[ExI] rice price

[Mirco Romanato]

Damien Broderick ha scritto:
> Uh-oh:
> 
> <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d6f1cd74-fc29-11dc-9229-000077b07658.html>Jump
>  in Rice Price Fuels Fears of Unrest JAVIER BLAS and DANIEL TEN KATE 
> - Financial Times (U.K.)

It is interesting to note that Egypt and many M.E. countries are big net
importer of food from Europe, North America and Australia. Saudi Arabia
probably peaked its extraction of water from wells, as many farms in the
desert stopped producing this year (there is an interesting article
about this at "The Oil Drum" blog.

High prices of food and oil will not be able to stop the growth of the
world economy, as in the next years will move to more efficient cars
(PHEV mainly), more solar (PV or thermo), nuclear power plants and so
on. And will put a big pressure to the current politicians to accept and
support GMO in agriculture and the development in advanced technology.

The other [not so bad] side is that many nations like Saudi Arabia,
Egypt, Iran and so on, will be forced to spend much more to keep
artificially down the prices of food for their poor populations.

> http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/03/24/egypt.bread.riot.ap/index.html
> Egypt tries to tackle deadly bread crisis - CNN.com

> The government also will add 15 million new names to the list of 
> those receiving cheap rations of cooking oil, sugar and rice. That 
> and other measures will increase the government's annual food subsidy
> costs by $3.1 billion to a total of $13.7 billion this year.

This will help to reduce the fertility rate of islamic nations as well 
(Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan - Iran, Morocco, Algeria, 
Tunisia are already near substitution level or under it ).
And this will force them to use more money to feed the people and 
prevent riots, revolts and revolutions at the expenses of support for 
da'wa (islamic proselitism), terrorist financing, mosque construction, 
financing of western universities and in western investments.

Linking the price of the food to the price of the oil (biofuels) is 
perfect to take back the money from the oil producers and hamper their 
political hegemony confronting them directly.

Mirco
-- 
[Intangible capital is] the preponderant form of wealth.
When we look at the shares of intangible capital across income classes,
you see it goes from about 60 percent in low-income countries to 80
percent in high-income countries.
That accords very much with the notion that what really makes countries
wealthy is not the bits and pieces, it's the brainpower, and the
institutions that harness that brainpower.
It's the skills more than the rocks and minerals.
—Kirk Hamilton

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