The Internationalization of Genocide: Transforming Food into Fuel 
The colossal squandering of cereals destined to fuel production 


by President Fidel Castro Ruz
 
Global Research, April 5, 2007 
Granma  


 Email this article to a friend
 Print this article 


The Camp David meeting has just come to an end. All of us followed the 
press conference offered by the presidents of the United States and 
Brazil attentively, as we did the news surrounding the meeting and the 
opinions voiced in this connection. 





        Faced with demands related to customs duties and subsidies 
which protect and support US ethanol production, Bush did not make the 
slightest concession to his Brazilian guest at Camp David. 

        President Lula attributed to this the rise in corn prices, 
which, according to his own statements, had gone up more than 85 
percent. 

        Before these statements were made, the Washington Post had 
published an article by the Brazilian leader which expounded on the 
idea of transforming food into fuel. 

        It is not my intention to hurt Brazil or to meddle in the 
internal affairs of this great country. It was in effect in Rio de 
Janeiro, host of the United Nations Conference on Environment and 
Development, exactly 15 years ago, where I delivered a 7-minute speech 
vehemently denouncing the environmental dangers that menaced our 
species? survival. Bush Sr., then President of the United States, was 
present at that meeting and applauded my words out of courtesy; all 
other presidents there applauded, too. 

        No one at Camp David answered the fundamental question. Where 
are the more than 500 million tons of corn and other cereals which the 
United States, Europe and wealthy nations require to produce the 
gallons of ethanol that big companies in the United States and other 
countries demand in exchange for their voluminous investments going to 
be produced and who is going to supply them? Where are the soy, 
sunflower and rape seeds, whose essential oils these same, wealthy 
nations are to turn into fuel, going to be produced and who will 
produce them? 

        Some countries are food producers which export their 
surpluses. The balance of exporters and consumers had already become 
precarious before this and food prices had skyrocketed. In the 
interests of brevity, I shall limit myself to pointing out the 
following:

        According to recent data, the five chief producers of corn, 
barley, sorghum, rye, millet and oats which Bush wants to transform 
into the raw material of ethanol production, supply the world market 
with 679 million tons of these products. Similarly, the five chief 
consumers, some of which also produce these grains, currently require 
604 million annual tons of these products. The available surplus is 
less than 80 million tons of grain. 

        This colossal squandering of cereals destined to fuel 
production ?and these estimates do not include data on oily seeds?shall 
serve to save rich countries less than 15 percent of the total annual 
consumption of their voracious automobiles. 

        At Camp David, Bush declared his intention of applying this 
formula around the world. This spells nothing other than the 
internationalization of genocide. 

        In his statements, published by the Washington Post on the eve 
of the Camp David meeting, the Brazilian president affirmed that less 
than one percent of Brazil?s arable land was used to grow cane destined 
to ethanol production. This is nearly three times the land surface Cuba 
used when it produced nearly 10 million tons of sugar a year, before 
the crisis that befell the Soviet Union and the advent of climate 
changes. 

        Our country has been producing and exporting sugar for a 
longer time. First, on the basis of the work of slaves, whose numbers 
swelled to over 300 thousand in the first years of the 19th century and 
who turned the Spanish colony into the world?s number one exporter. 
Nearly one hundred years later, at the beginning of the 20th century, 
when Cuba was a pseudo-republic which had been denied full independence 
by US interventionism; it was immigrants from the West Indies and 
illiterate Cubans alone who bore the burden of growing and harvesting 
sugarcane on the island. The scourge of our people was the off-season, 
inherent to the cyclical nature of the harvest. Sugarcane plantations 
were the property of US companies or powerful Cuban-born landowners. 
Cuba, thus, has more experience than anyone as regards the social 
impact of this crop. 

        This past Sunday, April 1, the CNN televised the opinions of 
Brazilian experts who affirm that many lands destined to sugarcane have 
been purchased by wealthy Americans and Europeans. 

        As part of my reflections on the subject, published on March 
29, I expounded on the impact climate change has had on Cuba and on 
other basic characteristics of our country?s climate which contribute 
to this. 

