Dutch trade minister somber about success of TTIP talks

DutchNews, August 30, 2016

Dutch trade minister Lilianne Ploumen has told broadcaster NOS that the ongoing TTIP trade talks between Europe and the US are proceeding with difficulty and without concessions from America, the treaty will not happen. 

Europe, Ploumen said, had made demands which need to be met before the treaty can become a reality. These include conditions for food safety and both the environmental and social aspects of the treaty. ‘

Without concessions from the Americans, I don’t see it happening,’ Ploumen said. Time is running out, given the next round of negotiations is due in October and that the US presidential elections take place in November, she said. 

Ploumen was reacting to comments made by Germany’s economic affairs minister Sigmar Gabriel who said he felt the talks had failed but that ‘no one is really admitting it’. 

He said that during the 14 rounds of talks so far, neither side had agreed on a single common chapter out of the 27 on the table.

‘Many of us in Europe think it is time for a “reset” in trade politics,’ Ploumen said. The treaty should be done differently, there should be greater transparency and more effort made to make sure that ordinary citizens understand the advantages, she said. 

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(Official Movie) THRIVE: What On Earth Will It Take?

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"Recalibration of Free Choice"–  Mar 3, 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll) - (Subjects: (Old) Souls, Midpoint on 21-12-2012, Shift of Human Consciousness, Black & White vs. Color, 1 - Spirituality (Religions) shifting, Lose a Pope “soon”, 2 - Humans will change react to drama, 3 - Civilizations/Population on Earth,  4 - Alternate energy sources (Geothermal, Tidal (Pedal wheels), Wind), 5 – Financials Institutes/concepts will change (Integrity – Ethical) , 6 - News/Media/TV to change, 7 – Big Pharmaceutical company will collapse “soon”, (Keep people sick), (Integrity – Ethical)  8 – Wars will be over on Earth, Global Unity, … etc.)  - New ! 

Leaked documents reveal US diplomats actually work for Monsanto

NaturalNews, by: Anthony Gucciardi, Wednesday, January 11, 2012

See allarticles by this author

(NaturalNews) Biotech giant Monsanto has been genetically modifying the world's food supply and subsequently breeding environmental devastation for years, but leaked documents now reveal that Monsanto has also deeply infiltrated the United States government. With leaked reports revealing how U.S. diplomats are actually working for Monsanto to push their agenda along with other key government officials, Monsanto's grasp on international politics has never been clearer.

Amazingly, the information reveals that the massive corporation is also intensely involved in the passing and regulations concerning the very GM ingredients they are responsible for. In fact, the information released by WikiLeaks reveals just how much power Monsanto has thanks to key positions within the United States government and elsewhere. Not only was it exposed that the U.S. is threatening nations who oppose Monsanto with military-style trade wars, but that many U.S. diplomats actually work directly for Monsanto.

What the leaked documents reveal -- Military style trade wars, government corruption

In 2007 it was requested that specific nations inside the European Union be punished for not supporting the expansion of Monsanto's GMO crops. The request for such measures to be taken was made by Craig Stapleton, the United States ambassador to France and partner to George W. Bush. Despite mounting evidence linking Monsanto's GM corn to organ damage and environmental devastation, the ambassador plainly calls for 'target retaliation' against those not supporting the GM crop. In the leaked documents, Stapleton states:

"Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility, but that also focuses in part on the worst culprits. The list should be measured rather than vicious and must be sustainable over the long term, since we should not expect an early victory. Moving to retaliation will make clear that the current path has real costs to EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voices."

The undying support of key players within the U.S. towards Monsanto is undeniably made clear not only in this release, but in the legislative decisions taken by organizations such as the FDA and USDA. Legislative decisions such as allowing Monsanto's synthetic hormone Posilac (rBGH) to be injected into U.S. cows despite being banned in 27 countries. How did Monsanto pull this off?

The biotech juggernaut managed to infiltrate the FDA positions responsible for the approval of rBGH, going as far as instating the company's own Margaret Miller as Deputy Director of Human Safety and Consultative Services. After assuming this position, Miller reviewed her own report on the safety and effectiveness of rBGH.

Many US diplomats pawns of Monsanto's GM agenda

While it may be shocking to you if you are not familiar with the corrupt influence of Monsanto, the cables also show that many US diplomats are pushing GMO crops as a strategic government and commercial imperative. Interestingly enough, the U.S. focused their efforts toward advisers to the pope specifically, due to the fact that many Catholic figureheads have openly voiced their opposition to GM foods. With this kind of political influence, is it any wonder that many food staples are now predominantly GM? Nearly 93% of U.S. soybeans are heavily modified conservatively, with many other staple crops coming in at similar numbers.

