Scotland and the food shortages

Britain is only 70% self-sufficient in cereal grains, down from 90% in the 1980s. Scotland is even worse, at only 40%. Most of that goes into the whisky industry and to animal feed. Scotland is thus almost totally dependent on others for this most basic of commodities for human consumption, which raises the question of whether Scotland could, if need be, feed itself.

The answer is yes, but only after significant change in land use and a rather drastic adjustment of the national diet.

Professor Peter Gregory, CEO of the Scottish Crop Research Institute says: "Technically, this is not a crisis for Scotland. There is enough arable land to provide for every person in Scotland. Our cereal yields are around twice the global average."

It would be possible to start making bread for five million people living in Scotland if we switched rape fields for wheat fields.

AN EXPENSIVE TIPPLE

"While the global credit crunch has forced many consumers to rein in spending, one Beijing-based billionaire has splashed out a record $500,000 on 27 bottles of red wine, London-based Antique Wine Company said on Saturday. The anonymous Chinese entrepreneur bought a mix of vintages of Romanee Conti, a Burgundy wine and considered to be among the world's most exclusive with only 450 cases produced each year. The client bought 12 bottles of Romanee Conti 1978, two bottles of the 1961, 1966, 1996 and 2003 and single bottles of the 1981, 1990, 1992, 1995, 1999, 2001 and 2002. "It is the highest price that has ever been achieved for a single lot," Managing Director Stephen Williams of the London- based Antique Wine Company told Reuters on Saturday. "I don't think he has bought this as an investment -- he has bought it to drink," he added. "The fine wine industry is completely immune from the global credit crunch." (Yahoo News, 19 April) RD

AN ILL DIVIDED WORLD

"Almost 30 per cent of Nepal’s 27m people live in absolute poverty or on less than $1 a day." (Financial Times, 21 April) RD

Self-interest and self -praise

Another of our ill-gotten gains series

Equitable Life has enlarged the pay package of its chief executive, Charles Thomson. Thomson's total rewards rose by 22% to top £1million. Thomson's package included salary of £453,973, a salary-related bonus of £199,305, and a discretionary bonus of half his salary - the maximum permitted under an "annual retention bonus scheme for senior staff"

Thomson has been reprimanded by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries for misconduct, after being found guilty of bringing the profession into disrepute over the revelation during the court action that he had faked his job reference for Equitable in 2001. He was guilty of "failure to comply with the standards of behaviour and integrity which the public and the profession might reasonably expect of a member".

Thomson had admitted in court in April 2005 that he himself was the author of the glowing reference to his "exceptional record of success" at Scottish Widows, where he was the deputy chief executive from 1995 to 2000.The reference concluded: "We will miss his intellect, integrity, and energy and feel sure he will bring great value to other organisations at the highest levels."

Nothing like a bit of self-praise and now being richly awarded above inflation remuneration .

hunger: it’s a market thing

From Ian Bell of the Sunday Herald

Lots of food, lots of hunger: it’s a market thing.

Last week the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development was published...Its main findings were simple enough, however. There is enough food for everyone. It is cheaper and, broadly, more nutritious than it has been in decades, but 800 million go hungry...

...there are no food shortages. Instead, according to one of those complicated theories they teach at Oxford and the like, there are money shortages. Or rather - and this is apparently so complicated it never gets discussed - some people are very short of money and some are anything but...

...The relationships between land, food security, politics and bread at £1.13 a loaf are not abstract. The laws of economics should not be mistaken for acts of God...

As Bell writes , the law of economics is not abstract but neither is it complicated . Simply put , in capitalism , if you cannot pay , you cannot have , no matter your dire need . The Socialist Party understand this , as too does the working class , even if they so far have not understood or sought the solution - socialism - and it is not more abstract analysis from philosophers and politicians that is required , instead the point now is to change the way the world is organised for the benefit of the few against the interests of the many to a system where we all enjoy the fruits of our labour . That takes political action and a political movement to organise around and that requires members and commitment.

HEATHROW HOMELESS

"Each night, scores of London's homeless men and women take advantage of modern travel delays by posing as stranded passengers in order to sleep in a warm, safe place. ... Those contacted included a man sleeping under his coat, another conspicuously hiding behind an open newspaper, and a woman clutching a duty free bag, who insisted she was waiting for a flight, only to whisper when police were out of earshot, "I can't afford electricity. It's warm here. Please let me stay." (Time, 21 April) RD

NEW SOURCE OF CONFLICT?

