Tag: food

Back to the Future With Price Controls

Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris is demonstrating why monetary debasement has always been a favorite way for government officials to plunder the citizenry. Rather than focusing on the Federal Reserve as the root cause of prices rising across society, she’s blaming rising food prices on grocery-store owners. Consequently, she says that if she is elected president, she’ll get a federal “anti-gouging” law enacted that prevents grocery stores from raising prices.

In other words, she’s going to impose price controls, which inevitably means that we are going to have to deal with shortages of everything in grocery stores that has a price control imposed on it.

Of course, this is what governments have done since the invention of the printing press. Debasing the currency by printing ever-increasing quantities of money and then blaming the resulting rising prices on greedy, rapacious, evil, profit-seeking, capitalist swine has always been the way that government officials plunder the citizenry without having the citizenry figure out what the government is doing to them.

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First Rule of Famine Club

One of the worst things governments can do when things go badly — but always seem to do — is make price controls. Gas on fire.

In case of actual food emergency, police military, thugs, and hungry people, go house to house, warehouse to warehouse, farm to farm — and seize food. People become expert at hiding food.

Farms often are picked over by plagues of locust-people. Farmers stop farming…

Hoarders, speculators, and preppers are different sorts, but they all get blamed as if they are hoarders.

Hoarders who buy everything they can get at last minute are a problem.

Preppers actually REDUCE the problem because they are not starving and stressing the supplies, but preppers get blamed as if they are hoarders.

Speculators, as with preppers, often buy far in advance of the problems and actually part of the SOLUTION. They buy when prices are lower and supplies are common.

Speculators can be fantastic. When prices skyrocket, speculators find a way to get their supplies to market even when they must travel far even to another country. But dirty governments run by dimwits will often call speculators “hoarders” and arrest them and seize their supplies.

Governments who often cause food emergencies always blame farmers, distributors, retailers, for price gouging and hoarding. Government price fixing, seizures, crime from government, and street thugs, causes actual production and distribution to plummet. That’s when the REAL problems start — and potatoes are worth far more than gold.

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The Rockefeller Foundation and the destruction of global agriculture

In their latest report, ‘True Cost of Food: Measuring What Matters to Transform the US Food System’, the Rockefeller Foundation is deeply engaged in a coordinated effort to radically change the way we produce food and how we calculate its true cost. They claim it is part of a global consensus, through the UN, to create “sustainable” agriculture amid the ongoing covid breakdown crisis. Far from being a positive change, it is intended to radically change our access to healthy food and our choice of what we eat. The Foundation, which has just released the second food report in two years, is partnering with the Davos World Economic Forum and big agribusiness to lead the drive. Their new slogan is “True Cost of Food.”

True Cost?

Rajiv Shah, President of the Foundation writes, “We spent the past year working with experts and advocates across the field to measure impact of the US food system. The result is the first US-wide set of metrics that can help us measure the cost of our food more accurately. With this new analysis, governments, advocates, food producers, and individuals are better equipped to transform our food system to be more nourishing, regenerative, and equitable …”

Here is where the words must be looked at more closely. These guys are experts at neuro-linguistic programming (“NLP”). In effect, it reads as if the same Rockefeller Foundation responsible for our industrialised, globalised food chain and the destruction that process has wrought on not only the family farm but also the quality of our global agriculture and diet, is now blaming their creation for huge external costs of our food. However, they write as if the greedy family farmer is to blame, not corporate agribusiness.

Shah states, “This report is a wake-up call. The US food system as it stands is adversely affecting our environment, our health, and our society.” Shah’s Rockefeller study states, “The US food system’s current set-up has led to costly impacts on the health of people, society and the planet. Global warming, reduced biodiversity, water and air pollution, food waste and the high incidence of diet-related illnesses are key unintended consequences of the current production system.” This is ominous.

The study adds, “ The burden of impact of these costs are disproportionately borne by communities that are marginalised and underserved, often communities of colour, many of whom are the backbone as farmers, fishers, ranchers and food workers.”

Using a Dutch group, True Price Foundation, the report calculates that the “true cost” of the US food system is not the $1.1 trillion that Americans spend annually on food, but rather at least $3.2 trillion per year when taking into account its impact on the health of people, livelihoods and the environment. This huge added cost is calculated mainly from health effects including cancer and diabetes and environmental effects such as CO2 emissions of what they call “unsustainable” agriculture. True Cost Foundation has a three-man board including Herman Mulder, a former banker with ABN Amro, one of the world’s leading agribusiness banks; Charles Evers, former Corporate controller and CFO with Unilever NV (1981-2002), one of the world’s leading agribusiness giants; and Jasper de Jong, Partner at Allen & Overy, one of the world’s largest law firms based in London. This is the team behind pricing such abstractions as a tonne of CO2 and other costs for the Rockefeller report. The only point is that CO2 is a harmless essential component of all life and is no cause for a rising global temperature.