U.S. diplomats have unique opportunities to spread honest and intellectual campagins that can serve to better mankind and end suffering, however they are instead spreading the roots of Monsanto deeper and deeper into international territory. As a substitute for the betterment of mankind, these paid-off diplomats are now spreading environment desecration and health destruction.

As if there wasn't already enough information to reveal Monsanto's corruption, the biotech giant also spends enormous amount of money lobbying government each year. Monsanto spent an astonishing $2 million lobbying the federal government in the 3rd quarter of 2011 alone, according to mainstream sources. Why so much cash? The government lobbying focuses on issues like regulations for GM crops and patent reforms. This 'legal' form of persuasion is the reason government agencies like the USDA and FDA let Monsanto roam freely.

Satisfying government officials' financial vested interest is all that matters when dealing with corrupt mega-corporations like Monsanto. As long as these financial ties continue to exist, Monsanto will continue to reign over the food supply and continue to wreak devastation to the environment, ecosystem, and humankind.

Sources for this article include:

http://naturalsociety.com/us-start-trade-wars-with-nations-opposed-to-monsanto-gmo-crops/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/03/wikileaks-us-eu-gm-crops

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9RL51J81.htm

http://213.251.145.96/cable/2007/12/07PARIS4723.html

http://www.fastcoexist.com/1677871/fearful-of-genetically-modified-crops-youre-too-late

About the author:

Anthony Gucciardi is a health activist and wellness researcher, whose goal is centered around educating the general public as to how they may obtain optimum health. He has authored countless articles highlighting the benefits of natural health, as well as exposing the pharmaceutical industry. Anthony is the creator of Natural Society (http://www.NaturalSociety.com), a natural health website. Anthony has been accurately interpreting national and international events for years within his numerous political articles. Anthony's articles have been seen by millions around the world, and hosted on multiple top news websites.

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'Speculation on basic foodstuffs is catastrophic'

Deutsche Welle, 16 October 2011  

Ziegler: Death by starvation is murder

To mark World Food Day on 16 October 2011, DW-World presents an exclusive interview held earlier this month with Jean Ziegler, the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, about the causes of world hunger.

Jean Ziegler, a former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, is a stark advocate of the right of every individual to have access to food. Since 2008, Ziegler has been a member of the Advisory Committee to the UN Human Rights Council. He spoke to Deutsche Welle in Geneva about the current global food situation.

Deutsche Welle: All people have a right to food, but food has also become a speculative commodity on the world's stock markets. Where do you see the reasons for this, and what effects does it have?

Jean Ziegler: Financial speculation on basic foodstuffs is completely catastrophic. In the first place, the big hedge funds, large banks and large-scale speculators moved to the commodities exchanges, particularly the food stock markets, after the financial crash and are now making astronomical profits, quite legally, with forward transactions. The result is that corn has become 93 percent more expensive in the past 18 months. The price of rice has gone up 110 percent. And the third basic foodstuff is wheat. A ton of wheat now costs 271 euros ($372), exactly twice as much as last year. Why is that a catastrophe? If you take the example of developing countries such as the 53 countries in Africa, 37 of them have to import food in normal periods, not just when there is famine, and they can't do that if the prizes explode. That is why stock market speculation on basic foodstuffs should be banned.

One of the biggest obstacles in the fight against hunger is that poor countries in particular are dependent on food imports. How could this development be reversed? How can countries regain some degree of the food security that they once had?

More than 10 million people are affected
 by the current food crisis in parts of Africa

By canceling their foreign debt. If developing countries spend everything they earn in the way of foreign currency to pay off interest or to pay back creditor banks in Frankfurt, London, Paris or New York, they don't have any money. Take Ethiopia as an example: this huge country of a million square kilometers, with 70 million inhabitants, has 3.8 percent of arable land. Because there is no investment, no fertilizer or selected seeds, and no market development, productivity is low. In normal periods, in the Sahel, Burkina Faso or Niger, they harvest 600 to 700 kilograms (1,300 to 1,500 pounds) per hectare (2.47 acres). In Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany, they get ten tons, or ten thousand kilograms (22,000 pounds), not because the farmers in Baden-Württemberg are so much cleverer or work so much more than farmers in the Sahel, but because farmers in the Sahel have no investments. No draft animals, so no natural fertilizer, no seed, selected seed, no pesticides, no irrigation. The only thing they have is the same short-handled hoe they have had for three thousand years, and they use rain-based agricultural methods, totally dependent on weather conditions that have gone mad.

