The Frog and the Scorpion

There are those who slave and there are those who eat.

From the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development: "there could be 9.1 billion people living on Earth in 2050 ... worldwide demand for food is expected to rise by 50 percent."

Fortune Magazine predicts that "as per capita incomes rise in China, India, and other parts of Asia, hundreds of millions of people will be adding meat to their daily fare. [This] ... will have a multiplier effect on demand because of the massive amounts of grain used to feed livestock. It takes seven pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef.

And there are those who feast.

The mood in the Stuyvesant Room of N.Y.'s Marriott Hotel is buoyant. For the handful of men and women in attendance, hunger is good business. The combination of more people and less land makes food a safe investment, with annual returns of 20 to 30 percent.

Susan Payne, chief executive of Emergent Asset Management, thinks farmland in sub-Saharan Africa is a real hot bet: "their farmland prices are the lowest in the world," She should know, the concern Ms. Payne represents now own 370,000 acres of arable land mainly in South Africa, Zambia and Mozambique.

Baron Rothschild agrees the market is bullish but warns that such investments risk being perceived as a blatant land grab and therefore: “An element of self policing must be adopted when dealing with farmland."

African farmers are no doubt comforted to hear that. Or not.

21st century Global Capitalism: 19th century colonialism to the 2nd power.



Oxford historian, James Anthony Froude, who once wrote that the Irish were "more like squalid apes than human beings" also observed that "England governed Ireland for what she deemed her own interest, making her calculations on the gross balance of her trade ledgers, and leaving moral obligations aside, as if right and wrong had been blotted out of the statute book of the Universe."

Word to the poor: Please, die quietly.

Asked to explain his country's touted economic growth despite reports of widespread hunger Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi responded that "the famine of 1984 was precipitated by drought in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa in general. The famine that could emerge as a result of this [current] crises is likely to be silent... [with] people suffering hunger quietly across the continent.

Mr. Zenawi, however, is a well-rewarded partner in the "War on Terror".

The consequence of recolonization under the guise of neoliberalism was predictable. As Prof. Michel Chossudovsky wrote back in 2001: The"economic therapy" imposed under IMF-World Bank jurisdiction is in large part responsible for triggering famine and social devastation in Ethiopia and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. [U]nder WTO rules, the agri-biotech conglomerates can manipulate market forces to their advantage."

Thirty years after encouraging laissez-faire policies that have large parts of Asia and Africa replicating scenes from Ireland's Great Famine the World Bank admits that the gobbling of local land by global investors has led to hunger and devastation: "by targeting countries with weak laws, buying arable land on the cheap, and then failing to deliver on promises of jobs and investments, [foreign investors] inflict serious damage."

Asked why he stung the frog who had just carried him on his back across the river, the scorpion replied, "because I'm a scorpion". The World Bank might have asked the frog if he thought a hedge fund manager can be 'self-policing'.

"Farmland is going to be one of the best investments of our time," says commodities guru Jim Rogers, adviser to AgCapita. "Eventually, of course, food prices will get high enough that the market probably will be flooded ... but that's a long ways away yet." And by then he and his investors will be rich and safe and across the stream.