Best of our wild blogs: 17 Jun 08

A Climate Hero: The Early Years
about the long struggle to raise the issue from the Worldwatch Institute

African Fish-eagle catching fish
from Bird Ecology Study Group blog

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Where Kallang meets Chek Jawa

Straits Times Digital Life 17 Jun 08;

Visit Temasek Island in virtual world Second Life and you may find yourself surprised, reports TAN CHONG YAW

BE PREPARED to be slightly disoriented when you step onto this Temasek Island, ensconced in the hit virtual world of Second Life.

The arrival jetty leads to the visitor centre which is the familiar glass control tower of the old Kallang Aerodrome. To the left is a hill reminiscent of Fort Siloso bristling with guns - some of which are trained unintentionally at Elgin Bridge, which connects South Bridge Road with North Bridge Road.

Beyond the bridge are Chek Jawa-inspired mudflats. The tide laps at the prop roots of the mangrove trees while two egrets fly overhead, and horseshoe crabs, starfish and turtles basking in the sun.

But true-to-life representation was not the aim of Temasek, said its creator Kenneth Y T Lim, assistant professor at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University.

Neither was replicating Singapore in its entirety the mission of this geographer. Rather, the six months of labour - his 'national service', as Kenneth puts it - are his interpretation of what's important in this island in the sun.

'I want Temasek to showcase Singapore's culture, ecology and history,' says Kenneth, adding that it gives foreigners a 'taste of real life' here.

Temasek will roll out next Monday, coinciding with Second Life's fourth anniversary.

Digital Life took a sneak peek at the 65,536 sq m plot of land last Thursday to find more treasures afoot.

On the other side of the island, a mall sits atop a marina. At the far end are chalets. A truncated Singapore River winds through the island, complete with a tongkang. Extensive tunnels - like those at Labrador Park - run underground.

Take a guided tour in a submarine that also flies. Or, survey the island on your own in anything ranging from a hang glider to what looks like a wooden helicopter. But you can't ride in the classic Citroen DS parked near the jetty - that's Kenneth's private vehicle.

What's real is the weather: If it rains in Singapore, it will be raining on that virtual isle, too.

That, and the funding for the project: It comes from Kenneth's own pocket, though he declined to reveal figures.

There's also a question of lifespan: Lion City, a Singapore-themed island, which opened with a roar last year has since whimpered to a close.

But Kenneth is not in it for commercial gain: Other than being a self-appointed tourism ambassador, he sees value in Second Life as an educational tool.

He is not alone. The National University of Singapore has a virtual campus with Princeton University and the University of Edinburgh as its neighbours.

Also, if the six volunteer designers of the site are any indication of how well Temasek will thrive, Kenneth's reckoning - that it will go the distance - may be right.

Not a programmer himself, the man had to trawl Second Life for experts who shared his vision and would work for free. Over several months, the team comprising Limkopi Davis, Derekcsy Cortes, Lim Pikajuna, Lonewolf Switchblade, Sanspareil London and Felixx Shepherd was assembled.

The three Singaporeans, Malaysian, Briton and German did the intricate designs that would become Temasek. Interestingly, none of them have met face to face.

'I won't be able to recognise most of them if I walked past them on the street!'

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All-time high: 52m train rides in May

Leong Wee Keat, Today Online 17 Jun 08;

A COMBINATION of rising costs — fuel, parking and Electronic Road Pricing — has made senior sales executive Darrell Choo think twice about turning the ignition key in his car.

While he still drives to his office at Suntec City, the 30-year-old has turned to public transport, especially trains, when going out to meet clients. “My trips are usually short so I can still stand the crowded trains and buses,” said Mr Choo.

Rising costs for motorists is partly why rail ridership hit record levels for the second time in less than six months. SMRT, which operates the North-South and East-West lines, saw commuters making 41,964,448 train trips last month — a 0.08-per-cent increase from its previous all-time high in January.

SBS Transit, which runs the North-East line, saw some 10,540,700 passenger trips last month. It has seen ridership climb from a daily average of about 285,000 last April to over 340,000 last month.

Both operators say the hike can be attributed to many factors, such as a change in travel patterns, population growth, employment growth and the Government’s push for more people to take public transport. “The rise in petrol prices could also be a contributing factor as some motorists switch to public transport,” added SBS Transit spokeswoman Tammy Tan.

With more passengers, have train rides and loads become unbearable? SMRT says the addition of over 500 train trips last month on weekdays — just before and after the morning and evening peak hours, lunch hours and evenings — has been effective in reducing the average train load to “not more than 1,200 passengers”.

Regular train commuters that Today spoke to say the increased frequency would be more useful during the peaks themselves. They also suggested more train trips during weekends and holidays.

With taxi fares rising, store manager Liu Zheng Yi noticed that trains are “quite crowded” with families heading out at weekends. He said: “While we may not pay for the extra comfort, you also don’t want trains to be packed, and with kids crying loudly.”

