That's good news, but this isn't (more at Bloomberg.com):
Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) -- The bag of green peas, stamped “USAID From the American People,” took more than six months to reach Haylar Ayako.
For seven of his grandchildren, that was a lifetime.
They died as the peas journeyed from North Dakota to southern Ethiopia. During that time, the American growers, processors and transporters that profit from aid shipments were fighting off a proposal before Congress to speed deliveries by buying more from foreign producers near trouble spots. As a result of legal mandates to buy U.S. goods, the world’s most generous food relief program wasn’t fast or flexible enough to feed the starving in Ethiopia’s drought-ridden South Omo region this year.
Companies Benefit
Cargill Inc., Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Bunge Ltd. accounted for 47 percent of 2007 commodities spending for aid, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The program was created in the 1950s, partly to reduce domestic surpluses. The regulations require that almost all the peas, corn and other crops come from American sources, effectively steering the bulk of the business to the biggest food-trading companies.
The rules also stipulate that 75 percent of the food must be transported on U.S.-flagged vessels, benefiting ship operators, including Liberty Maritime Corp., based in Lake Success, New York, and Sealift Inc., of Oyster Bay, New York. In 2007, the program’s shipping contracts were worth $385 million, according to the USDA.
Politics isn’t the only manmade cause of the disaster that befell Ayako and his family in Ethiopia. Dozens of interviews on six continents show that the global food crisis also has roots in the failure by governments of developing countries to invest in agriculture, in a three-fold jump in fertilizer prices over two years and in speculators who doubled bets on grain futures and drove prices to records.
(More)
beware of the leopard
· 11 months ago
O & W, you rock!
mike in dc
· 11 months ago
This is horrible news disguised as good news. Malaria is one of the few factors that has helped slow down the destruction of rainforests in the tropics. With the elimination of this disease, I am afraid that civilization will encroach more rapidly on these habitats, which have been vanishing at an alarming rate for decades.
ekwhite
· 11 months ago
I guess it is alright for the brown people in a foreign country to get a horrible debilitating disease. How do you feel about the polio vaccine, or the DTP vaccine you got as a kid? Or the Smallpox vaccine? Or antibiotics? Or are they OK because they helped white people?
mike in dc
· 11 months ago
My point of view has nothing to do with race. I simply don't want to see the entire surface of the planet covered with strip malls, condos, and parking lots. There are plenty of places away from the tropics that I would be delighted to see restored to their natural state at the expense of white people and people of other races.
cosanostradamus
· 11 months ago
. We're big on tropical med's here in Hawaii. No malaria to speak of. Leprosy, dengue fever, leptospirosis. Not in Waikiki, of course... (?)
This vaccine looks very promising to me. Malaria is a tough nut to crack, however, because of antigenic variation. Glaxo SmithKline appears to have found a way around that problem. Excellent news indeed.
All Comments
Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) -- The bag of green peas, stamped “USAID From the American People,” took more than six months to reach Haylar Ayako.
For seven of his grandchildren, that was a lifetime.
They died as the peas journeyed from North Dakota to southern Ethiopia. During that time, the American growers, processors and transporters that profit from aid shipments were fighting off a proposal before Congress to speed deliveries by buying more from foreign producers near trouble spots. As a result of legal mandates to buy U.S. goods, the world’s most generous food relief program wasn’t fast or flexible enough to feed the starving in Ethiopia’s drought-ridden South Omo region this year.
Companies Benefit
Cargill Inc., Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Bunge Ltd. accounted for 47 percent of 2007 commodities spending for aid, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The program was created in the 1950s, partly to reduce domestic surpluses. The regulations require that almost all the peas, corn and other crops come from American sources, effectively steering the bulk of the business to the biggest food-trading companies.
The rules also stipulate that 75 percent of the food must be transported on U.S.-flagged vessels, benefiting ship operators, including Liberty Maritime Corp., based in Lake Success, New York, and Sealift Inc., of Oyster Bay, New York. In 2007, the program’s shipping contracts were worth $385 million, according to the USDA.
Politics isn’t the only manmade cause of the disaster that befell Ayako and his family in Ethiopia. Dozens of interviews on six continents show that the global food crisis also has roots in the failure by governments of developing countries to invest in agriculture, in a three-fold jump in fertilizer prices over two years and in speculators who doubled bets on grain futures and drove prices to records.
(More)
We're big on tropical med's here in Hawaii. No malaria to speak of. Leprosy, dengue fever, leptospirosis. Not in Waikiki, of course... (?)
It's funnier in pictures.
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http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/~biocomp/hawaii.php
Thank GAWD we're not birds!
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