You have said that death by starvation is murder. Who is the murderer?

The recently released World Food Report says that a child of under 10 years of age dies every five seconds. Some 37,000 people die of hunger every day. The same World Food Report says world agriculture could feed 12 billion people without any problems. There is no objective lack of food any more.

A child that dies of starvation these days has been murdered. The murderer is the cannibalistic world order. That world order is dominated by multinational corporations. The global agricultural market is dominated by some 10 multinational companies that function according the principle of profit maximization; that's completely normal. It's not a matter of attacking them. What matters here is the structural violence of a cannibalistic order. Last year, Cargil controlled 26 percent of the entire global wheat trade. Monsanto controls 85 percent of all seed, both genetically modified and normal selected seed. Archer Midland, Louis Dreifus control the rice market and decide every day who on this planet will live and who will die.

According to the human rights organization FIAN, chronic hunger results above all from the fact that the perpetrators are not punished. Is that how you see it, and who could bring them to trial?

Huge quantities of grain are needed
to make bioethanol

Last year, the Americans burnt 138 million tons of corn and hundreds of millions of tons of wheat to produce bioethanol and biodiesel. The production and import of bioethanol and biodiesel have to be banned. Stock market speculation on basic foodstuffs must and can be banned. The 27 states of the EU pay billions in production and export subventions and swamp the African markets with cheap products, completely ruining the local farming industry. This form of dumping can and must be stopped. The foreign debt of the poorest countries must be canceled so that these countries can invest in subsistence farming. And land-grabbing has to stop, it must be banned. All of these are very concrete demands that a democratic public sphere could implement today, now.

What demands would we have to make on global agricultural production to be able to feed nine billion people in the long run?

The world could feed 12 billion people already today. It's a problem of distribution.

It's not just raw agricultural products that are being destroyed - you spoke about wheat and corn from the USA - but we also hear that around a third of all food on offer is wasted here in Europe. What can be done there? Who is to blame?

Millions of tons of food are thrown away by supermarkets, by bakeries. That is the consumption mania, the neoliberal consumption mania that we have, the total lack of responsibility for people. It isn't a matter of transporting the bread that is thrown away here as dry bread for Somali refugees. That is nonsense, complete nonsense. It is a matter of wresting the structures of production and consumptions away from the corporations; of saying: there is a right to food, it is produced and the amount of food is distributed in such a way that everyone has access to the food that gives and preserves life.

The tyranny of the oligarchy of globalized financial capital has existed for 20 years. Things have been liberalized and privatized as never before in the history of humankind. Nation-states are like snowmen in summer; every week they lose more sovereign rights. And hunger is growing. Minimum wages for farmers, land rights, rights to seed, rights to fertilizers, the legally protected access of people to sufficient food: these are things we can achieve - it isn't a utopian dream.

Author: Andreas Zumach / tj

Editor: Sean Sinico

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G-20 announces measures to stabilize food prices

The Jakarta Post, Associated Press, Paris | Thu, 06/23/2011

The largest economies in the world agreed Thursday to a series of measures to stabilize world food prices after years of sudden fluctuations caused global instability, especially in poorer countries.

French Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire said the G-20 summit of agriculture ministers had agreed to calm the world market by establishing a transparent system to track global supplies, set up emergency food reserves, engage in more research into new wheat strains and create a rapid response mechanism to deal with drought in producer countries.

"It is a tour de force for the international community that lets you still believe in the power of solidarity and working together to address the big questions facing the planet, like the future of world agriculture," Le Maire told journalists.

The accord was a rare case of international agreement in the area of food and agriculture, where countries have long been at loggerheads because of divergent interests.

International farm groups have also called for more regulation in the market, but that has been resisted by more free market-oriented governments like Britain and Australia.

The gravity of the situation, however, was driven home when rising energy prices prompted a spike in food prices in 2008 that sparked riots in almost two dozen nations over three continents.

Last week, David Nabarro, the U.N. special representative on food security and nutrition, said that a repeat of 2008 is very likely and shortages of food, water and power are bound to create social anxiety and political instability in the future.

A recent U.N. study also predicted that prices will be 20 percent higher for cereals and up to 30 percent higher for meat in the coming decade compared to the past ten years.

With the global population expected to increase from 6.9 billion to 9 billion by 2050, the problem of feeding the world put food security at the top of G-20 summit's agenda.

"We all recognize the necessity of putting in place on the market of agricultural products new rules and regulations," Le Maire said, reflecting the new consensus that food prices had to be protected, especially from financial speculation in commodity markets.