Also notable about the Rockefeller report, True Cost of Food, is that the contributors included law school professors, university economists, the World Wildlife Fund (“WWF”), and the True Cost Foundation. No single farmer organisation was included.

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No Farms, No Food

We live in a world where oligarchs accumulate land, use their media assets to denigrate natural foods and invest in fake alternatives. On the other ‘side’, wealthy professionals calling themselves freedom fighters travel the world and the internet insisting we should eat organic and local. Meanwhile, the food security of many of the eight billion-plus of us remains at the mercy of the weather, diseases and insects. Neither side offers a viable solution or much benefit for many beyond themselves.

An increasing realisation of the corruption and greed that drives much of our New Normal is motivating a growing movement for self-sufficiency. Local sourcing of natural-grown foods is coupled with denigration of big agribusiness and industrialised food production. Incoherently, it is also often coupled with claims that those backing the big agribusiness enemy are aiming for depopulation, while the way in which small-scale agriculture will feed the world’s growing population is left unexplained.

From the comfort of big jet planes made in huge factories, it is now possible to gain likes by posting photos of the organic and rather cute livestock we left back home. These can be supplemented with pictures of the Thai rice, Costa Rican coffee and Mexican avocados from our favorite brunch spot. This approach to food and agriculture is a hobby, and a good one. But the world cannot support eight billion such hobbies.

The other side of the agriculture coin has also been doing us harm: an obese population in rich countries with declining life expectancy, fat on industrial corn syrup, seed oils and other unnatural metabolism adulterators, coupled with declining physical activity. Nor are we benefiting from unevidenced claims that diets including meat or raw milk will somehow restart an age of plagues. Or that humans should transform themselves into insectivores.

Regulating independent family farmers out of business, with their generations of knowledge, is not a step forward either but a decimation of rural society and human dignity – of the reason for living in the first place. Replacing them with centralised fake food factories funded by wealthy investors and their pet celebrities will concentrate wealth rather than food security. To survive and thrive – all of us – we need to face the realities of growing and delivering huge quantities of healthy human food.

We feed far more, and live far better, than past Malthusians predicted because we grow more food and store and transport it more effectively than they thought we could. That is not an ‘elitist’ thing, it is quite the opposite. Like the rest of life, we need to continue to progress, but keep that progress in all our hands rather than a greed-driven few – which is the unavoidable challenge of all human progress, and a challenge our agencies are now failing. But in fighting for food freedom, we must still feed over eight billion. This means investing in large-scale farm machinery and supply and food management infrastructure – in large agricultural enterprises.

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Farming To Feed Eight Billion Is A Business, Not A Hobby

We live in a world where oligarchs accumulate land, use their media assets to denigrate natural foods, and invest in fake alternatives. On the other ‘side’, wealthy professionals calling themselves freedom-fighters travel the world and the internet insisting we should eat organic and local. Meanwhile, the food security of many of the eight billion plus of us remains at the mercy of the weather, diseases and insects. Neither side offers a viable solution, or much benefit for many beyond themselves..

An increasing realization of the corruption and greed that drives much of our New Normal is motivating a growing movement for self-sufficiency. Local sourcing of natural-grown foods is coupled with denigration of big agribusiness and industrialized food production. Incoherently, it is also often coupled with claims that those backing the big agribusiness enemy are aiming for depopulation, while the way in which small-scale agriculture will feed the world’s growing population is left unexplained.

From the comfort of big jet planes made in huge factories, it is now possible to gain likes by posting photos of the organic and rather cute livestock we left back home. These can be supplemented with pictures of the Thai rice, Costa Rican coffee and Mexican avocados from our favorite brunch spot. This approach to food and agriculture is a hobby, and a good one. But the world cannot support eight billion such hobbies.

The other side of the Agriculture coin has also been doing us harm; an obese population in rich countries with declining life expectancy, fat on industrial corn syrup, seed oils and other unnatural metabolism adulterators, coupled with declining physical activity. Nor are we gaining by unevidenced claims that diets including meat or raw milk will somehow restart an age of plagues. Or that humans should transform themselves into insectivores.

Regulating independent family farmers out of business, with their generations of knowledge, is not a step forward either but a decimation of rural society and human dignity – of the reason for living in the first place. Replacing them with centralized fake food factories funded by wealthy investors and their pet celebrities will concentrate wealth rather than food security. To survive and thrive – all of us – we need to face the realities of growing and delivering huge quantities of healthy, human food.

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Study Confirms — Trans Fats Policy Killed Millions

For the past six decades, saturated fats and cholesterol have been wrongly vilified as the central culprit of heart disease, stroke and peripheral vascular disease. However, research has demonstrated that it’s actually trans fats and processed vegetable oils found in many processed foods that are the real enemy.