Some relief could be in sight. From Saturday, commuters travelling on weekends can expect SMRT trains to arrive every five minutes. This means up to 106 more train trips on Saturdays and up to 65 more on Sundays, SMRT added.

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Singapore River's diesel bumboats go green

Channel NewsAsia 16 Jun 08;

SINGAPORE: An icon at the historically-important Singapore River has undergone a transformation.

The bumboats there have gone green! The last of the 10 diesel-powered bumboats were replaced with electric-powered vessels last weekend.

This is to ensure that the water quality will remain good, as the Marina Basin will be turned into a freshwater reservoir when the Marina Barrage is completed.

Bumboats have been plying the Singapore River for decades.

At first, they were used to ferry goods to warehouses and then over the past 20 years, they have been carrying people.

The smell and noise of the diesel engines have been part of the experience for the people taking the bumboats.

Ryden Fang, Singapore River Cruises & Leisure's director, said: "What people usually comment is: it's very noisy, the diesel's smelly. But now, I really miss the smell a lot... because we try to maintain as much flavour of the old boat as possible, we actually designed and built the new bumboats according to the old bumboats but in a bigger version."

At the succession ceremony, Ah Gu - a boatman for 30 years - handed over the kerosene navigation light from the old diesel bumboats to the new electric bumboats.

Then it was time for the diesel boats to make their final journey along the Singapore River. On board were 80 senior citizens from Chinatown Kreta Ayer Senior Activity Club.

The Singapore River Cruises & Leisure is willing to donate the old boats to corporations and institutions which are interested in showcasing the bumboats for heritage preservation and educational purposes. - CNA/ir

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Small community in Seoul tries to live at one with nature

Channel NewsAsia 17 Jun 08;

SEOUL: Some Koreans concerned about the environment are trying their best to live at one with nature.

Kim Soo Ji, a 12-year-old at Sung Mi San School, said being outside the classrooms and being able to see the things she learnt in textbooks are the fun parts of studying at her school, which was set up by local residents.

"I am now much more closer to nature. This garden on this roof top was made when I was in grade 4. Now that I am in grade 6, I see this garden as my friend. I really like it," she said.

In this small area in the northern part of Seoul, several mothers gathered in 1994 to bring up their children here - allowing them to learn more about nature and themselves.

Teacher Shin Hyang Chul said: "I hope that students could learn the diversity of biology from this class, diversity in the ecosystem. Our school doesn't use the word 'environment', instead... we use the word 'ecology'."

"We want to be more careful about the word 'environment' - which contains a human dominant concept about the nature. While students are getting to know about all kinds of life through this class, they can become a friend with nature," the teacher continued.

Setting up the school is only one of the many things Sung Mi San residents have done to make the area eco-friendly.

Using organic ingredients, food here is made by local residents.

Kim Hyun Joo, a resident, said: "Right now everyone is talking about mad cow disease. But we have been in this cooperative lifestyle for a long time now. Our children and our family are healthy because they eat these kinds of (organic, home-grown, home-made) food. And because we eat these (kinds of) food, we are also helping the environment and that is a great pride for us."

The residents are not stopping here. They have also started a car-sharing system; and instead of driving cars, cycling is being promoted.

Local residents in this community here practice traditional cooperative lifestyle - called Dooreh - educating their children together, buying food together, and even farming together. - CNA/ac

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Viable alternative fuel in pond scum

Gwynne Dyer, Straits Times 17 Jun 08;

'TODAY we witness a very great change for hydrocarbons,' said Mr Alexei Miller, head of Russian oil and gas giant Gazprom, last week.

'(The price of oil is already) very high, and we think it will reach US$250 (S$340) a barrel.'

Cue for legions of financial journalists to faint and writhe in coils at the news of impending economic Armageddon. So will we see some attempt to move away from dependence on oil now?

Mr Miller is the only CEO of a major oil company who is predicting US$250 a barrel oil within 18 months. The others remember what happened the last time the oil price peaked like this in the 1970s.

The big consuming countries responded by cutting back on oil use so drastically that the Opec cartel lost control of the price, which then bumped along below US$20 a barrel through the late 1980s and 1990s.

With the oil price in the high US$130s, we are already seeing a move away from the monster vehicles that became so popular in the US during the cheap oil years. But the 1970s-style of conservation is not going to bring oil prices down this time.

For every American or German switching to a car with lower fuel consumption, there is a Chinese or Indian first-time car buyer taking up the slack and keeping demand for oil high.

So if the car-driving masses are ever to escape from high fuel prices, they cannot rely on simply cutting demand through conservation. They need an alternative fuel.

But the bio-fuels that are now on offer - made from corn, sugar cane, sugar beets, oil palm or soya beans - simply cannot replace oil. There just aren't enough land and water resources to grow bio-fuels and food too.

