Thursday,
November 15, 2007
The
ANNOTICO Report
"Wheat makes
up 60% of the price," he says,but
one of the reason prices are rising in the first place: the growing use of
agricultural crops to make ethanol and other alternative fuels. "Agriculture
for energy is an extremely stupid thing," Barilla says. "It's
very inefficient."
Mr.Barilla appears to have been
reading the Annotico Reports, and listening to the International Monetary
Fund because:
On July 11,
2007 the article titled "Biofuels Cause Skyrocketing Pasta Costs in
BioFuels is a Stupid Idea.!!!!!!!
American car makers have furiously fought Higher Fuel Efficiency ( and Lower Pollution standards) for decades, a
MUCH Better IDEA to conserve Oil!!!!! You
have Food Costs as one of the Low Income Families Budget Busters, and Famines,
and People Starving worldwide, and you turn Food into Fuel
??
On
September 1, 2007 "Italians Say Basta
to Pasta - For One Day"
Again
I say, the idea of using food/grain for fuel is stupid, and a result of lobbying
by the Agri Business to drive up prices and profits.
In
a world with Starvation, Poverty, and Droughts, this Bio fuel is a
Heartless idea. besides it doesn't address
Global Warming.
Far
more sensible is Conservation, and the use of Inexhaustible Energy, such as
Solar Power, Tidal Power, and Hybrid Energy.
On September 14, 2007 "Isn't this Pasta Protest Silly ? NO ! NO!"
A global
intelligence gatherer is terming recent events "the biofuel
backlash". Wheat-growers, especially in
Even with good
Weather, there is With world wide Starvation.
Then when there are Floods, Droughts,Cold and other less favorable weather, this Bio
Fuel project becomes a Travesty. There are literally
millions of ways to CONSERVE Energy and Utilize
ALTERNATE Self Replenishing Energy,, How can the Government/Oligarchs justify,
using Taxpayers to Subside Bio Fuels, and then have the Consumer Taxpayer pay
significantly higher prices for Food.?
Thanks
to Pat Gabriel
Pasta Panic Strikes
The price of
wheat is up 60% this year, and in Italy
Fortune
Magazine
By
Peter Gumbel
November
15 2007
(Fortune
Magazine) -- Something unusual is going on in the pasta section of the largest
supermarket in Parma, Italy, these days. All the pasta is still there, stacked
on both sides of a tennis-court-length aisle in the center of the store. The
dizzying choice, too, is the same as in many Italian supermarkets: dozens of
shapes, sizes, and colors, ranging from banal penne and rigatoni to lumachine, shaped like tiny snail shells.
What's new are
the big signs fluttering above the aisle and affixed to the partitions at the Ipercoop market, a short drive from
The movement in
question has to do with the price of pasta, which has jumped about 20% this
year for some varieties, touching off a nationwide protest. But the story
behind the price hike is a global saga involving agricultural policies,
commodity-market speculation, the growing use of ethanol as an alternative
fuel, and Australian drought.
Italian pasta
producers have taken great pains to justify the increase by pointing to the
soaring cost of wheat, which has increased by 60% over the past year. That's an
excuse the conspiracy-crazed Italians aren't buying.
"Yes, the
price of wheat has risen, but it has simply gone back to 1985 levels. So who's
been profiting from low prices these past 20 years?" asks Rosario Trefiletti, president of the Federconsumatori
consumers' association in
Trefiletti's association, along with
three others, has been so incensed by the price hikes - according to their
calculations, spaghetti is up by an average of 27% this year - that they called a pasta strike in September. For one day
consumers were urged not to buy pasta (although in a country that consumes more
than five times as much pasta per head as the
"It was a
huge success," Trefiletti says. It has certainly
brought results. The government, which knows a good populist issue when it sees
one, began holding talks with producers, farmers, and consumer lobbyists, who
are calling for tougher controls and price safeguards for food staples.
"The government can't impose lower prices," says Carlo Pileri, who heads another consumer group, "but it can
do moral suasion."
Then came the regulators. On Oct. 23,
For
"Wheat
makes up 60% of the price," he says, pointing to a box of penne on a table.
What irks him is not so much the public fuss in
Italians
aren't alone in this struggle. Rising bread and flour prices have sparked
protests across drought-stricken
And it's not just
wheat that's soaring. Milk prices are at record highs, and rice is up too.
Jacques Diouf, the Senegalese head of the UN's Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),
spoke last month about the risk of upheaval across the developing world.
"If you combine the increase of oil prices and the increase of food
prices," he said, "then you have the elements of a very serious
crisis in the future."
Governments
from
In richer
countries, too,
the hikes are spurring authorities to action. In
And in September
the European Union reversed a 20-year-old policy that required farmers to leave
10% of their land fallow. The aim of abandoning the so-called set-aside policy
is to spur a quick boost in production of wheat, oats, and barley.
The big
winners in all this, at least for now: American wheat farmers. Production is up about
14%, while exports, aided by the weakening dollar, are expected to rise more
than 25% this year. Stocks are at their lowest level since the late 1940s. Best
of all, prices have jumped to an average yearly price of $249 a metric ton for
hard red winter wheat, more than double what it was in 2000.
"The
early-season pace of wheat export sales and shipments has been
blistering," reports the USDA's October Wheat Outlook. At the
The boom could be
short-lived. FAO wheat expert Abdolreza Abbassian warns that a flurry of production increases by
farmers trying to take advantage of the price rises may soon make itself felt.
"It could all lead to a short-term glut," he says. Indeed, wheat
futures have eased since peaking in late September.
Wheat experts
point to Four Factors that have combined to propel prices higher. The first
and most significant is to be found in Australia, one of the world's
biggest wheat producers, where two harvests in a row have been ravaged by
drought at a time crops in other big exporting nations, such as Argentina
and Canada, have been less than stellar.
Second, stocks of wheat are at
the lowest since 1983, a consequence of changing agricultural policy in both
the
And finally
there's Barilla's gripe: the growing use of crops for fuel. Wheat isn't
directly affected; in the
Barilla thinks
that's crazy.
For one thing, it requires a huge and expensive use of water. It will require
a big increase in the amount of food produced in the future. And he worries
that the quality of the crops will drop. "This policy will have a
tremendous effect," he frets. His skepticism is shared by the International Monetary Fund, which took the
Walk into Carmela
Ugo's pasta and bakery store on
"We're
trying to resist raising prices," she says. "The danger is that the
more they go up, the less people buy. But so far they're still buying."
She stops to serve a customer a slice of focaccia for
lunch before getting on to her pet peeve, the pasta strike.
"
Just
blown up by the media," she says. "If you're going to strike, you
need to stage one like we had in the 1970s. Back then, pasta stores and bakeries
closed down altogether for the day." She beams. "Now that was a
real strike."
The
ANNOTICO Reports Can be Viewed (and are Archived) on:
Italia
Italia
Mia: http://www.ItaliaMia.com (3 years)
Annotico
Email: annotico@earthlink.net