In the decades saturated fats were demonized, the food industry responded by replacing saturated fats with more shelf-stable trans fats and a new market of low-fat (high-sugar) foods was born.

Americans’ health has plummeted ever since, and millions have been prematurely killed by this mistake. Making matters worse, genetically engineered soy oil, which is a major source of trans fat, can oxidize inside your body, thereby causing damage to both your heart and your brain.

One of the first articles published exonerating saturated fats was in 1957 by the late Dr. Fred Kummerow,1 who spent eight decades absorbed in the science of lipids and heart disease. In 2013, Kummerow sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for not withdrawing trans fats from the market.2 It was Kummerow’s lifetime work that revealed the dangers of trans fat and oxidized cholesterol and the relationship to heart disease.

Not surprisingly, trans fat is also linked to dementia as the arterial changes that occur in the heart muscle also occur in the brain, triggering neurological damage. Research has demonstrated the dangers to health and a great financial burden that eating a diet with trans fat has placed on the American public.

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Kamala Harris’ solution to climate change is to alter the food pyramid and force Americans to eat less meat

At a CNN Climate Town Hall on Sept. 4, 2019, then-Sen. Kamala Harris wanted the government to create “incentives” for Americans to eat less meat, even agreeing to change the food pyramid. According to her, this could curb the effects of climate change.

The event was part of the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. Before she dropped out of the race, a voter asked if she supported changing the nation’s dietary guidelines to reduce the consumption of red meat – because, according to the woman, climate change is linked to the “overproduction of red meat.”

Harris answered: “I think the point that you’re raising in a broader context, which is that, as a nation, we actually have to have a real priority at the highest level of government around what we eat and in terms of healthy eating because we have a problem in America.”

“So the answer is yes,” she continued. “I will also say this: The balance that we have to strike here, frankly, is about what government can and should do around creating incentives, and then banning certain behaviors.”

During the same gathering, she admitted to having cheeseburgers from time to time. “But there also has to be what we do in terms of creating incentives that we will eat in a healthy way, that we will encourage moderation, and that we will be educated about the effect of our eating habits on our environment. We have to do a much better job at that, and the government has to do a much better job at that,” she said.

Meanwhile, the administration of President Joe Biden has been pushing ways to combat climate change by reducing carbon dioxide emissions, switching to electric vehicles and allegedly even eating meat substitutes such as bugs rather than consuming red meat.

“Joe Biden’s climate plan includes cutting 90 percent of red meat from our diets by 2030,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) tweeted in 2021. “They want to limit us to about four pounds a year. Why doesn’t Joe stay out of my kitchen?” But Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack denied it back then.

“There is no effort designed to limit people’s intake of beef coming out of President Biden’s White House or USDA,” Vilsack said as reported by Politico. “Sometimes in the political world, games get played and issues are injected into the conversation knowing full well that there’s no factual basis.”

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The UN’s Green Agenda Will Spark Famine

“We The Peoples of the United Nations determined…to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,” — United Nations Charter Preamble (1945)

This is the second part in a series looking at the plans of the United Nations (UN) and its agencies designing and implementing the agenda of the Summit of the Future in New York on 22-23 September 2024, and its implications for global health, economic development, and human rights. Previously the impact on health policy of the climate agenda was analyzed.

The right to food once drove UN policy towards reducing hunger with a clear focus on low- and middle-income countries. Like the right to health, food has increasingly become a tool of cultural colonialism – the imposition of a narrow ideology of a certain Western mindset over the customs and rights of the ‘peoples’ that the UN represents. This article discusses how it happened and the dogmas on which it relies.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the farming equivalent of the World Health Organization (WHO), was founded in 1945 as a specialized United Nations (UN) agency with a mission to “achieve food security for all.” Its motto “Fiat panis” (Let there be bread) reflects that mission. Headquartered in Rome, Italy, it counts 195 Member States, including the European Union. The FAO relies on more than 11,000 staff, with 30% being based in Rome.

Of its US$3.25 billion biennial 2022-23 budget, 31% comes from assessed contributions paid by Members, with the remainder being voluntary. A large share of voluntary contributions come from Western governments (US, EU, Germany, Norway), development banks (e.g. World Bank Group), and other lesser-known publicly- and privately-funded entities set up for assisting environmental conventions and projects (including the Global Environment Facility, Green Climate Fund and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation). Thus, like the WHO, most of its work now consists of implementing the dictates of its donors.