It would take half the landmass of continental United States to grow enough grain to fuel America's cars and trucks. 'Second-generation' bio-fuels that depend on plants such as switchgrass and willow are better in terms of not competing with food because they grow quickly on waste ground, but they cannot provide the volume of fuel needed either.

So if we are going to go on driving cars, but cannot afford to fuel them from petroleum - and cannot afford to put all those greenhouse gas emissions in the air either - then what do we do instead?

This is where it gets interesting, because there are two alternative fuels that could theoretically be produced in the volumes required, and that would not add to the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

One is algae, grown in open ponds on marginal land, or in nutrient-rich sewage farms, or even in completely contained environments in the dark.

Other plants also contain oil, but the great virtue of algae - pond scum, in the vernacular - is that it can double its mass every two hours under ideal circumstances.

That means it can be harvested daily. The US Department of Energy estimates that to replace all the petroleum fuel in the country with home-grown algae fuel would require 40,000 sq km of land, which is less than one-seventh of the area devoted to growing corn in the US.

The oil that is produced can be burned as biodiesel, or further refined until it is almost the same as the fuel we put we put in our vehicles today. It needs no special distribution network, works in unmodified engines and is effectively carbon-neutral. And the biomass that is left after the oil has been extracted can either be fed to cattle or fermented to produce ethanol.

Fuel from algae is not yet ready for prime time, but there are now numerous start-up companies exploring rival ways of growing and processing it.

Oil majors such as Shell and Chevron are already jumping in as well. The main question is cost, but so long as oil stays above US$100 a barrel it's likely that some of these methods will prove competitive.

The other, more radical proposal is to transform carbon dioxide from being the problem to being part of the solution by combining it with hydrogen to make a synthetic octane fuel suitable for use in vehicles.

You get your CO2 from the exhaust gases of coal and gas-fired power plants or just extract it from the air directly - the first prototypes of machines for doing this are now being tested - and you obtain your hydrogen however you like.

Getting hydrogen requires energy, and is only carbon- neutral if the electricity used to split it out of water comes from a non-fossil fuel source such as solar, wind or nuclear. But combining the hydrogen with CO2 avoids the huge problems of storage, refrigeration and high pressures connected with using pure hydrogen as a fuel: The synthetic octane can be handled and burned just like conventional fuel.

One or both of these approaches is going to start challenging conventional oil in the market within five to 10 years if the price of oil stays high. Assurances of supply and cost are the big concerns driving this process now, but the ultimate prize is a vehicle fuel that does not contribute to global warming.

Conventional oil can never offer that advantage, so in the long run it is in big trouble.

The writer is a London-based independent journalist.

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Rhino numbers in Africa 'highest for decades'

Paul Eccleston, The Telegraph 17 Jun 08;

The rhino is staging a comeback in Africa, a new survey has revealed. Numbers of both the black and white rhino are at their highest level for decades.

Figures from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) show there are now more than 21,000 African rhinos.

The biggest success story is the black rhino (Diceros bicornis), which increased its numbers from 3,730 in 2005 to 4,180 in 2007 although it remains Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of species.

Numbers increased by about 450 animals with the discovery of new populations or boosted in other cases by the transplanting of animals to areas where they were previously scarce such as North Luangwa National Park, Zambia.

"This is fantastic news for the African black rhino," says Dr Richard Emslie, scientific officer of the IUCN SSC African Rhino Specialist Group.

"However, these magnificent creatures are not out of the woods yet. They are still classed as Critically Endangered and face increasing threats of poaching and civil unrest. There is no room for complacency."

Similarly the white rhino (Ceratotherium simum) also boosted its numbers from 14,540 in 2005 to 17,480 in 2007.

It is listed as Near Threatened on the Red List but one of its two subspecies, the Northern white rhino, is listed as Critically Endangered and may already be extinct.

Poaching for its prized horn restricted it in the wild to Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo where numbers fell from 30 in April 2003 to only four confirmed animals by August 2006.

Dr Martin Brooks, chair of the IUCN SSC African Rhino Specialist Group, said: "Worryingly, recent fieldwork has so far failed to find any presence of these four remaining rhinos.

"Unless animals are found during the intensive surveys that are planned under the direction of the African Parks Foundation, the subspecies may be doomed to extinction."

The majority of African black rhino can be found in just four countries - Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia and Kenya but with increasing numbers in other range states. All countries with breeding populations have recorded increases, except Zimbabwe, whose numbers are slightly down.

Poaching for its horn remains the biggest threat to the rhino and while it is under control in many countries it has been responsible for significant losses in both the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe.

"Even though protection from poaching is critical, effective rhino conservation must also include intensive monitoring and biological management to ensure annual growth rates of at least 5 per cent per year so that surplus rhinos are made available to create new populations," said Dr Brooks.

