusalem Post. How about they stop killing Palestinians if they're so concerned? Or just let food into Gaza?

Generous occupier

"“This, of course, included the 1,000 or so acres on which we had been farming for decades,” Bernstein said. “This could be returned to the Jordanians for peace. And, we at Yahel, and the other villages along the border with Jordan, were willing to give back every inch of land, every pomelo, every date, everything that we had been growing in exchange for the most important gift we could give our children – and that’s peace with out Arab neighbors."

See for yourself, this typo (?) is not mine. Who said Freud was wrong? But read the rest of the article: The guy admits they appropriated the land, but is his infinite generosity, he is now willing to give it back to Jordan in exchange for peace.

Palestine is the land of the Palestinians and only they can decide what to do with it.

Christmas oysters

Another ludicrous idea for Lebanese agriculture: the cultivation of oyster mushrooms as a replacement crop for "traditional" crops. Unbelievable. No one, but no one, in Lebanon eats oyster mushrooms. What are they trying to do? Grow oyster mushrooms as an export commodity? They've been trying to promote this project since 2000, and they made their first local sales in November 2007. Great success.

On the impossibility of democracy

Asa'ad Abu Khalil (Angry Arab) veeery long article in Al-Akhbar: on the impossibility of democracy. i don't usually post Asa'ad's articles, because they rarely address development of food and farming issues, but this one is exceptionally good, and it has a good section on the selective use of democracy and on the blackmailing of governments by aid donors.

More controversy

"For years, many scientists have been making dire predictions of widespread irreversible ‘desertification’ in the African Sahel. But recent findings have proven them wrong.

Satellite images consistently show an increase in ‘greenness’ since the 1980s over large areas, confirming evidence on the ground indicating that the Sahel has recovered from the great droughts of the 1980s, and that human factors have played a large role in reclaiming the desert.

Although variable rainfall and droughts are seen as normal in arid and semiarid climates, the droughts that struck the Sahel in the late 1960s through to the 1980s were unprecedented in length and severity. Land degradation and famine during the droughts, exacerbated by political instability and unrest, prompted the UN to hold a conference on desertification in 1977. This initiated a debate, still ongoing, on the causes and effects of drought, land degradation and desertification." (...and Rania is back, with thanks!)

I don't know how many of you have been following the very interesting blog comments exchange in the "Senate Skeptics" post, and if you haven't, take a look, believe me, it is worth it. Here's another controversial issue: is the UNCCD all wrong?