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2011-01-13 Africa North

Algeria has imported over one billion dollars of oil and sugar

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Posted by Fred 2011-01-13 00:00|| || Front Page|| [3 views ] Top

#1 They should be in a much better position than we are; they're a net exporter, they have a surplus, and foreign reserves. What happened?

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2011-01-13 00:09|| 2011-01-13 00:09|| Front Page Top

#2 The price of basic food items all over the world is about to spike. Agricultural setbacks are happening all over, from drought to floods. Money itself is being debased, so investors are seeking the ultimate safe haven, commodities, things (unlike gold) that you can actually eat. Even a country with a valuable export and foreign reserves still has to budget its expenditures.
Expect more riots.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2011-01-13 01:06|| 2011-01-13 01:06|| Front Page Top

#3 Could be the top folks in Algeria are buying stuff on the world market and marking it up before releasing it to domestic wholesalers.

One way for the big shots of the 3rd world to make some quick money.

Posted by lord garth 2011-01-13 06:55|| 2011-01-13 06:55|| Front Page Top

#4 Protests over rising unemployment and higher food prices have left at least two dozen dead in Tunisia.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2011-01-13 08:31|| 2011-01-13 08:31|| Front Page Top

#5 It was Russia and India banning grain exports in order to keep domestic prices down that set the food prices on the international market soaring. Most countries cannot insulate themselves from this global price rise, because they depend on imports for a lot of domestic consumption. But that means that a lot of their population cannot buy enough food for their families, so they go hungry. Then they get angry, and the riots start.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2011-01-13 08:34|| 2011-01-13 08:34|| Front Page Top

#6 In India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called in his top cabinet ministers Tuesday to discuss the problem, with food inflation climbing above 18 percent and unseasonal rains in southern India threatening crop production.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2011-01-13 08:43|| 2011-01-13 08:43|| Front Page Top

#7 Much of the problem is self inflicted. It began in the '60s and '70s with Norman Borlaug's Green Revolution.

Though agriculture was booming, only four nations utterly dominated grain production. So the USDA intervened, producing any number of crossbred grains that would grow around the world.

Monsanto corporation was tasked with producing and distributing these grains to other countries basically for free. With great success, Monsanto took up the reigns and produced even better and higher yielding crops.

Then they developed Roundup herbicide, and grain which was resistant to it, which worked great, slashing labor costs to farmers. All of which was mostly free to farmers in these countries, subsidized by the US.

Then Monsanto on its own discovered that farmers were reusing that grain so that they wouldn't even have to pay the marginal cost. So Monsanto produced new types of grain, called "terminator", that had huge yields, but the grain could only be reused for seed once.

And farmers had to pay market price for it.

The third world was outraged. They demanded that Monsanto only provide good seed grain for free, not terminator seed. This was because any farmer paying for terminator would easily outsell his competitors, but he had to pay for the privilege.

And they wanted all the good stuff for free. This was the big start to the anti-GM food movement.

Both Monsanto and the USG have agreed that "tough, if you want more, you have to pay for it." And third world greed is such that they would prefer cheap imports to growing their own.

Unfortunately, cheap imports are no longer staying cheap.

Posted by Anonymoose 2011-01-13 10:31|| 2011-01-13 10:31|| Front Page Top

#8 Borlaugh has a lot to answer for even if it was only "unintended consequences".
Today there are more Muslims in the world than than the combination of all Muslims back to Mohammed combined and it's all due to Borlaugh's "Green Revolution"
The population of Pakistan, fr instance, in the 1950's was 30 million and now it's 170 million comprising mainly of illiterate Saudi financed madras alumni whose only accomplishment is to recite the Quran by heart.

Posted by tipper 2011-01-13 15:30|| 2011-01-13 15:30|| Front Page Top

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