Group: Northern white rhinos near extinction
Yahoo News 17 Jun 08;

The northern white rhino of central Africa is on the verge of being wiped out, a conservation group said Tuesday.

The four surviving specimens of this rare subspecies have not been seen since August 2006, said Martin Brooks of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which compiles an annual list of the world's most endangered animals.

The rhinos, which lived in Congo's Garamba National Park, were the last remaining northern white rhinos in the wild.

Other rhino species have fared better in recent years, according to IUCN. The number of southern white rhinos in Africa increased to 17,480 last year from 14,540 in 2005. African black rhinos increased to 4,180 in last year from 3,730 in 2005.

"They are still classed as critically endangered and face increasing threats of poaching and civil unrest," said Richard Emslie, a rhino specialist working for IUCN. "There is no room for complacency."

Rhinos are hunted by poachers for their horns, which are prized as trophies and as ingredients in traditional medicine.

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Scrubbing Out Sea Life: exfoliating plastic beads in toiletries

Exfoliating plastic beads feel good—unless you live in the ocean.
Hillary Rosner, The Slate 16 Jun 08;

A smiling model glides, mermaidlike, through a lush underwater garden. Undulating ribbons of something resembling kelp rise from the sea floor, and tiny enchanting pearl-like beads bubble up though the aquamarine water. Polish your troubles away with Olay Body Wash Plus Spa Exfoliating Ribbons, the subject of this commercial, and you too might feel as if you're floating through a luxurious Atlantis.

The trouble is, the more you exfoliate, the less Edenic that underwater realm becomes for the creatures who live there. That's because the exfoliating ingredient in Olay's body wash, and in most similar big-brand products (such as Dove Gentle Exfoliating Foaming Facial Cleanser and Clean & Clear Daily Pore Cleanser), is actually made out of plastic: tiny particles of polyethylene that scrub the dirt from your face and then wash straight down the drain and into watersheds and, eventually, oceans.

It's well-known by now that increasing amounts of plastic are clogging the planet's seas, killing millions of sea creatures every year when they swallow it, choke on it, or get tangled in it and drown. Plastic doesn't biodegrade, meaning it doesn't break down into its initial components; every piece of plastic ever made is probably still around somewhere on the planet today. But sunlight disintegrates plastic into smaller pieces of plastic. These can wind up in waterways like rivers and creeks, flowing out to sea.

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UK tap water campaign challenges bottled water

Paul Eccleston, The Telegraph 16 Jun 08;

A campaign aimed at persuading consumers to reject bottled water in favour of tap water has been launched.

Despite having some of the highest quality tap water in the world, Britain still spends £1.5bn per year on designer label water.

The Tap campaign aims to break the habit by demonstrating that tap water is just as beneficial and tastes as good - if not better than - bottled.

It is taking on the big companies such as Evian, Highland Spring and Volvic with DIY Bottled Water.

Tap hopes to persuade people to hang on to their empty plastic bottle of water, rebrand it with a self-adhesive Tap label and then refill it at the kitchen or office sink. It wants the bottled reused in this way 10 times before it is recycled.

Later this year Tap, which describes itself as an ethical enterprise and a consumer campaign, will be issuing its own bottles for people to use.

It says 70 per cent of the money raised from bottles, labels and a Tap Challenge Pack - aimed at setting up blind tastings to prove tap water is as good as the more expensive alternatives - will be donated to help fund water projects in poorer countries.

Tap founder Joshua Blackburn said: "The bottled water industry is the triumph of marketing over common sense, it has become a symbol of our disposable culture at its dumbest.

"In countries such as Britain, where high quality water is literally on tap, it's time to bin the bottle. Most people don't even realise that until recently, bottled water was more expensive than petrol."

By persuading consumers to reject their bottle-buying habit they will be helping the environment and at the same time will act as a consumer champion by bringing about even higher quality tap water.

The DIY Bottled Water pack, containing five large bottle labels for litre -sized bottles, and five small labels for 400ml-sized bottles together with 20 tap water campaign stickers, will cost £6.

Tap's own reusable bottles will cost £8.50p for the larger size and £6 for the smaller bottle. All the Tap products are guaranteed to be carbon neutral.

Details of the products can be found at www.wewanttap.com.

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Africa Could Triple Food Output Quickly - UN

Hereward Holland, PlanetArk 17 Jun 08;

NAIROBI - To counter the global food crisis, Africa could triple or quadruple domestic production over two seasons through simple changes to agricultural practices, a United Nations food expert said on Monday.

In response to rising food prices, the continent must drop its reliance on food imports and learn to feed itself, said Mafa Chipeta, sub-regional coordinator for the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) in east Africa.

"Within two seasons we can change (dependence on imports)," he told Reuters on the sidelines of the launch of a regional FAO conference in Nairobi, Kenya. "We can boost production by three or four times by making simple changes."

Governments should reduce fertiliser prices and introduce quality, high-yield seed varieties, he said.

