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