Stealing food from the hungry

[auroraglacialis]

from PRI: Public Radio International - Hedge funds buying massive tracts of African farmland

This is not that new, but that article makes it ABUNDANTLY clear what is going on in the world in this economy today and makes me just want to puke!

Western hedge funds have begun buying up vast parcels of land all over Africa. ... over 148 million acres... an area larger than California. ... often used to produce export commodities -- including biofuels, cut flowers and specialized foods -- and are displacing millions of Africans from fertile farmland.... the contracts ... allow foreign companies to keep exporting as much as 80 percent of what is grown on the acquired land, even if the host country is experiencing food shortages....The companies boast they can make a profit even without growing anything on the land..."With the collapse of the housing market, there is a drive for the new commodity to invest in...Mittal said. "These hedge funds are promising returns of 25 to 40 percent." Mittal called this the new investment bubble.

(excerpts - please read the original article for full report, includes an audio report.)

W T F !
These people are playing with other peoples lives, with hunger, death and destruction, people here pack food packages and send food and money to these countries because people go hungry and the same countries export biofuels and cut flowers!!! Even if the pople are starving !!! And to top this off, they even make a profit by not growing anything on the lands that people used to make a living off?

What else there is to say? I mean really - this kind of stuff makes all the pretense of a beneficial financial economy, the origins of world hunger in lack of food and many many other things crumble with ease.

As long as this kind of stuff is going on, no one can tell me that these countries need GMO crops, more development and technology, that the economic system called capitalismis sustainable or that the plan of industrialized countries is to help the poorer countries. This is totally ****es up.