Chipeta also argued more investment in irrigation and dismissed the need for high-tech solutions such as genetically modified organisms.

He said he hoped the week-long conference would produce "actionable decisions" for Africa's agricultural sector which employs about two-thirds of the continent's workforce.

"Africa imports about US$25 billion worth of food and receives about a third of the world's food aid," he said. "The food crisis cannot be solved by the continuation of charity."

Opening the conference, Kenya's Agriculture Minister William Ruto said 46 percent of Africans were hungry.

"Agriculture-led development is fundamental to eradicating hunger, reducing poverty, generating economic growth and minimising the burden of food imports while opening the way to expansion of exports and employment opportunities," he said.

Mobido Traore, FAO assistant director general for Africa, said 20 years ago Africa was a net exporter of food.

However, whilst the urban population has expanded as people abandoned rural areas in search of employment, governments have not invested sufficiently in agricultural production and therefore become net food importers, he said. (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/) (Editing by Janet Lawrence)

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Our diet of destruction: faceless trading giants who decide what we eat

Felicity Lawrence, The Guardian 16 Jun 08;

Huge areas of the Amazon rainforest are being cut down to satisfy global demand for soya. But how did this crop and a handful of others come to dominate our diet so completely? In an extract from her new book, Felicity Lawrence investigates the faceless trading giants who really decide what goes on our plates

Look at a few packets in a typical kitchen cupboard, and you will notice a disconcerting overlap between the labels of apparently completely different foods. A handful of ingredients, some of them barely used as food in the west before the second world war, crop up in everything from baby food to cat food to processed meals. The same half-dozen heavily subsidised commodities - soya, rapeseed, palm oil, corn, sugar and rice - are broken down into their individual parts and endlessly reconstituted.

They are sold back to us as processed food or turned into animal feed to produce the factory meats that have conquered our diets in the past half-century. How did such a transformation come about?

When you look back at the origins of much of today's industrialised food system, what you see is the ebb and flow of empire. First there were the British imperial ambitions that turned slave-produced sugar from the colonies into the engine of emerging capitalism during the industrial revolution. Later the prewar European powers developed and controlled new fats such as margarines. Today we are living with the postwar American model, a privatised form of empire that reached into every corner of world food supply in the second half of the 20th century.

The result has been a kind of food Fordism. We are fed a production-line diet that is homogenised and bolted together from standard commodity parts. The parts, many of them created out of American agricultural surpluses, are largely controlled by an oligopoly of US-based trading and processing companies - Cargill, ADM, Bunge - that are little known in the UK. All three companies are now expanding in China and heavily involved in spreading the western industrialised diet, with its unsustainable dependence on fossil fuels and extravagant use of grains. As the Chinese move up this processed-food chain, the diet-related diseases that have afflicted us in the west are growing there too.

It took a journey of more than 7,000km to the heart of the Brazilian rainforest for me to understand some of the power structures in this food chain. It was the rise of the humble soya bean that opened a window on the mechanics of today's structure, and the environmental and social toll it exacts.

It is only from the air that you can absorb the vastness of the Amazon. What happens to the rainforest that surrounds the world's largest river system will affect every single one of us, as experts in climate change constantly point out. A fifth of the planet's fresh water is contained here, and the trees recycle it back into the atmosphere, from where it drives the world's weather.

But Brazil is the new agricultural frontier, and forest clearance, much of it for soya production, has been taking place on a scale from which campaigners fear the forest may not recover. Greenpeace has been tracking deforestation and agreed to take me up in its spotter plane in 2006 as it was launching its fight to stop the food industry destroying the Amazon.

From the window of the plane on one side I could see mile after mile of the velvet folds of virgin forest. Where man had not ventured with chainsaw and bulldozer, the trees were giving off water vapour like a thousand puffs from a life-giving inhaler. But on the other side was an enormous area recently planted with soya. It looked as though a giant industrial lawnmower had cut a swath through the jungle, and the luminous green trail it had created shone through a dry heat haze. "So who is buying all that soya, and how on earth do they get it out?" I shouted over the roar of the engine. The answer had to wait. A storm was blowing in and we quickly turned back through the flashes of lightning for Santarém, the frontier port built deep in the Amazon basin.

That night I watched from the roof of my hotel as a new storm blew great squalls hundreds of miles up the Amazon from the Atlantic. On the waterfront below, the baroque blue cathedral, built by the original colonisers, the Portuguese, came and went from view in the enveloping rain. Its twin towers and pediment still present a proud facade to anyone coming up the river's main navigation channel, but the paint was peeling now, the legacy of the sugar plantations and slavery fading. The centre of gravity had shifted. A few hundred metres up the river, Cargill has built its own monument to power, an enormous, gleaming loading and storage facility for soya. The elevator towers of this $20m (£10.2m) grain terminal are testaments to the new gods of transnational trading efficiency and global economic domination. The digging of the port here has brought Brazil's soya closer to its main European markets.

