Memo to Cameron: Floods are actually in charge of us

There had to be a moment when a changed climate resulting from global warming caused persistent extreme weather. With horrific storms and floods in Britain and France, the worst drought in California since records began and temperatures over 40º in Australia, that moment has arrived.

David Cameron is now "in charge of the floods" – but in reality the floods are in charge of us.  

Thousands of people are without power, roads are impassable, the sea is encroaching into town centres and breaking down sea walls. Some villages have been cut off for weeks, all normal life put on hold. Yesterday police helicopters cruised the Somerset levels, warning people to leave their homes.

Cameron announced the ConDem government will contribute an extra £100m (literally a drop in the ocean) and stated "there is no limit to what this government will do - whether it is dredging the rivers Tone and Parrett (on the Somerset levels), whether it is support for our emergency services, whether it is fresh money for flood defences, whether it is action across the board, this Government will help those families and get this issue sorted".

But it can't be "sorted" in that sense. Quick fixes are of no use here.

In the medium term, Devon and Cornwall are going to be cut out of the rail network for as long as six months and probably longer if it proves unrealistic to rebuild along the coastal route.

In the longer term, there will be a massive speed up of coastal erosion. We have seen the beginnings of that this month. Villages that have existed since medieval times may become uninhabitable.

Dredging the Somerset levels is a disastrous idea. It will force streams and rivers into unnatural gorges, where water will rush towards the sea, spilling over every time it hits a pinch point - say a bridge. Villages and farms on the levels will see a slight diminution of floods but the water will burst river banks in towns like Taunton.

There is another way, which is to accept that during winter storms some farm land will be flooded. Adding huge quantities of organic matter to the fields - that is compost - would ensure they hold the water and drain well when the storms end. This would mean turning away from chemical farming.

We need to create open space in towns and cities. We need to stop building on flood plains and where have already done it, take urgent measures to improve drainage. The environment agency wants to regulate so new housing developments must be built with a soak-away - open land to hold excess water when rainfall is too much for sewer drains. But the construction industry opposes this simple measure, because they would not be able to crush quite so many homes on to every site.

The system of capitalist economy privileges private ownership and profit above all other considerations, and our market state governments have become simply another facet of this whole. The idea the state should pay for infrastructure has been rubbished for decades. The days when they could act in opposition to business interests in the public interest have long gone.

Climate change will increasingly create chaotic social conditions and we know that governments' first response to disorder is generally to crack down on the population. But they can't crack down on the weather - it's bigger than all of us.

It has become clear during the floods that people have had to rely on their own resilience and social solidarity to get through. A hands-off state has proved incompetent and unable to prepare for what was on the cards. This is true on a regional, national and global scale as well.

The lessons are pretty stark. Society’s resources have to be marshalled in a co-operative and democratic way so we can decide how best to respond to extreme weather, which is here to stay. Weather is now first and foremost a political question of power. At the moment, it’s in the hands of incompetent politicians and their developer friends. That's what has to change.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

More of the same won't solve the food crisis

An intensifying global climate and farming emergency is threatening the security and affordability of food while leading international agencies view the crisis as an investment opportunity.

In the UK, the wettest autumn on record, followed by the coldest spring in 50 years has devastated spring wheat. Normally at this time of year UK farmers would export 2.5m tonnes - this year food processing companies will import a similar amount.

In central Europe, the state of emergency continues in the aftermath of unprecedented flooding wreaking havoc across Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic. At least 18 people were killed, and tens of thousands evacuated.

The European Union is struggling to count the cost in lost production, but the areas affected by the floods and heavy rains are amongst some of Europe's key farming areas, including in Italy.

In the United States, wildfires are raging in drought affected south west states of Colorado, New Mexico, California and Oregon.

Every US state west of a line from Minnesota in the north to Mississippi in the south (with the exception of the far north states on the border with Canada) is now entering a second year of drought.  Some 80% of US agriculture land was affected in 2012 and there is no sign of any let up.

The US agriculture department is warning consumers of 15% price increases for meat, dairy and cereal products.

Meanwhile the eastern half of the US been swept by yet another Atlantic storm. The strength and frequency of these is being driven by climate change. A US government study warns that "for each 1°C increase in tropical sea surface temperatures, hurricane surface wind speeds will increase by 1 to 8% and core rainfall rates by 6 to 18%".

