Tuesday, May 08, 2007

what food insecurity brings: goodbye to the upa is one welcome result

may 7th, 2007

but the rest of the harm will persist. more and more agri-produce will be diverted for fuel purposes. the only answer for india: become founding member of the OFEC (organization of food exporting countries) and create a cartel. unfortunately at the moment the UPA have the begging bowl out as tvr shenoy suggests

http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/marketview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9136006&fsrc=nwl

7 comments:

truti said...

The Economist has been a terribly superficial rag, since the days Andrew Knight left the paper. Among other ignorant things the paper has been famous for, it was at one time the fiercest supporter of the fraud Bjorn Lomborg, the denialist crank from Denmark who is famous for his stupid tome denying climate change. While the ostrich across the pond, WSJ leaves its syupidity to its editorial and op ed pages, Economist sprinkles its stupidity all over. This edit seems to mark a turn in the Eco's pov (becoming more intelligent perhaps) in its explicit acceptance of climate change.

Ghost Writer said...

Even funnier bloopers of the British 'press' are highlighted in this article by Premen Addy today
http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnist1.asp?main_variable=Columnist&file_name=Premen%2FPremen8%2Etxt&writer=Premen
I quite enjoyed the one about Rajiv Gandhi's ashes being immersed in "Ahmedabad in the western state of Gujarat where the Ganges meets the Jammu"

Harish said...

on a different note...
What India needs is a hard hitting straight talking, well executed right wing daily.. and look what we get

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/may/09murd.htm

A tie up between an anti Hindu/India, Christist friendly SunTV group and the all powerful Murdoch. Given the natural instincts of the owners of SunTV to put self before nation, and given the wonderful ways of manipulations known to Murdoch and his company what good can come out of such a tie-up for India..More christist friendly, Hindu bashing tirades.. more op-eds condemning Modi..subtle conversion etc etc..

Given our country's rather loose standards of media oversight a crude, irresponsible race for TRP ratings or readership..and the power media holds on public..this tie-up is wrong and baneful at so many levels..

I wish we had newspapers like Pioneer actually have a pan Indian readership to take on rags like TOI, IE etc..but then thats a wish...like so many other things i wish happened in India..

san said...

African countries are currently complaining that India is blocking them from entering the Indian market for food/produce.

Perhaps India really should open its borders to outside competition, as this will help lower the food prices in the country, which would bring some relief to the poor.

Ghost Writer said...

san,
"opening up Indian food markets" is a instinct for suicide as things currently stand.
70% of Indians depend on agriculture for their daily sustenance; that is more jobs than any other sector can ever hope to produce.
African countries are uncompetitive compared to India given our land mass, water and sunshine conditions. They will never be able to compete - but what will happen is that the US mega trillion dollar corporates who benefit from hefty US agricultural subsidies (America's largest corporate welfare program) will wipe out the poor Indian farmer.
These "African countries" - notice how they are not named - whose "Presidents" are red herrings fattened - likely by US Agri-companies

Shahryar said...

@kural:

Please do not libel Bjorn Lomborg by claiming he is denying climate change.

Excerpt from The Skeptical Environmentalist Replies:

Take global warming, where Stephen Schneider berates me for neglecting and misunderstanding science and failing to support the Kyoto Protocol. But in my book I clearly use the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as key documentation, and all the uncertainties notwithstanding, I accept that science points to anthropogenic global warming. (This is in contrast to the contrarians who deny global warming or indeed to early work of Schneider, who suggested that we could be heading for a new ice age.)

Schneider claims that I don't understand the research in studies by Richard S. Lindzen and by the Danish solar scientists. Yet Lindzen replies: "... at one fell swoop, Schneider misrepresents both the book he is attacking and the science that he is allegedly representing." And the solar scientists: "It is ironic that Stephen Schneider accuses Lomborg of not reading the original literature, when in his own arguments against Lomborg he becomes liable to similar criticism."

With global warming our intuition says we should do something about it. While this intuition is laudable, it is not necessarily correct—it depends on comparing the cost of action to the cost of inaction and the alternative good we could do with our resources. We should not pay for cures that cost us more than the original ailment.

The Kyoto Protocol will do very little good—it will postpone warming for six years in 2100. Yet the cost will be $150 billion to $350 billion annually. Because global warming will primarily hurt Third World countries, we have to ask if Kyoto is the best way to help them. The answer is no. For the cost of Kyoto in just 2010, we could once and for all solve the single biggest problem on earth: We could give clean drinking water and sanitation to every single human being on the planet. This would save two million lives and avoid half a billion severe illnesses every year. And for every following year we could then do something equally good.

Schneider tells us that we need to do much more than Kyoto but does not tell us that this will be phenomenally more expensive. His attitude is the sympathetic reaction of a traditional environmentalist: solve the problem, no matter the cost. But using resources to solve one problem means fewer resources for all the others. We still need the best information on science, costs and benefits.

Shahryar said...

Re African food producers:

I was under the impression that most African countries are net food importers!

Perhaps the ruling elites are planning to sell produce they have got as food aid to raise cash?

Granted their local producers have been priced out by cheap subsidized grains from US, they need to develop export crops to pay for their imports.

African farmers suffer from infrastructure problems which are probably similar to those faced by Indian farmers.

With the recent scares about the quality of foodstuff from China, other producers with pukka organic farming credentials may find markets opening up!