Just as the new railroads had been vital to opening up the prairies of North America, this newly constructed infrastructure was driving the transformation of the Amazon and helping Brazil meet the apparently insatiable global demand for soya. Cargill, together with ADM and Bunge, is responsible for about two-thirds of the total financing of soya production in Brazil. They provide the seed, fertiliser and agrochemicals to the ranchers, and buy and store and ship the crops to Europe. But how was the demand for all those beans created?

Bake a soya bean and - provided you have first soaked and boiled it long enough to neutralise its toxins - you can make a dish that is cheap and cheerful. It may be slightly indigestible still and make you fart, but it is nevertheless useful for providing complete protein in inexpensive vegetable form.

As a whole raw bean, soya has its commercial limitations. Crush it, however, and the possibilities become infinite as it is separated into its more lucrative parts. The oil can be extracted with solvents and degummed. The lecithin can be removed from the resulting sludge to be sold for a thousand and more food-processing purposes. Then, deodorised and hydrogenated, the oil can be used to make, or fry, any number of fast foods, snacks and convenience meals. The vitamin E, which has the irritating habit of reducing shelf-life, can be stripped out and turned to money elsewhere. So too can the soya sterols that can command a premium as technofoods - cholesterol-lowering ingredients for margarines, yoghurts and drinks.

Once the oil has been removed, the defatted soya bean meal, which is full of protein, can be fed to intensively farmed chicken, cattle and pigs to turn them into highly productive factory units - intensive dairy cows that can deliver ever greater yields of milk, chickens that grow to shop weight in just a few weeks, pigs and cattle that fatten faster than they ever could on grass or forage.

The vast majority of soya is used to feed factory-farmed animals. Chicken has a particular attraction for the livestock industry, which refers to the birds not as flocks but as "crops", for the good reason that they grow fast enough to produce a return in little more than a month. For the commodity traders and processors, the livestock revolution has represented the best way to move up what they call the value chain. You can make a good margin on trading grain and soya, especially if you are a powerful enough presence in the global markets. But feed your surplus to animals - it takes about 3kg of protein feed to produce half a kilo of chicken protein - and you concentrate your resources. Persuade the world to eat vast quantities of this cheap meat, consumed preferably in a highly processed way that divides the parts and separates out the "high value" lean meat and treats much of the rest as waste - and you make far greater margins.

It required technological breakthroughs and government protection to create this market, though. Soya meal was used experimentally in animal feed in the 30s but farmers were reluctant to use it because with its oil still in it was regarded as indigestible to chickens and pigs. Then researchers at ADM worked out how to heat-treat it to overcome the problem. The oil was similarly regarded as barely fit for consumption because it smelled so bad, until the Americans, following the tanks advancing through Germany, acquired the technology from the defeated enemy to get rid of the "off" flavours.

That left the way open for the US to promote the soya that suited its agricultural conditions as part of the reconstruction of Europe in the 50s.

The US came out of the second world war with its agricultural base intact, but the farming lands of its European allies and of Germany had been devastated. With millions desperately hungry, the US announced its Marshall plan to help rebuild western Europe with financial aid. But it had another crucial role: the removal of tariff barriers that might hinder US access to foreign markets was made part of the new terms of trade with the non-communist world. Of the $13bn in financial aid paid under the Marshall plan between 1947 and 1952, more than $3bn was spent by European countries on imports of US food, animal feed and fertiliser.

As Europe recovered, soya exports to other countries were supported by other US food aid programmes. In 1967, 86% of all US soya oil exports were subsidised under its food aid law. Meanwhile, in the Kennedy round of talks for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in the mid-60s, the US insisted that if Europe wanted to keep its agricultural protections, it must open up its markets to more US soya exports.

The raw ingredients for today's food system have, in other words, been kept cheap for transnational corporations by government policy. And where US subsidies go, western diets have a habit of following. American exports have created whole new patterns of consumption. Demand has been a function of price, availability and production, just as it was with the rise of sugar consumption in the 18th century.

Between 1995 and 2005, $165bn of American taxpayers' money was used to support US agricultural commodities. Soya, corn, rice, wheat and cotton accounted for 90% of that money. Sugar was also heavily subsidised. The real beneficiaries of this system of government support have not been US farmers, who have gone out of business in their thousands, but the mainly US-based trading giants. For subsidies have allowed them to export grains at less than the cost of production, making it impossible for other countries to compete, while bringing the money from added-value markets back home. In this they mirror the patterns of trade established between previous empires and their colonies.