As Peter Kendall, president of the UK's National Farmers Union has said: “Climate change scientists have long predicted that agriculture will face major challenges from global warming. However 2012 has starkly demonstrated the cost that extreme weather events can wreak on farmers and the food supply chain.”

The OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2013-2022 says agricultural production will grow by just 1.5% a year on average over the coming decade, compared with annual growth of 2.1% between 2003 and 2012. That's not even enough to feed the growth in population over the same period.

They go on to warn that a repeat of the drought of 2012 could raise world food prices by between 15-40%.

But they can only offer more of the same market-driven solutions, and in fact present the crisis as an investment opportunity for cash-strapped governments:

"Agriculture is an increasingly market-driven sector, as opposed to policy-driven as it was in the past, thus offering developing countries important investment opportunities and economic benefits, given their growing food demand, potential for production expansion and comparative advantages in many global markets."

They do not explain how this approach will feed the world's people, since all the land grabbing and intensive application of chemicals of recent years have totally failed to deliver more food.

There is no room here to set out an alternative agriculture policy, but suffice it to say that growing close to the point of consumption, using organic methods and shifting away from high meat and high processed diets can succeed where industrial farming has failed.

And doesn't that describe pretty accurately the kind of agriculture pursued by those who are currently being driven off their land to make way for the agri-businesses? No profit in there for Monsanto or Walmart though.

The food “plateau” is just another example of how capitalism is incapable of moving forward a single step to meet society's needs, and is actually in reverse. It is time we opted for a very different diet.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Drought is good - for Monsanto's profits, that is

The drive to put the chemical industry totally in control of agriculture is resulting in record profits for agri-chemical giant Monsanto and record droughts last year for the United States, Brazil and other parts of South America.

Hang on – isn’t it a bit tenuous to directly connect the one to the other, the profits to the drought? Well, the global corporations and their servile governments would say so, but if you unpick the relationship it is clear enough.

Monsanto’s earnings in the three months to November 2012 were $339 billion, up from $126 billion the previous year, that’s two and a half times greater. This resulted from a 27% increase in sales of genetically modified corn seeds, mainly to farmers in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, and of pesticides, particularly the weed killer Roundup.

It is axiomatic that if Monsanto sells more GM corn seed it will sell more Roundup, because the main characteristic of GM corn is that it “Roundup ready” and can tolerate repeated applications. It’s a deadly symbiotic relationship that is polluting land and water supply throughout the world.

Of course, all this intensive cropping needs more fertiliser. Since 1990, consumption of fertiliser in Brazil has increased by 7% every single year and in China and India by 5%.

This intensive style of agriculture abuses the soil by forcing it to produce more than it is organically able to. As the soil become impoverished, more and more fertiliser and pesticides are applied. As the markets for grain increase, more and more land is drawn into this cycle of degradation.

Over the past five decades, global arable land increased by 67 million hectares, much of it from cleared forests or scrub, transforming carbon sinks into carbon emitters.

Why do we need these vast quantities of grain and oil crops? It is not for food, but to service the expansion of the highly profitable (deeply unhealthy) meat diet from the developed capitalist economies to the rest of the world. And it is also to expand into the highly profitable (and subsidised by us) bioethanol market.

The global industrialised food system is responsible for one-third of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a partnership of 15 research centres around the world. And agriculture is responsible for 86% of that, closely followed by fertiliser manufacture and refrigeration.

Last year was the hottest in US history (as far back as the records go) with more than 62% of the land mass suffering some level of drought. The drought has continued into winter and next year’s early wheat may not germinate. There have been wildfires in December.

In north-eastern Brazil, cattle are dying in thousands and farmers are reduced to feeding them cactus. The drought threatens power cuts in big cities like Salvador and Recife, as the water falls below the levels where hydro-electric power stations can function.

But Monsanto’s US order book is reported to be extremely healthy. The drought has made American farmers fear a seed shortage so they are getting their orders in early. Monsanto’s scientists are working flat out on “drought-resistant” seed – so they can profit further from the climate crisis they helped create.

This is entirely in line with the logic of a system that

- squanders billions of tons of animal, including human, waste instead of composting it into organic fertiliser

- feeds protein and carbohydrate to cattle while humans starve

- clears rainforest to grow palm to make bioethanol, and calls it “tackling climate change”

- adds to greenhouse gas emissions by transporting food thousands of miles from places where people are starving, to places where they are dying from obesity-related diseases.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

World Bank policies help drive global hunger

The World Bank has issued a global hunger warning after food prices soared by 10% in a single month from June to July. But this is disingenuous to say the least since the agency’s own policies backing corporate greed, are major contributors to hunger.

