Mainly the so-called "food crisis"

The accepted wisdom spewing forth from the mouths of governmental officials, academic experts & corporate or financial bigwigs about the "food crisis" is that it is the result of (a) rising oil prices, (b) the diversion of food crops into biofuel & (c) the rising consumption in countries such as India & China. In a previous post, I commented on how this was partially true but fundamentally erroneous. The picture they paint is that of a short-term bump in the road, resolvable in perhaps a year or two, rather than a crisis that has far deeper roots & was being prepared over decades. In fact, calling it a "food crisis" actually masks the far more important dynamics underlying the surface phenomenon of people facing starvation, It is not so much a "food crisis" as it is the result of decades of an imperialist system that has given us

(a) government subsidies for agribusiness, thereby allowing them to undercut the farmers in much of the world outside of the G7 nations;

(b) structural adjustment policies imposed on poor countries by the World Bank & the IMF since the 1970s—"free trade" & investment agreements have ruthlessly stripped the protective tariffs & other tools used by developing countries to protect local agricultural production, forcing them to open their markets & lands to global agribusiness, speculators & subsidized food exports from the G7 nations;

(c) the diversion of fertile lands away from serving local food markets to the production of global commodities or off-season & high-value crops for Western supermarkets;

(d) the voracious race for higher profits that has led to the depletion of the aquifers the world over, thereby creating conditions that exacerbate the problems brought on by drought, such as the total destruction of Australian rice production;

(e) the depletion of the large fish population in the last 50 years (90% of the large fish have been harvested) & the general spoliation of the oceans, especially the destruction of the coral reefs of the world that 25% of all fish species call home;

(f) the massive death of bees in the US (& who knows where else), probably due to pesticides —over 50% (who or what is going to pollinate our crops?);

(g) the massive death of bats in New England & perhaps other regions of the US (pesticides?)—bats play a very crucial role in keeping down the insect population;

(h) the steeply rising price of fertilizer (phosphates & nitrates), a piece of news that is just barely beginning to make it into the mainstream press.

Furthermore, to top all of this off, we have the ugly spectacle of the financial institutions—banks, investment houses, hedge funds—all joining in feasting themselves on the hunger & starvation that is stalking the world. We are witnessing yet another set of speculative bubbles, this time in (i) oil, (ii) precious metals (gold. Platinum, silver) & (iii) food.