These trading giants have remained shadowy in European perception, despite their colossal footprint. Cargill, the largest privately owned corporation in the world in most years, was said in testimony to the US senate in 1999 to control 45% of global grain trade, including 42% of US corn exports, a third of all soya bean exports and about 20% of wheat exports. It is also the world's largest crusher of oilseeds such as soya and rapeseed. Since it is a private company and not obliged to publish detailed accounts, more recent and accurate share figures are hard to come by. It declines to comment on its market shares, but it has, if anything, consolidated its position since then, although its areas of concentration shift. Its revenues in 2007 were $88bn. Most of us eat its products in some form every day, yet many of us have never heard of it. Nor had I before I started writing about the politics of food, but since then it has been hard not to stumble across its operations in every country whenever I visit a food factory, industrial farm or fast food or supermarket supplier.

ADM (Archer Daniels Midland), another US-based grain trading corporation, is one of the world's largest processors of soya beans, corn, wheat and cocoa, and also has a huge portfolio of interests, from making sweeteners and food processing ingredients to energy and animal feed production. Its global sales in 2006/7 were $44bn. Almost half of them came from making animal feed, vegetable oils and emulsifiers from oilseeds such as soya.

Two other grain and oilseed giants are part of this trading nexus that dominates food supply. Bunge, which expanded through the late 19th century as a grain trader in South America, is now a transnational with headquarters in the US. It is the world's largest exporter of soya beans and a major corn and oil processor. The Louis Dreyfus group, a French family-owned private company, has vast grain, sugar, and energy trading interests around the world and now focuses on financial aspects of commodity trading. In the US it has joint grain ventures with ADM and Cargill. (EU subsidies have achieved a similar position for a handful of its corporations, mainly those processors whose power was established before the war.)

As well as buying and selling agricultural commodities, these four global companies control refining and crushing plants and turn those cheap, subsidised commodities into a myriad other ingredients, from starches to syrups to fats to animal feed. They also play the markets, and have vastly complicated corporate structures that enable them to shift transactions and profits from subsidiary to subsidiary.

Cargill, the behemoth, is "the undisputed ruler in the global grain trade and extends its tentacles into every aspect of the global food system", according to Brewster Kneen, the company's unauthorised biographer. Cargill initially built up its power in the 1870s, in the speculative era of the American agricultural frontier when US grain, along with sugar, began providing the fuel for workers in an industrialising, urbanising Britain. It began with a family of grain traders who bought up storage facilities in the US on strategically placed transport routes, the new railroads and the waterways of the Great Lakes and Mississippi. There has perhaps been nothing quite like it in terms of reach since the days of the East India Company.

Cargill rarely gives interviews, but in the words of its company brochures: "We buy, trade, transport, blend, mill, crush, process, refine, season, distribute around the clock around the globe." And: "We are the flour in your bread, the wheat in your noodles, the salt on your fries. We are the corn in your tortillas, the chocolate in your dessert, the sweetener in your soft drink. We are the oil in your salad dressing and the beef, pork or chicken you eat for dinner. We are the cotton in your clothing, the backing on your carpet and the fertiliser in your field."

Cargill owns two-thirds of the company that is the world's largest producer of fertiliser ingredients, with major factories in North America, South America and China. Cargill's subsidiary Sun Valley produces half of all the chicken products used by McDonald's across Europe and is a leading supplier of chicken to UK supermarkets. Cargill accounts for nearly half of UK and more than a third of all European production of glucose syrups. And, as I have found on my own journeys around today's globalised food system, it has as often as not been the feed for your cow's milk, the emulsifier and fat in your ready meal, the oil that fried your crisps, the soya proteins in your veggieburger ...

History shows that empires rise and fall, however, and that the fall when it comes tends to be fast. Food empires are likely to be no different. We are now entering a period of rapid transition. The postwar food system, dependent on prodigious quantities of crude oil for its production, has not only pushed us to our biological limits but is hitting the environmental buffers. After half a century in which they shaped the nature of global diets with the disposal of their agricultural surplus, the Americans have done a sudden about-turn. With the price of oil constantly breaking new records, they want their surplus back to keep their cars on the road. The US government has started pouring subsidies into the production of ethanol from corn. Grain prices have been soaring. The standard commodity parts are no longer cheap, but we are left with the legacy of the old economic order, with diets that were created out of excess.

· Adapted from Eat Your Heart Out: Why the Food Business Is Bad for the Planet and Your Health, by Felicity Lawrence, to be published by Penguin on June 26. To order a copy for £8.99 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875.

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Long-term solutions to food crisis needed now

World Economic Forum: Price hikes caused mainly by government policies, says key speaker
Hazlin Hassan, Straits Times 17 Jun 08;

KUALA LUMPUR - GLOBAL business leaders and Asian policy-makers yesterday urged governments to urgently implement long- term solutions to reduce the impact of spiralling food and fuel prices amid warnings that it could spark social unrest and protectionism.

The food and fuel crises dominated discussions at the two-day World Economic Forum (WEF) on East Asia, an annual gathering of businessmen, politicians, policy-makers and analysts.

Mr Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chairman of the Swiss-based multinational food company Nestle, attributed two-thirds of the food price hikes to policy moves.