Maize and soybeans reached all time peaks due to an unprecedented summer of droughts and high temperatures in the United States and Eastern Europe, according to the World Bank’s latest food price watch report.

From June to July, maize and wheat rose by 25% and soybeans by 17%. The lives of millions of people are threatened, particularly in Africa and the Middle East. For example maize prices rose 113% in Mozambique in July and sorghum by 220% in South Sudan.

Drought in the US damaged crops of maize and soybeans, for which it is the world’s largest exporter. The dry summer in the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan reduced the productivity of wheat.

“We cannot allow these historic price hikes to turn into a lifetime of perils as families take their children out of school and eat less nutritious food to compensate for the high prices,” said World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim. “Countries must strengthen their targeted programmes to ease the pressure on the most vulnerable population, and implement the right policies.”

But this is hypocritical since the Bank’s own policies, supporting the requirements of the corporations and the rest of the global élite, are major contributors to hunger.

For example, the global land grab is entirely endorsed by the agency’s free market approach. Instead of bringing in rules to end this new brutal colonialism, the Bank and the UN developed a code of practice to facilitate it.

Governments are supported to treat traditional lands as state land with the right to sell it off to the highest bidder. Their own people are driven off to work for low wages from the new masters or to join the populations in the slums and barrios of the cities.

The mono-crops grown for export, using large quantities of water and fertilizer have negative effects on local markets. Water is being pumped to support the new large-scale agri-businesses, leaving family allotments, often planted by women, without adequate supply. And when the land is bled dry – literally – the land grabbers will move on, using investment funds from corporations like Goldman Sachs, to buy cheap somewhere else.

So far over 83 million hectares of land have been part of the global rush for land - 56.2 million hectares in Africa, 5% of the continent’s total agricultural land. Worldwide, 20 million hectares of land are growing crops to feed people who live a thousand miles away or more. And of course these intensive farming methods, clearing scrub land and pumping it full of fertiliser only serve to add to greenhouse gas emissions.

The World Bank’s much-vaunted focus on developing drought-resistant grains is all about profit – these will be grown on grabbed land and then exported to feed the beef that ends up in globo-burgers, or to burn up as bio-diesel.

La Via Campesina, the global movement of peasant farmers, sums it up by saying that the so-called agrarian reform supported by institutions like the World Bank, is all about sustaining capitalism:

“Because of the global crises, taking control of the earth’s remaining resources – land, water, forests, biodiversity – has become crucial to the survival of capitalism and the corporations. At the recently concluded Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, this resource grab has been institutionalised under the label of ‘green economy’.”

Ending hunger means returning the land to the people to work in ways that mitigate the impacts of climate change that are now unavoidable. That would certainly involve abolishing capitalist agencies like the World Bank in favour of  democratic local, regional, national and international assemblies. Scientists could then help the majority develop ways to maintain themselves by sustaining the eco-systems they are a part of.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Food as a commodity sends a message

As two-thirds of the United States suffers from the largest drought to hit the country in 50 years, food crop prices rocket and speculation is rising on the financial markets.

Corn and soybeans, essential for feeding large swathes of the planet’s population, stand at record highs. Corn has jumped between 30 to 50 per cent and soybeans are up 60% since last December.

For investors in food as commodities, of course, it’s great news. The Fiscal Times, for example, put matters like this:

“Agricultural commodities have handily beaten most other asset classes so far this year as a place where investors have been able not only to generate positive returns but capture gains of 20 percent or more, depending on their ability to buy into the right contract at the right time, and roll that contract over when it approaches expiry".

Thus, big consumers of grain from Egypt and Morocco to South Korea and Taiwan are facing a renewed bout of food inflation as cash rich gamblers on the commodity exchanges drive food inflation far beyond the limits of supply and demand.

In fact, it seems that economic, social and political effects of the sharp rise in agricultural commodity prices have barely begun. And with the increased cost of food, memories of the world’s recent food crises abound.

In 2007-08 rapidly rising food prices triggered riots around the world. In 2011 wheat prices were a major factor in pushing Egypt’s masses onto the road to revolution.

This time around, in Indonesia, the tofu industry has threatened to strike over rising soyabean prices; in Mexico, the cost of corn tortillas is on the rise; and Iran last week witnessed a rare protest over the cost of chicken.