        On our poor and anything but consumerist island, one would be 
unable to find enough workers to endure the rigors of the harvest and 
to care for the sugarcane plantations in the ever more intense heat, 
rains or droughts. When hurricanes lash the island, not even the best 
machines can harvest the bent-over and twisted canes. For centuries, 
the practice of burning sugarcane was unknown and no soil was compacted 
under the weight of complex machines and enormous trucks. Nitrogen, 
potassium and phosphate fertilizers, today extremely expensive, did not 
yet even exist, and the dry and wet months succeeded each other 
regularly. In modern agriculture, no high yields are possible without 
crop rotation methods. 

        On Sunday, April 1, the French Press Agency (AFP) published 
disquieting reports on the subject of climate change, which experts 
gathered by the United Nations already consider an inevitable 
phenomenon that will spell serious repercussions for the world in the 
coming decades. 

        According to a UN report to be approved next week in Brussels, 
climate change will have a significant impact on the American 
continent, generating more violent storms and heat waves and causing 
droughts, the extinction of some species and even hunger in Latin 
America.

        The AFP report indicates that the Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change (IPCC) forewarned that at the end of this century, every 
hemisphere will endure water-related problems and, if governments take 
no measures in this connection, rising temperatures could increase the 
risks of mortality, contamination, natural catastrophes and infectious 
diseases. 

        In Latin America, global warming is already melting glaciers 
in the Andes and threatening the Amazon forest, whose perimeter may 
slowly be turned into a savannah, the cable goes on to report. 

        Because a great part of its population lives near the coast, 
the United States is also vulnerable to extreme natural phenomena, as 
hurricane Katrina demonstrated in 2005. 

        According to AFP, this is the second of three IPCC reports 
which began to be published last February, following an initial 
scientific forecast which established the certainty of climate change. 

        This second 1400-page report which analyzes climate change in 
different sectors and regions, of which AFP has obtained a copy, 
considers that, even if radical measures to reduce carbon dioxide 
emissions that pollute the atmosphere are taken, the rise in 
temperatures around the planet in the coming decades is already 
unavoidable, concludes the French Press Agency. 

        As was to be expected, at the Camp David meeting, Dan Fisk, 
National Security advisor for the region, declared that ?in the 
discussion on regional issues, [I expect] Cuba to come up (?) if 
there's anyone that knows how to create starvation, it's Fidel Castro. 
He also knows how not to do ethanol?. 

        As I find myself obliged to respond to this gentleman, it is 
my duty to remind him that Cuba?s infant mortality rate is lower than 
the United States?. All citizens ?this is beyond question?enjoy free 
medical services. Everyone has access to education and no one is denied 
employment, in spite of nearly half a century of economic blockade and 
the attempts of US governments to starve and economically asphyxiate 
the people of Cuba. 

        China would never devote a single ton of cereals or leguminous 
plants to the production of ethanol, and it is an economically 
prosperous nation which is breaking growth records, where all citizens 
earn the income they need to purchase essential consumer items, despite 
the fact that 48 percent of its population, which exceeds 1.3 billion, 
works in agriculture. On the contrary, it has set out to reduce energy 
consumption considerably by shutting down thousands of factories which 
consume unacceptable amounts of electricity and hydrocarbons. It 
imports many of the food products mentioned above from far-off corners 
of the world, transporting these over thousands of miles. 

        Scores of countries do not produce hydrocarbons and are unable 
to produce corn and other grains or oily seeds, for they do not even 
have enough water to meet their most basic needs. 

        At a meeting on ethanol production held in Buenos Aires by the 
Argentine Oil Industry Chamber and Cereals Exporters Association, Loek 
Boonekamp, the Dutch head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation 
and Development (OECD)?s commercial and marketing division, told the 
press that governments are very much enthused about this process but 
that they should objectively consider whether ethanol ought to be given 
such resolute support.  

According to Boonekamp, the United States is the only country where 
ethanol can be profitable and, without subsidies, no other country can 
make it viable. 

        According to the report, Boonekamp insists that ethanol is not 
manna from Heaven and that we should not blindly commit to developing 
this process. 

