[Biofuel] Global uprising against land grabbing

[Keith Addison]

Global uprising against land grabbing

GRAIN <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

New from GRAIN | 22 April 2010

Social movements denounce World Bank strategy on land grabbing

On 26 April 2010, the World Bank is opening a major two-day 
conference on land at its headquarters in Washington DC. Seated at 
the table will be governments, donor agencies, researchers, CEOs and 
non-government organisations. The main topic of discussion? How to 
harness the fresh wads of cash being put on the table to build 
agribusiness operations on huge areas of farmland in developing 
countries, especially in Africa. The Bank calls these farm 
acquisitions "agricultural investment". Social movements call them 
"land grabbing".

At the meeting, the Bank will release a long-awaited study on this 
new land grabbing trend. Apart from assessing how many hectares are 
being bought and sold where, why and through whom, the Bank will 
present its solution to the risks and concerns raised by foreign 
investors -- from George Soros to Libya's sovereign wealth fund to 
China's telecoms giant ZTE -- taking control of overseas farmland to 
produce food for export: a set of "principles" for all players to 
follow. The FAO, UNCTAD and IFAD have agreed to support the Bank in 
advocating these "principles".

La Vía Campesina, FIAN, Land Research Action Network and GRAIN have 
produced a joint statement outlining how the Bank's initiative will 
only serve to facilitate land grabbing and why it must be stopped. 
Over 100 other social organisations and movements have formally 
associated themselves with the statement as co-sponsors. Today and in 
the coming days, many groups will be speaking out against the current 
land grabbing trend and explaining how the real solution to feeding 
our world lies in supporting community-based family farming for local 
and regional markets -- not industrial farming for global 
agribusiness.

We invite all interested groups and individuals to join forces with 
us and speak out from your own experience.

The LVC-FIAN-LRAN-GRAIN statement, together with the list of 
co-sponsors, is available in Arabic, English, French and Spanish at 
http://www.grain.org/o/?id=102. If 
you wish to register your own support for the statement you can post 
a comment at 
http://farmlandgrab.org/12200 or send 
an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and we will post it for you.

Simultaneous media events and actions are taking place in Washington 
DC and many other towns and cities across the world. For information 
on the Washington DC events or how to talk to activists from the 
affected countries, please contact Kathy Ozer of the National Family 
Farm Coalition for La Via Campesina (mobile: +1-202-421-4544, email: 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]) or Devlin Kuyek at GRAIN (mobile: +1-514-571-7702, 
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]).

Media reports and further inputs and actions from different groups 
joining this movement will be collated online at 
www.farmlandgrab.org.


Further references
- The World Bank's land conference webpage is: 
http://go.worldbank.org/67YHA6L0K0. 
The conference papers are being posted online at: 
http://go.worldbank.org/IN4QDO1U10
- La Via Campesina is the international movement of peasants, small- 
and medium-sized producers, landless, rural women, indigenous people, 
rural youth and agricultural workers with 148 members in 69 
countries: www.viacampesina.org.
- FIAN (FoodFirst Information and Action Network) is an international 
human rights organisation with members and sections in 50 countries 
to advocate for the realisation of the right to food: 
www.fian.org.
- LRAN (Land Research Action Network) is a network of researchers and 
social movements committed to the promotion of individuals' and 
communities' right to land: 
www.landaction.org.
- GRAIN is a small international non-profit organisation that works 
to support farmers and social movements in their struggles for 
community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems: 
www.grain.org and 
farmlandgrab.org.


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Re: [Biofuel] Not exactly biodiesel they way we usually think of it, but still interesting

[Chris Burck]

cool stuff.

