Food: A luxury Item?

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via AlterNet:



Food: A luxury Item?

By Frei Betto, Latin America in Movement. Posted July 16, 2008.

The average price of food has tripled in the last twelve months. We may soon be buying our groceries from a boutique.



Who would have imagined having to go to a boutique to buy rice, beans, vegetables, and meat? But perhaps this reality is not so far off. The average price of food has tripled in the last twelve months.

Last year, the owners of the world invested $134 billion in the industry of death -- arms manufacturing -- a 45% increase from just ten years ago, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI. Governments invested 2.5% of the global GDP in military spending. Worldwide, $202 billion was invested per capita in feeding the beasts of the Apocalypse with missiles, bombs, mines, and nuclear arms. In summary: according to the FAO, compared to spending on food, the amount spent on arms surpassed it 191 times over!

In 2007, the United States accounted for 45% of the world's arms sales. Today, this market is dominated by 41 American companies and 34 in Western Europe. In the last ten years, U.S. military spending has increased by 65%, surpassing the total monetary investment in World War II. This is the price of the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In addition to the brutal disparities between what is invested in death (arms) and what is applied to life (food), the petroleum crisis, with barrels costing over $130, raises the cost of food terribly. In the last fifty years, agriculture has industrialized, leading to an increase of 250% in global cereal harvests. But this does not mean that grains are cheaper or that they are reaching the mouths of the hungry. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/91614/?ses=2840c1374e98363c7d5424145a33691f