The FAO was instrumental in implementing the 1960s and 1970s Green Revolution, associated with a doubling in world food production that lifted many Asian and Latin American populations out of food insecurity. The use of fertilizers, pesticides, controlled irrigation, and hybridized seeds was considered a major achievement for hunger eradication, despite resulting pollution to soil, air, and water systems and facilitation of the emergence of new resistant strains of pests. The FAO was supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) founded in 1971 – a publicly funded group with the mission to conserve and improve seed varieties and their genetic pools. Private philanthropies, including the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, also played supportive roles.

Successive World Food Summits held in 1971, 1996, 2002, 2009, and 2021 have punctuated the FAO’s history. At the second summit, world leaders committed themselves to “achieving food security for all and to an ongoing effort to eradicate hunger in all countries” and declared “the right of everyone to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger” (Rome Declaration on World Food Security).

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DOD Funds Research on Fake Meat Rations to Improve Soldiers’ ‘Military Readiness’

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has partnered with the BioIndustrial Manufacturing and Design Ecosystem (BioMADE) to produce lab-grown foods intended to feed the nation’s military. The public-private partnership, which is largely DOD funded, released a project call in May 2024 looking for proposals in a number of focus areas, including “sustainable food production.”1

Under this category, the Sustainable Logistics for Advanced Manufacturing (SLAM) project includes a call for innovations in food production that “could include, but are not limited to, production of nutrient-dense military rations via fermentation processes, utilizing one carbon molecule (C1) feedstocks for food production, and novel cell culture methods suitable for the production of cultivated meat/protein.”2

Ultimately, the partnership sets up military members as lab rats who will be fed synthetically grown, ultraprocessed junk foods in lieu of a healthy, whole-food-based diet.

DOD Plans to Feed Soldiers Fake Meat

The biotech industry is rolling out a “tsunami of fake foods”3 that are being positioned as environmentally friendly and health-promoting alternatives to real foods like meat and dairy. Lab-grown meat may one day represent 80% or more of the “meat” consumed worldwide,4 a dramatic departure from the way humans have eaten for centuries.

The DOD describes BioMADE as “a nonprofit created by the Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC).” In 2020, it awarded the outfit $87 million in funding for a new Manufacturing Innovation Institute (MII):5

“Through a close relationship with DOD and the Military Services, BioMADE will work to establish long-term and dependable bioindustrial manufacturing capabilities for a wide array of products.

Anticipated bioindustrial manufacturing applications include the following products: chemicals, solvents, detergents, reagents, plastics, electronic films, fabrics, polymers, agricultural products (e.g., feedstock), crop protection solutions, food additives, fragrances, and flavors.”

However, the DOD also funds innovation grants, each of which has a $2-million limit up to a total budget of $500 million — funding that earmarked at least in part for BioMADE’s development of lab-grown fake meat products.6 In fact, in March 2023, BioMADE announced that its federal funds budget ceiling had increased from an initial $87.5 million to over $500 million.7

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) condemned the idea. Ethan Lane, NCBA vice president of government affairs, said in a press release:8

“It is outrageous that the Department of Defense is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to feed our heroes like lab rats … American troops deserve to be served that same wholesome, natural meat and not ultraprocessed, lab-grown protein that is cooked up in a chemical-filled bioreactor.

This misguided research project is a giant slap in the face to everyone that has served our country. Our veterans and active-duty troops deserve so much better than this.”

Former U.S. Special Forces member Martin Bailey further told the Daily Mail:9

“I think the government should focus on letting the military protect our nation from enemies, foreign and domestic, sometimes, but you know, that’s what the military is there for. They’re not there to be experimental lab rats … why doesn’t the government feed experimental meat product that, you don’t even know what it is, why don’t they feed that to, let’s say, homeless people?

Well, there’s a reason they don’t, because that would be completely unethical. So why is it ethical to stick it down the throat of our military service members?”

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Free drink refills could be banned in Wales

Free drink refills could be banned at restaurants and cafes as part of new proposals by the Welsh government.

Health Secretary Eluned Morgan has launched a consultation to restrict “promotions of food products high in fat, sugar and salt”.

It also proposes to restrict retailers from putting forward offers, such as buy one get one free, on unhealthy food.

The Welsh government said it was “supporting people in Wales to make the healthy choice”.

The consultation outlines proposed legislation which the Welsh government said was “taking action to improve our food environment”.

  • It includes a proposal to prohibit retailers from offering free drink refills, which many high street restaurants including Nando’s and Five Guys offer.
  • Another proposal will prevent retailers offering promotions, including buy-one-get-one-free and three-for-two offers on unhealthy food products.
  • A third proposal will bar retailers from placing high fat, sugar and salt food products in certain locations in stores, including entrances, end of aisles and checkout or queueing areas.
  • It will also apply to online equivalents including website entry pages, shopping basket and payment pages.

The Welsh government said food products with poor nutritional value were promoted more than healthier products, which then influenced the food and drink people buy.

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