Several dozen French farmers dressed as livestock and ears of corn demonstrated near the Paris bourse on Wednesday, protesting the role of financial markets in the food crisis.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick appeared at the ministers' side during the news conference to express his support for the new measures and the seriousness of price swings.

"We are not going to be able to stop food prices from going up and down, but we can smooth out the swings and we can protect the poor whether they are small farmers or consumers," he said.

One of the key aspects of the new accord is the Agricultural Market Information System that would stave off panic food speculation by making instantly available to all countries the state of world food stocks, production and consumption, Zoellick explained.

"What we saw when prices started to surge in 2008 was that the lack of information on stocks and availability can lead to panic in markets and panic is what leads to price hikes," said Zoellick. "Uncertainty leads to volatility."

The new "action plan on food price volatility and agriculture" also called for the institution of emergency food reserves to offset humanitarian crises.

Banks and international agencies were also urged to draw up risk management plans for developing countries financial tools to offset price fluctuations.

"Financial engineering has been associated with the 'dark side.' This initiative helps bring it into the light," said Zoellick. "These tools that are widely and commonly used in developed countries, we can now make them available to farmers in developing countries."

The plan also called for ending export bans by producer nations, such as when Russia banned grain exports following forest fires, causing a spike in wheat prices.

Le Maire emphasized that the plan sets down concrete and ambitious proposals that will be put in place immediately.

"The plan takes place as of today," he said.

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G20 agriculture ministers to confront food crisis

Deutsche Welle, 21 June 2011

More food than ever will be needed to
feed the world

Demand for food is outpacing supply, driving up prices and eating into reserves. Agriculture ministers from the Group of 20 nations will meet in Paris this week to discuss how to combat food shortage and soaring prices.

While the G20 nations agree the world needs more affordable food, they are divided on how to achieve this goal: whether to tame prices through regulation or increase agriculture production - or both.

Agriculture ministers meeting in Paris hope to iron out their differences amid surging demand for food and biofuels that is putting upwards pressure on farm prices expected to remain high for years to come.

Their meeting is seen as a preparation for the November summit at which G20 leaders hope to agree to concrete steps to reduce food price volatility in agricultural commodities.

Calls for tighter regulation

Agreement is expected on the launch of an agricultural market information system to share key data on global stocks and production. The initiative comes as the world economy battles a food price shock due to production shortfalls, strong demand and speculators pushing prices higher.

Many speculators are laughing all the
way to the bank

But France wants far more to come out of the meeting than just an agreement on a food stock database. The country has made tighter regulation of commodity markets a top priority of its G20 leadership, which ends with the November summit. French President Nicolas Sarkozy blames speculators for the food price inflation, which, among other things, has caused unrest in parts of Africa and the Middle East.

The French proposal envisions putting a lid on how much of a market an investor can buy into or imposing a minimum cash deposit for commodity derivative transactions. It also calls for greater transparency of who is making the transactions.

Even some commodities experts, like Frank Neidig at Bankhaus-Lampe in Düsseldorf, admit to a problem with speculators. Neidig notes that while crop growers prefer to lock into fixed prices and play it safe, other stakeholders like to gamble and haul in the profits. Markets, he said, are becoming increasing crowded with speculators "who are the least bit interested in real grain deliveries."

French idea

The French idea, however, has yet to win the support of the United States, the United Kingdom and several other countries that believe speculation isn't the cause for the high food prices. Many of them argue against regulation in favour of measures to increase agricultural output through investments and the use of new technologies.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy
wants to clamp down on
speculators

Ralf Südhoff, director of the Berlin office of the United Nations World Food Program, argues that " a little bit of everything" is needed to avoid a food crisis. "We need to establish greater transparency and larger reserves," he told Deutsche Welle. "And we need to dramatically increase production in developing countries in a sustainable way and get speculators under control to calm markets and avoid price swings."

Südhoff said G20 agricultural ministers will discuss the establishment of regional reserve centers to respond to food needs in emergency cases and ways to increase food production in developing countries. But whether France, he added, can garner support for its proposal to curb speculation remains to be seen.

The clock is ticking. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization projects that the world will need to produce 70 percent more food by 2050 to feed its population and that food prices already this decade will be 30 percent higher than in the previous decade.

The need for more affordable food is real. That's a fact G20 leaders will need to swallow fast.

Author: John Blau

Editor: Thomas Kohlmann

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US universities in Africa 'land grab'

Institutions including Harvard and Vanderbilt reportedly use hedge funds to buy land in deals that may force farmers out

guardian.co.uk, John Vidal and Claire Provost, Wednesday 8 June 2011

US universities are reportedly using endowment funds to make deals
that may force thousands from their land in Africa.
Photograph: Boston Globe via Getty Images

Harvard and other major American universities are working through British hedge funds and European financial speculators to buy or lease vast areas of African farmland in deals, some of which may force many thousands of people off their land, according to a new study.