He said only about 10 per cent of the food price increase is due to spiralling cost of fuel while another 10 per cent is due to changing lifestyle, referring to increasing demand in China and India.

He blamed about one-third of the price hike on governments promoting increased biofuel production, saying that one-third of corn production in the United States will go into biofuels.

Another third is due 'to political decisions to stop exports', he told a panel discussion, referring to countries such as Argentina, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.

He added that governments are also to blame for distorting agriculture prices with subsidies.

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi has warned of a 'real disaster' unless bold steps are taken to tackle the global inflation crisis.

'About 100 million or more people have descended into poverty worldwide while low and middle-income groups everywhere are feeling the strain of increased food prices on their budget,' he said late Sunday.

He urged developed nations to think again on issues such as the much-criticised farm subsidies, as well as a shift towards biofuel production.

Mr Michael Roux, chairman of Australian investment bank Roux International, believed oil prices would collapse if the US goes into a recession.

'We are seeing lots of distortions in the market, and we are just paying the price for some of these distortions,' he said, citing the diesel stockpile by China ahead of the Olympics as an example of a short-term distortion that has pushed up prices.

Tun Musa Hitam, chairman of Malaysia's Sime Darby, the world's largest palm oil company, said governments should seek long-term solutions rather than knee-jerk reactions.

He blamed the rising prices on 'political inability and a lack of political will'. 'At the government level, they have to get their act together,' he said.

Malaysia this month increased fuel prices by up to 63 per cent, fuelling protests across the country.

The soaring cost of food and fuel has led to unrest in Indonesia, the Philippines and Spain.

Indonesian Trade Minister Mari Pangestu urged countries not to panic in response to the crisis.

'It's important not to panic. It is something that we globally cannot afford. When you panic you may not undertake the appropriate policies.'

She said the rise in prices is already leading to protectionism although it hasn't led to 'actual sanctions'.

She said Indonesia has introduced programmes to help the poor by offsetting the impact of higher prices.

For example, it has reduced import tariffs and VAT tax related to agriculture products and also encouraged farmers to boost soya bean production, she said.

Mr Ahn Ho-Young, South Korea's Deputy Trade Minister, said his government has announced a US$10 billion (S$13.7 billion) programme to help low-income workers and small enterprises, as well as cut its dependence on foreign oil.

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US Iowa floods affect cornfields

Iowa corn-founded by floods
No relief in sight as overflowing rivers prevent planting, spoil what's sown
Straits Times 17 Jun 08;

NEWHALL (IOWA) - HERE, in some of the best soil in the world, the stunted stalks of farmer Dave Timmerman's newly-planted corn are wilting in what sometimes look more like padi fields than the plains, the sunshine glinting off pools of water.

Although time is running out, Mr Timmerman has yet to plant all of his soya bean crop because the waterlogged soil cannot support his footsteps, much less heavy machinery.

His small farm has been flooded four times in the past month by a tributary of the Cedar River, which overflowed its banks last week, causing catastrophic damage in nearby Cedar Rapids and other towns and farmsteads across the state.

At a time when corn should be almost waist-high in the United States' No. 1 corn state, Iowa has lost 530,000ha of corn and 810,000ha of soya beans. Some 16 per cent of the state's 10 million ha of tillable farmland is underwater.

'In the lean years, we had beautiful crops but they weren't worth much,' Mr Timmerman said, surveying the land that his family has tended for generations.

'Now, with commodity prices sky high, Mother Nature is throwing us all these curve balls. I'm 42 years old and these are by far the poorest crops I've ever seen.'

All across the sodden, rain-soaked Mid-west, there are thousands - many of them other farmers - who are a lot worse off than Mr Timmerman.

Since the beginning of this month, first tornadoes and then heavy rain and flooding, have cut a watery path across the region. And officials fear that worse flooding may lie ahead as rain-gorged tributaries spill into the Mississippi River system, threatening scores of other communities.

But the plight of Mr Timmerman and thousands of other farmers who have seen their fields turn into flood plains goes beyond the Mid-west.

Last week, the price of corn broke through the US$7 (S$9.60) a bushel price-point on the commodities futures market for the first time, and soya beans rose sharply too.

Besides Iowa, the heavy-farming states of Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Minnesota have suffered an unusual level of flooding this year.

Soaring global demand in addition to the increased use of corn for ethanol, an alternative fuel, have shrunk the worldwide supply of staples that are the core of practically every continent's diet.

Meanwhile, the price of oil has jumped, increasing the cost of producing crops, feeding livestock and causing an overall inflation of grocery bills here and abroad, sparking riots and protests in at least two dozen countries.

'The American farmer, we feed the world,' Mr Timmerman said.

'We're going to be short on corn and we're going to be short on soya beans.

'It's heart-wrenching.'

NEW YORK TIMES, ASSOCIATED PRESS

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