On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 11:08 AM, Darryl McMahon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:

> Binding biomass (lignin) with conventional diesel to reduce soot.
>
>
> http://w3.tue.nl/en/news/news_article/?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=9245&tx_ttnews[backPid]=361&cHash=519bda9553
>
> Darryl
>
> --
> Darryl McMahon
>
> The Emperor's New Hydrogen Economy (in trade paperback and eBook)
> http://www.econogics.com/TENHE/
>
> Journey to Forever reviews The Emperor's New Hydrogen Economy
> http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html#tenhe
>
>
> ___
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>
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> messages):
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Re: [Biofuel] Judge: Gene Patents Are Invalid

[Chris Burck]

not exactly, ken.  at least, as i understand it, GMOs do not contain
"manufactured" genes.  they are merely transplanting already existing
genetic material into organisms which heretofore did not contain said genes
in their genome (and thus the attributes of the transplanted genes could not
be obtained by "traditional" methods such as selective breeding).

still, it is different, as you point out.  enough so that the big ag lawyers
(and the judges who side with them) have plenty of room for legal parsing.


On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 8:05 AM, Ken Riznyk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> I doubt that this ruling applies to Big Ag. The genes Big Ag are using are
> not found in nature but are manufactured using recombinant DNA technology.
>  The Myriad Genetics case is gene identification.
> Ken
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[Biofuel] Financing World Hunger

[Keith Addison]

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/financingWorldHunger.php

ISIS Report 21/04/10

Financing World Hunger

How the financial markets create hunger and make huge profits

Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and Prof. Peter Saunders

World food crisis rerun?

Food prices have been rising since 2003. By mid-2008, the food 
commodity price index peaked at 230 percent of its 2002 value, with 
most of the increase due to the grain prices. Corn and wheat both 
reached 350 percent and rice 530 percent respectively of their 2002 
values [1]. The United Nations declared 2008 the year of the global 
food crisis even before prices peaked [2], and an estimated 150 
million were added to the world's hungry that year [3]. Although food 
prices have fallen from their peak, they remained well above 2002 
levels;. By the end of 2009, more than a billion people are 
critically hungry, with 24 000 dying of hunger each day, over half of 
them children [3, 4]. The UN Food Programme faces a budget shortfall 
of US$4.1 billion.

The UN's special rapporteur on the right to food Olivier de Schutter 
blames [5] "inaction to halt speculation on agricultural commodities 
and continued biofuels policies", and warns of a rerun of the 2008 
food price crisis in 2010 or 2011. What happened in 2007-8 was a 
"price crisis, not a food crisis", he says, precipitated by 
speculation in the financial market that was not linked to 
insufficient food being produced.

It would be a mistake to dismiss other threats to food production, 
notably the inherently unsustainable "green revolution" agricultural 
model that is highly dependent on rapidly depleting resources such as 
fossil fuels and water, and monoculture crops especially vulnerable 
to physical and biological stresses associated with climate change 
(see [6] 'Land Rush' as Threats to Food Security Intensify 
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/landRush.php). Nonetheless, the 
disproportionate influence of the unregulated financial market on the 
real economy of goods and services (see [7] Financing Poverty, SiS 40 
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/FinancingPoverty.php) is most devastating for 
people's access to food, a basic necessity.

The global commodity food trade and its deregulation

Food is produced by farmers everywhere in the world; but it is mostly 
bought and sold as commodities by 'middlemen', now mostly big 
corporations that trade globally, not just in a commodities market, 
but also in an elaborate financial derivatives market that pushes 
food prices up and creates price volatility.

Commodities are the raw materials while 'commodities derivatives' are 
financial contracts derived from the value of the underlying 
commodity [8]. At the bottom of the commodities derivatives is the 
'futures' contract, which brings together buyers and sellers in a 
regulated auction market like the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) in 
the United States, to bid and settle a price for the delivery of a 
quantity of a commodity, say corn, at an agreed time (usually 90 
days) and place. This futures contract enables commodity sellers, 
such as grain elevator operators, to avoid sudden price drops and 
commodity users or traders to avoid sudden price increases; and is 
generally regarded as a kind of insurance. But it ceased to work as 
such after the deregulation of the global agricultural markets.