Now, sharply rising food prices are intensifying the already existing impact of austerity measures imposed by governments since 2008.  Austerity measures are of course part of the effort to pass the responsibility for debts accumulated in bailing out the banks onto already beleaguered populations.

The World Bank is one of many agencies of the global capitalist class that are worried. Africa is their last hope of a source of profitable growth for corporations in the deepening global depression.

“Certainly there is a lot of reason to worry’ says Mthuli Ncube, Chief Economist and Vice President of the African Development Bank (AfDB).

“It is a threat … if they (the food prices) keep rising, again we will have social upheaval that will threaten economic growth in Africa”

Another global food price spike will squeeze net food importers in Africa. It will combine with the euro zone crisis in Europe and the continuing slowdown in China’s growth to negatively impact African exporters of oil and other commodities.

But, naturally, the Bank’s first and only concern is to return to profitable growth – the self-vicious circle of profit-fuelled commodity production process that has culminated in the present crisis.

The ways in which abnormal weather conditions like the US drought interact with global warming and climate change is extremely complex. But even Brad Plummer of the mainstream Washington Post is now warning about the effects of climate change on US farmers.

He has concluded that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2012 report on extreme events, which brings together existing investigations, concluded that it was probable that droughts would “become more intense in many parts of the world if the planet keeps heating up — a trend that could disrupt the world’s food supply”.

The use of land and food production to generate profit and for speculation is fundamentally incompatible with feeding the world’s population.  Breaking the vicious circle between the corporate profit system, climate change and the threat of starvation for millions on the planet is most urgent.

A global network of People’s Assemblies can remove break the cycle by seizing control of the land, factories, offices and infrastructure and setting out on a path to sustainable production replacing the chase for profits with the interests of the planet and those who live on it.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

Policies for the global food crisis

The food crisis may have slipped from the headlines, but almost a billion people face starvation in 2009. Drought and high prices, along with a diversion to bio-fuels and higher costs in the West, will reduce production in most of the world's major grain producers.

A report from the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) this week warns that food shortages are growing. In Eastern and Southern Africa, almost 30 million people face hunger due to three years of drought caused by global warming, combined with political conflict and the market system imposed by corporate globalisation.

Half of China's winter wheat harvest has been hit by drought and India is experiencing low rainfall. In Argentina, a year-long drought has killed nearly one million animals and destroyed half the grain. It is the same in Paraguay and in Uruguay average rainfall fell by more than third in the last twelve months.

The FAO report says that not only are the poor getting poorer, but formerly better off people are eating less. They are cutting back on education and health costs to buy food, and selling the assets they rely on for the future, such as land, tools, livestock.

Richer countries are not immune. In Australia, the coastal areas where agriculture thrived are now marginal for production, due to drought. In California a third year of drought is adding to an economic crisis that has Governor Schwarzenegger trying to balance the books with a tax increase, which the state legislature won’t pass.

California has the highest increase in unemployment and the largest number of home repossessions in the US. Things can only get worse – the melt water which is the basis of its agriculture, is coming to an end as rapid melting shrinks the mountain glaciers.

Meanwhile, the global chemical corporations continue their programme of trapping every farmer – large and small – in their net. The UN is desperately trying to win support for a new legal regime that stops patenting of crop varieties, but the powerful elites will ensure they don’t succeed.

And while drought resistant varieties are urgently needed, if developed in the current profit-driven system only the largest industrial farms will benefit. Small and medium sized farms will disappear.

However, there is another way forward. Here are some proposals:

• The whole chain of food production is taken out of the hands of profit-driven corporations – both agri-business and supermarket chains.
• Working democratically, farmers, distributors and consumers develop a holistic, sustainable, not-for-profit system that feeds everybody. 
• Land is brought into common ownership and producers are supported with fair prices.
• To counter the immediate crisis, drought resistant varieties are developed with public money diverted from weapons production.
• A new system of fertilisation is introduced, with composting carbon waste a legal requirement. Crop rotation is reinstated and a focus on local food reduces the need for mono-culture.
• Farmers in very marginal farming areas are helped to sustainably grow bio-fuels, to power their own homes, schools, hospitals and earn a livelihood.
  

What does everybody think? For years the system of “aid to poor countries” has failed and under the impact of global warming is collapsing altogether. The poorest in every country – even in California – are facing hunger in 2009. We have a chance to prevent it – but we need to act now.

Penny Cole
Environment editor