"Equatorial Guinea sits at the heart of a deepwater corner of the Atlantic Ocean that is of growing interest to governments from Washington to Beijing. For the US, the Gulf of Guinea is the linchpin of growing sub-Saharan African oil production. Not only is it a bulwark against the troubles in the Middle East, it is also forecast to provide a quarter of US crude oil imports by 2010. China and other emerging economic powers also see an opportunity to muscle in, attracted by promises of big infrastructure projects and a relationship that is free of the colonial baggage carried by westerners in Africa. US multinationals such as ExxonMobil, Amerada Hess and Marathon Oil have, for some time, had Equatorial Guinea handily locked down, pumping more than 350,000 barrels a day."
(New Statesman, 10 April) RD

DYING FOR A JOB (2)

"Union leaders have expressed concern about the effectiveness of new laws on corporate homicide in Scotland. According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) 24 workers were killed and 2,702 people were seriously injured at their workplace in the year 2006/7.(BBC News, 6 April) RD

DYING FOR A JOB

"Fifty-four Myanmar migrants have suffocated to death in a cold storage container while being smuggled to Thailand to escape desperate conditions at home, Thai police said Thursday. The incident was the deadliest in a wave of recent tragedies as people flee economic collapse in military-ruled Myanmar and search for work in Thailand, where they often end up abused and exploited. Police said that 121 people had been crammed inside an airtight frozen seafood container measuring six metres (20 feet) long and 2.2 metres wide. Colonel Kraithong Chanthongbai, local police commander in southern Ranong province on Myanmar's border where the bodies were found late Wednesday, said the men and women were trying to get to Phuket island to work as day labourers. (Yahoo News, 10 April) RD

CAPITALIST PROGRESS?

"These are everyday stories in Ethiopia, which has the highest per capita rate of car fatalities in the world, with 190 deaths per 10,000 vehicles. Across sub-Saharan Africa, AIDS is the only killer more devastating than traffic for people ages 15 to 44. For children, traffic is the No. 1 killer. An African is 100 times more likely than an American to die in a car. According to the World Health Organization, Africa has 4 percent of the world's cars—but accounts for more than 11 percent of the world's traffic casualties and that is probably conservative. The WHO figures that road casualties in Africa are underreported by as much as twelvefold, and it predicts the death toll will rise an additional 80 percent by 2020, as the population grows and becomes more motorized." (Newsweek, 14 April) RD

HUNGER AMIDST PLENTY

"Food prices in Haiti are reported to have increased by 50 to 100 per cent in the last year. The population are particularly vulnerable because almost four-fifths live on less than $2 a day." (Times, 14 April) RD

AN UPPER CLASS TWIT

Boris Johnson speaks
" I can hardly condemn UKIP as a bunch of boss-eyed, foam-flected euro hysterics, when I have been sometimes not far short of boss-eyed, foam-flected hysteria myself (2004)."I can't remember what my line on drugs is. What's my line on drugs? (2005) "What ever James Oliver says, McDonald's are incredibly nutritious and, as far as I can tell, crammed full of vital nutrients and rigid with goodness. (2005) The awful truth is that people do take me seriously ...you must consider the possibility that underneath it all there may really lurk a genuine buffoon." (2007) (Observer Magazine, 13 April). RD

PROGRESSING BACKWARDS

The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that hundreds of thousands of people will face starvation if food prices keep rising. Dominique Strauss-Kahn said that social unrest from continuing food price inflation could cause conflict. There have been food riots recently in a number of countries, including Haiti, the Philippines and Egypt." (BBC News, 13 April) RD

A GRIM FUTURE

Recent droughts in places like Australia and Africa combined with the explosive competition inside modern capitalism has led to many experts forecasting future disasters. "In recent months the commodity prices of rice, wheat and corn has jumped 50 percent or more, pushing retail prices to levels unseen in a generation and prompting grain-exporting countries to curtail trade to suppress domestic inflation. On March 20, the World Food Program issued an emergency appeal for more funding to keep aid moving to the world's poorest countries. Last week World Bank president Robert Zoellick called for urgent global action on the part of rich nations "or many more people will suffer or starve." (Newsweek, 14 April) RD

THE GAP WIDENS

Much is made of the progressive nature of capitalism by journalists eager to prove that it is a society that is gradually making us all better off. A dissident view has recently been aired by the journalist Phillip Blond.
"The New Economics Foundation has shown that global growth has not aided the poor. In the 1980s, for every $100 of world growth, the poorest 20 per cent received $2.20; by 2001, they received only 60 cents. Clearly neo-liberal growth disproportionately benefits the rich and further impoverishes the poor. Real wage increases in the top 13 countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have been below the rate of inflation since about 1970 – a situation compounded in Britain as the measure of inflation massively underestimates the real cost of living. Thus wage earners – rather than asset owners – have faced a 35-year downward pressure on their standard of living." (Independent, 23 March) RD

A FREE SOCIETY?