The deregulation of global agricultural markets was part of the 
economic deregulation driven by the World Trade Organization (WTO), 
the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It was a process 
initiated by the Breton Woods Agreements of 1944 to standardize 
international trade and marketing policies to facilitate global trade 
[9]. It eliminated government intervention in agricultural markets, 
dismantling global commodity agreements, price supports, and other 
mechanisms that had helped stabilize global supplies and prices. The 
WTO's Agreement on Agriculture, and other multi-lateral and bilateral 
free-trade agreements including the North American Free Trade 
Agreement (NAFTA), opened up markets in the developing world to an 
increasingly powerful global agribusiness industry.

The consequence of deregulation was [10] "to replace local market 
access for the majority of small farmers with global market access 
for a few global transnational companies. Thanks to non-existent 
anti-trust enforcement and rampant vertical integration, [t]hree 
companies - Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), and Bung - control 
the vast majority of global grain trading, while Monsanto controls 
more than one-fifth of the global market in seeds."

Farmers may have benefited from a windfall in higher prices paid for 
their produce in the short term, but they have had to pay more for 
inputs like fertilizers and diesel for tractors. Only big 
agribusiness corporations could profit from the long term rise in the 
market [10, 11]. Cargill's 2007 third-quarter profits increased 86 
percent, General Mills' were up 60 percent, and Monsanto's 45 
percent. Bunge saw prof

[Biofuel] Not exactly biodiesel they way we usually think of it, but still interesting

[Darryl McMahon]

Binding biomass (lignin) with conventional diesel to reduce soot.

http://w3.tue.nl/en/news/news_article/?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=9245&tx_ttnews[backPid]=361&cHash=519bda9553

Darryl

-- 
Darryl McMahon

The Emperor's New Hydrogen Economy (in trade paperback and eBook)
http://www.econogics.com/TENHE/

Journey to Forever reviews The Emperor's New Hydrogen Economy
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html#tenhe


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Re: [Biofuel] socialism, taxes, economics, comments please.

[Ken Riznyk]

I was browsing thru some of the old biofuel posts and saw this one and its 
thread. Sorry but I couldn't resist putting in my own jaded comments.
The proper resolution of the problems is to do what Bolivia did. Get a loan 
from the IMF to build a pipeline to the village. The IMF will require that the 
well no longer be communal but should be sold to a big water company like 
Bechtel. Bechtel will raise the price of water so high that those people on the 
lower end of the economic strata will not be able to afford it. Under pressure 
from lobbyists or from outright bribery the village will pass a law making it 
illegal to collect rainwater. What's better socialism or capitalism?



- Original Message 
> From: Chip Mefford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: biofuel@sustainablelists.org
> Sent: Mon, September 18, 2006 2:16:21 PM
> Subject: [Biofuel] socialism, taxes, economics, comments please.
> 
> Spent a lot of hours behind the wheel these last few weeks.
Driving from the 
> 'services' economy of the greater mid-atlantic
Washington DC USA region, 
> through rural WV, and Pa, up through
industrialized and agricultural southern 
> Canada, down through
agricultural and tourist economy of northern 
> Michigan/UP...

A model came to mind.

A Very Simple Economic 
> Model.
-

Albert, the blacksmith.
Earns 
> the equiv of $24,000 US a year
plying his trade.

Beverly, the mortgage 
> banker.
Earns the equiv of $240,000 US a year,
plying her 
> trade.

Charles, the surgeon,
Earns the equiv of $2.400,000 US a 
> year
plying his trade

Emily, the CEO,
Earns the equiv of 
> $24,000,000 US a year
plying her trade.

In this community, folks work 
> 8 hours a day
to fulfill their trade obligations, no more,
no 
> less.

In this community, folks work 5 days a week
to fulfill their 
> trade obligations, no more,
no less.

In this community, folks work 48 
> weeks a year
to fulfill their trade obligations, no more,
no 
> less.

In this community where Albert, Beverly,
Charles and Emily live, 
> it takes 1 hour
to go the communal well, and draw the
water needed for the 
> day, and haul it
back to their respective 
> domiciles.

---

Q1.
What is an 
> hours labour worth in this community?

Q2.
Should the community 
> consider bringing in cheap labour
to haul their water?

Q3,
Should 
> the community levee a tax and use the tax to
pay the cheap labour to haul the 
> water?
Q3.1
  If so, at what rate should Albert, Beverly, 
> Charles
and Emily be taxed?