        Today, developed countries are pushing to have fossil fuels 
mixed with biofuels at around five percent and this is already 
affecting agricultural prices. If this figure went up to 10 percent, 30 
percent of the United States? cultivated surface and 50 percent of 
Europe?s would be required. That is the reason Boonekamp asks himself 
whether the process is sustainable, as an increase in the demand for 
crops destined to ethanol production would generate higher and less 
stable prices. 

        Protectionist measures are today at 54 cents per gallon and 
real subsidies reach far higher figures. 

        Applying the simple arithmetic we learned in high school, we 
could show how, by simply replacing incandescent bulbs with fluorescent 
ones, as I explained in my previous reflections, millions and millions 
of dollars in investment and energy could be saved, without the need to 
use a single acre of farming land.

        In the meantime, we are receiving news from Washington, 
through the AP, reporting that the mysterious disappearance of millions 
of bees throughout the United States has edged beekeepers to the brink 
of a nervous breakdown and is even cause for concern in Congress, which 
will discuss this Thursday the critical situation facing this insect, 
essential to the agricultural sector. According to the report, the 
first disquieting signs of this enigma became evident shortly after 
Christmas in the state of Florida, when beekeepers discovered that 
their bees had vanished without a trace. Since then, the syndrome which 
experts have christened as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has reduced 
the country?s swarms by 25 percent. 

        Daniel Weaver, president of the US Beekeepers Association, 
stated that more than half a million colonies, each with a population 
of nearly 50 thousand bees, had been lost. He added that the syndrome 
has struck 30 of the country?s 50 states. What is curious about the 
phenomenon is that, in many cases, the mortal remains of the bees are 
not found. 

        According to a study conducted by Cornell University, these 
industrious insects pollinate crops valued at anywhere from 12 to 14 
billion dollars. 

        Scientists are entertaining all kinds of hypotheses, including 
the theory that a pesticide may have caused the bees? neurological 
damage and altered their sense of orientation. Others lay the blame on 
the drought and even mobile phone waves, but, what?s certain is that no 
one knows exactly what has unleashed this syndrome. 

The worst may be yet to come: a new war aimed at securing gas and oil 
supplies that can take humanity to the brink of total annihilation. 

        Invoking intelligence sources, Russian newspapers have 
reported that a war on Iran has been in the works for over three years 
now, since the day the government of the United States resolved to 
occupy Iraq completely, unleashing a seemingly endless and despicable 
civil war. 

        All the while, the government of the United States devotes 
hundreds of billions to the development of highly sophisticated 
technologies, as those which employ micro-electronic systems or new 
nuclear weapons which can strike their targets an hour following the 
order to attack. 

        The United States brazenly turns a deaf ear to world public 
opinion, which is against all kinds of nuclear weapons. 

        Razing all of Iran?s factories to the ground is a relatively 
easy task, from the technical point of view, for a powerful country 
like the United States. The difficult task may come later, if a new war 
were to be unleashed against another Muslim faith which deserves our 
utmost respect, as do all other religions of the Near, Middle or Far 
East, predating or postdating Christianity. 

        The arrest of English soldiers at Iran?s territorial waters 
recalls the nearly identical act of provocation of the so-called 
?Brothers to the Rescue? who, ignoring President Clinton?s orders 
advanced over our country?s territorial waters. Cuba?s absolutely 
legitimate and defensive action gave the United States a pretext to 
promulgate the well-known Helms-Burton Act, which encroaches upon the 
sovereignty of other nations besides Cuba. The powerful media have 
consigned that episode to oblivion. No few people attribute the price 
of oil, at nearly 70 dollars a barrel as of Monday, to fears of a 
possible invasion of Iran. 

        Where shall poor Third World countries find the basic 
resources needed to survive?

        I am not exaggerating or using overblown language. I am 
confining myself to the facts. 

        As can be seen, the polyhedron has many dark faces. 

 

April 3, 2007

Fidel Castro Ruz
 

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://listserv.icors.org/archives/gambia-l.html

To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?S1=gambia-l
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]
¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