"The State secret police may have died with communism but its surveillance methods are still alive at Lidl, the German supermarket chain. George Orwell's Big Brother, it seems, stalks the aisles between the cornflakes and the canned dog food, Detectives hired by Lidl - which has more than 7,000 stores worldwide, including 450 in Britain - have been monitoring romance at the cash till, visits to the lavatory and the money problems of shelf-stackers. Several hundred pages of surveillance have been passed on to Stern magazine, causing outrage among unions and data protection officials." (Times, 27 March) RD

THIS IS PROGRESS?

Apologists for capitalism like to paint a picture of a system that is gradually improving the lot of the world's poor, but recent developments show that this is a fallacy. The development of the markets in China and India and the process of arable land being used to produce bio-fuels instead of less profitable foodstuff have led to chaos throughout the world. "Rising food prices could spread social unrest across Africa after triggering riots in Niger, Senegal, Cameroon and Burkina Faso, African ministers and senior agriculture diplomats have warned. Kanayo Nwanze, the vice-president of the United Nations’ International Fund for Agriculture, told a conference in Ethiopia that food riots could become a common feature, particularly after the price of rice has doubled in three months." (Financial Times, 4 April) RD

Capitalism's Waste

Waste & Resources Action Programme reports that a third of the food we buy, amounting to 6.7 million tonnes, gets discarded from UK households annually. Fruit and vegetables are a major component at around 40% of this. The top five fruit & vegetables which get binned without even being touched are apples (4.4 million or 179,000 tonnes pa), potatoes(5.1m or 177,000 tonnes pa), bananas (1.6m or 77,000 tonnes pa), tomatoes (2.8m or 46,000 tonnes pa) and oranges (1.2m or 45,000 tonnes). Producing, storing and getting the food to UK homes consumes much energy through transport, packaging etc. If we could stop the wastage of all this food, it would save the equivalent of at least 15 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. This would be equivalent to taking 1 in 5 cars off UK roads, according to WRAP.

The amount of discarded food-stuff is boosted by supermarket marketing promotions such as "two-for-one" deals with the result millions of Britons buy more than they need and then fail to eat much of what they bought before it goes off.

The study findings show essentially that much is discarded because it simply goes off, and storage conditions at home bear much blame. Simply storing most fresh fruit and vegetables inside the fridge keeps these foods stay fresh for up to 2 weeks longer.

DOUBLE STANDARDS

"Too much public money is spent on prolonging the lives of the elderly when it could be diverted to helping young offenders, according to a senior Church of Scotland minister. The Reverend Maxwell Craig, who is now retired but retains the honorary position of Extra Chaplain to the Queen in Scotland made the comments yesterday in a newspaper column.(Times, 27 March)
We are fairly certain that the reverend gentleman is complaining about the expense of keeping old workers healthy and not the Royal Family whom he serves and who have a fairly good record of longevity. RD

British Inequality

According to this BBC report , after 30 years of unprecedented economic growth, the British are richer, healthier - but no happier than in 1973. The main reason for the rise in wealth has been the increase in house prices. But the growing wealth has not led to greater happiness.

In 1973, 86% of people said they were satisfied with their standard of living, while in 2006 85% were satisfied. And one in six UK adults reported that they suffered from a variety of mental health problems in the latest survey, of which the largest category was "mild anxiety and depression."

The amount of goods and services purchased by UK households has risen by two and half times in thirty years.

But that increase in spending was not evenly distributed among the whole population, with the income of those in the top 10% of the income distribution going up much faster than that of households of the bottom 10%. In 1979, the real disposable income of the top 10% was three times greater than the real income of those in the bottom 10%, but by 2006 that had grown to four times greater.

And social mobility also appears to have declined, according to studies cited in the report. Children born in 1958 to poor parents coming to adulthood in the 1970s, were more likely to have moved to a higher part of the income distribution than those born in 1970, who came of age in the new millennium.

And child poverty has remained stubbornly high, with 22% of children living in relative poverty in 2005/6, compared to 27% in 1990/91.