Discussion.

What is this hour 
> devoted to drawing water worth?
Since there are 24 hours in the day, and all 
> the
hours are spoken for, doing the regular stuff,
like raising kids, 
> cleaning house, working,
fiddling about, and occasionally watching NFL
or 
> world cup rallye, the only reason to do offload
the hauling of water duty 
> would be to gain an extra
hour of free time.

So, to Albert, an hour of 
> free time is essentially
worth $1000 over a year. To Beverly, $10,000, 
> to
Charles $100,000 and to Emily 
> $1,000,000.



Discussion
How 
> does the Nash Equilibrium bear on 
> this
scenario?

-

Somewhere, 
> I'm sure this Very Simple Model is
already addressed. If someone could point 
> me to
a paper, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Comments 
> please.

thanks.






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Re: [Biofuel] Acid-base chemistry

[Chris Burck]

lol, yeah, moles for sure are kind of tricky.  precisely because of
the things you mention.  (i dropped chem in college.  there was no way
i was going to pass if i stuck it out.)  thanks for sharing your
impression of the youtube guy.  sorry if it was waste of your time.

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[Biofuel] Methane has "scent of potential"

[Keith Addison]

Ulp...

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/eo20100420mr.html

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Methane has scent of potential

By MICHAEL RICHARDSON

SINGAPORE - Starting this month and extending through May, South 
Korea will resume exploratory drilling in waters off its east coast 
to find out whether a long-hidden energy resource can be turned into 
a new wellspring of natural gas. Other major energy users and 
importers, including the United States, China, Japan and India, are 
in the midst of similar research and development programs to unlock 
what they hope will be a treasure trove of methane hydrates on land 
and at sea. All of them aim to be in commercial production by 2020 at 
the latest.

Gas hydrates have very high energy yield. One cubic meter of methane 
extracted from hydrate expands into 164 cubic meters of regular 
natural gas, the least-polluting of fossil fuels. Gas hydrates are 
icelike compounds of methane and water molecules, and are so far 
untapped on large scale. They are concentrated in permanently frozen 
(permafrost) land zones, such as the Arctic and China's 
Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, and offshore in sediments on the continental 
shelf margins of many countries.

The full extent of the global gas hydrate resource is gradually being 
uncovered. Although there is still much to learn, energy specialists 
estimate it may amount to between 1,000 and 10,000 billion metric 
tons - or as much as twice the known reserves of conventional fossil 
fuels (coal, oil and natural gas).

A U.S. government-energy industry partnership last month announced 
that recent drilling and seismic surveys had confirmed high 
saturations of methane hydrate in reservoir-quality sands under the 
seabed in U.S. waters in the Gulf of Mexico, already a major 
production zone for conventional gas and oil.

At a cost of $37 million, South Korea has hired a deep-water drilling 
ship to sink 32 holes over the next few weeks in a sea basin south of 
the Dokdo Islands, which are disputed with Japan. South Korean 
officials say that initial estimates indicate there is enough 
recoverable methane in the hydrate deposit to meet the country's gas 
demands for up to 30 years.

China has recovered small amounts of methane hydrate from the South 
China Sea. Chinese officials last month said that land deposits found 
in permafrost areas of the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau were estimated to 
contain the equivalent of at least 35 billion metric tons of oil, 
enough to supply the country for 90 years.

Japan has spent more than $260 million since 2001 on research into 
methane hydrates and plans to start deep-sea drilling trials in 2012. 
The main focus of its program is the Nankai Trough, about 50 km off 
the Pacific coast of the island of Honshu.

However, there are challenges. For one, it has so far proven 
difficult to extract the methane from the hydrates in a continuous 
and cost-effective way. In addition, some scientists are concerned 
that exploiting the resource could intensify climate change. Methane 
from wetland rice farming, sheep and cattle grazing, urban landfills 
and other sources already accounts for about 17 percent of 
greenhouse-gas emissions resulting from human activity, second only 
to carbon dioxide. When released into the atmosphere unburned, 
methane is at least 25 times more potent as a global-warming gas than 
carbon dioxide (although it only persists for a decade or so, versus 
over a century for much of the CO2.

