Thanks to Speculative Investors, the Food Market Will Be the Next Bubble to Burst

By Ari LeVaux
Residential real estate may be slumping, but ag land is booming. In Iowa, farmland prices have never been higher, having increased a whopping 34 percent in the past year, according to The Des Moines Register. The boom is driven in part by agribusiness expansion, but also by a new player in the agriculture game: private investment firms. Both are bidding up land values for the same reason: the price of food.

They're betting on hunger, and their reasoning, unfortunately, is sound. This is bad news for would-be small farmers who can't afford land, and much worse news for the world's hungriest people, who already spend 80 percent of their income on food.

Thanks to the world's growing population of eaters and the fixed amount of land suitable for growing food to feed them, supply and demand tilts the long term forecast toward higher prices. More immediate concerns -- like increasing demand for grain-intensive meat and the rise of the corn-hungry ethanol industry -- have fanned the flames of a speculative run-up in agricultural commodities like corn, wheat, and soy. Add cheap money to the mix in the form of low interest rates, along with an army of traders chasing the next bubble, and you've got a bidding war waiting to happen.

The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 allowed the bidding to begin by allowing the trade of food commodities without limits, disclosure requirements, or regulatory oversight. The Act also permitted derivatives contracts whereby neither party was hedging against a pre-existing risk; i.e. where both buyer and seller were speculating on paper, and neither party had any intention of ever physically acquiring the commodity in question.

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Defeating GMOs - The Power of the Free Market

In 405 B.C., at the moment when Sparta captured the Hellespont, thereby controlling access to the Straits of Bosporus and the Black Sea, cutting off the supply of grain from that vital area, Athens was doomed. Indeed, it is said that, when news of this stunning development reached Athens, a wailing went up throughout the city that could be heard in Corinth  They knew.  Whoever controls the food supply, controls the course of destiny.

The dangers associated with GMO foods are myriad. They include major health risks, as foreign genes from other organisms, including bacteria and viruses, are forced into the DNA of food crops. Potential human health risks identified by FDA scientists include increased allergens in the food supply, toxins, new diseases, birth defects, infertility, increased risk of cancer, nutritional deficiencies, and even damage to internal organs, particularly gastrointestinal organs. And what of the other human health risks, the health of Society, and of Freedom?  Of these many dangers, the issue of food security, and of Farmer's Freedom, strikes me as being the most frightening.

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Rally at Nashville Farmers' Market Calls for Labeling of Genetically Modified Foods

By Jenny Upchurch
"What's GMO stand for?" a driver yelled at Flo Oakes and her group outside the Nashville Farmers' Market on Saturday morning.

"Genetically modified organisms," they hollered back.

A few dozen people held banners and shouted slogans here as part of a nationwide rally demanding action to help consumers identify from where food comes.

Genetically modified organisms have had changes introduced into their DNA by genetic engineering techniques. The changes make them resistant to viruses and chemicals. Typical plants and products include soybeans, corn and canola and cotton seed oil.

"I'm not a biologist, not a scientist,"Oakes said. "I feel like we're being guinea pigs. We have never put genes together like this and then put them in the environment without proper scrutiny and testing."

Activists want genetically modified foods labeled and they want limits on how closely such plants can be grown to organic agriculture to prevent cross-contamination. They also want more research on the safety of genetically modified organisms.

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