A team of Russian, American and Swedish scientists last month 
reported that a relatively shallow section of the Arctic Ocean 
seafloor that holds vast stores of gas hydrate is showing signs of 
instability and widespread venting of methane into the atmosphere. 
However, it is not clear whether these emissions are new and are 
being triggered by the increasing temperature of bottom waters, or 
whether they have been there unnoticed for decades or longer.

In its most recent annual report on greenhouse gas emissions, the 
U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that in 
2008 methane levels rose for the second consecutive year, after a 
10-year lull.

The annual report for 2009 is due later this month. In its report for 
2007, the NOAA said that rapid industrialization in Asia and rising 
wetland emissions in the Arctic and tropics were the most likely 
causes of the recent methane increase.

"We're on the lookout for the first sign of a methane release from 
thawing Arctic permafrost," said NOAA scientist Ed Dlugokencky. It 
was too soon to tell whether the spike in emissions of methane since 
2007 marked the start of a sharply rising trend, he said.

Methane hydrate promises to be a relatively clean fuel source for the 
future. But as commercial development proceeds, governments and the 
energy industry will need to put safeguards in place to ensure that 
it does not intensify global warming and cause dangerous climate 
change.

Michael Richardson is a visiting senior research f

Re: [Biofuel] Judge: Gene Patents Are Invalid

[Ken Riznyk]

I doubt that this ruling applies to Big Ag. The genes Big Ag are using are not 
found in nature but are manufactured using recombinant DNA technology.  The 
Myriad Genetics case is gene identification.
Ken




- Original Message 
> From: Guag Meister <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: biofuel@sustainablelists.org; sustainablelorgbiofuel@sustainablelists.org
> Sent: Tue, April 6, 2010 4:46:12 AM
> Subject: [Biofuel] Judge: Gene Patents Are Invalid
> 
> Hi All ;



Keith we discussed this before on-list.  This is great 
> news!!  There will be a lot of pressure from Big Ag to overturn this.  And 
> where
is the mainstream press on this story?  This needs everyone's 
> support. 
Invalidating gene patents would be a huge positive in ensuring 
> crop 
diversity and food supply.



BR

Peter G.


> target="_blank" 
> href="http://www.gac-seeds.com";>www.gac-seeds.com


http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100329/1506458769.shtml

Judge: 
> Gene Patents Are Invalid



  
>   
In a huge ruling, U.S. District Judge Robert 
Sweet 
> has said that gene patents are invalid.  As you may recall, last 
May, 
> the ACLU was the first to finally challenge
whether or not genes could be 
> patented.  There was a lot of back and 
forth over the case, with many 
> saying that a ruling against gene patents
would throw a wrench into the 
> business plans of many companies, because
so many biotech/medical companies 
> have been relying on the idea that 
gene patents must be valid for so 
> long.  But just because many companies
relied on a mistaken 
> understanding of patent law, doesn't mean that it 
should be allowed to 
> continue.  The judge made the point clear when it 
came to gene patents, 
> saying that they:


"are directed to a law of nature and were therefore 
> improperly granted."


The case was brought against Myriad Genetics, 
> who will surely appeal, so
this is nowhere close to over.  But it 
> involved a test for breast 
cancer, that Myriad basically had a monopoly over 
> -- and the claim was 
that this not only made it more difficult for women to 
> get tested, but 
it also greatly discouraged other research in the 
> field.  In part, this 
was because the patents that Myriad held were 
> incredibly

broad.





Patents, of course, are not 
> supposed to be granted on things found in in
nature -- and it's hard to 
> argue against the idea that genes are found 
in nature.  Supporters of 
> gene patents often claim that they're not 
really gene patents, but a patent 
> on identifying the gene, which is a 
nice semantic game that the judge 
> clearly saw through.  This is a huge 
step forward for encouraging more 
> real research into genetic 
testing, rather than locking up important 
> information.



> 


  
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