Researchers say foreign investors are profiting from "land grabs" that often fail to deliver the promised benefits of jobs and economic development, and can lead to environmental and social problems in the poorest countries in the world.

The new report on land acquisitions in seven African countries suggests that Harvard, Vanderbilt and many other US colleges with large endowment funds have invested heavily in African land in the past few years. Much of the money is said to be channelled through London-based Emergent asset management, which runs one of Africa's largest land acquisition funds, run by former JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs currency dealers.

Researchers at the California-based Oakland Institute think that Emergent's clients in the US may have invested up to $500m in some of the most fertile land in the expectation of making 25% returns.

Emergent said the deals were handled responsibly. "Yes, university endowment funds and pension funds are long-term investors," a spokesman said. "We are investing in African agriculture and setting up businesses and employing people. We are doing it in a responsible way … The amounts are large. They can be hundreds of millions of dollars. This is not landgrabbing. We want to make the land more valuable. Being big makes an impact, economies of scale can be more productive."

Chinese and Middle Eastern firms have previously been identified as "grabbing" large tracts of land in developing countries to grow cheap food for home populations, but western funds are behind many of the biggest deals, says the Oakland institute, an advocacy research group.

The company that manages Harvard's investment funds declined to comment. "It is Harvard management company policy not to discuss investments or investment strategy and therefore I cannot confirm the report," said a spokesman. Vanderbilt also declined to comment.

Oakland said investors overstated the benefits of the deals for the communities involved. "Companies have been able to create complex layers of companies and subsidiaries to avert the gaze of weak regulatory authorities. Analysis of the contracts reveal that many of the deals will provide few jobs and will force many thousands of people off the land," said Anuradha Mittal, Oakland's director.

In Tanzania, the memorandum of understanding between the local government and US-based farm development corporation AgriSol Energy, which is working with Iowa University, stipulates that the two main locations – Katumba and Mishamo – for their project are refugee settlements holding as many as 162,000 people that will have to be closed before the $700m project can start. The refugees have been farming this land for 40 years.

In Ethiopia, a process of "villagisation" by the government is moving tens of thousands of people from traditional lands into new centres while big land deals are being struck with international companies.

The largest land deal in South Sudan, where as much as 9% of the land is said by Norwegian analysts to have been bought in the last few years, was negotiated between a Texas-based firm, Nile Trading and Development and a local co-operative run by absent chiefs. The 49-year lease of 400,000 hectares of central Equatoria for around $25,000 (£15,000) allows the company to exploit all natural resources including oil and timber. The company, headed by former US Ambassador Howard Eugene Douglas, says it intends to apply for UN-backed carbon credits that could provide it with millions of pounds a year in revenues.

In Mozambique, where up to 7m hectares of land is potentially available for investors, western hedge funds are said in the report to be working with South Africans businesses to buy vast tracts of forest and farmland for investors in Europe and the US. The contracts show the government will waive taxes for up to 25 years, but few jobs will be created.

"No one should believe that these investors are there to feed starving Africans, create jobs or improve food security," said Obang Metho of Solidarity Movement for New Ethiopia. "These agreements – many of which could be in place for 99 years – do not mean progress for local people and will not lead to food in their stomachs. These deals lead only to dollars in the pockets of corrupt leaders and foreign investors."

"The scale of the land deals being struck is shocking", said Mittal. "The conversion of African small farms and forests into a natural-asset-based, high-return investment strategy can drive up food prices and increase the risks of climate change.

Research by the World Bank and others suggests that nearly 60m hectares – an area the size of France – has been bought or leased by foreign companies in Africa in the past three years.

"Most of these deals are characterised by a lack of transparency, despite the profound implications posed by the consolidation of control over global food markets and agricultural resources by financial firms," says the report.

"We have seen cases of speculators taking over agricultural land while small farmers, viewed as squatters, are forcibly removed with no compensation," said Frederic Mousseau, policy director at Oakland, said: "This is creating insecurity in the global food system that could be a much bigger threat to global security than terrorism. More than one billion people around the world are living with hunger. The majority of the world's poor still depend on small farms for their livelihoods, and speculators are taking these away while promising progress that never happens."

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BBC News, 8 June 2011

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Hedge funds are behind "land grabs" in Africa to boost their profits in the food and biofuel sectors, a US think-tank says.

Foreign firms are snapping up farming land in
Africa, a new report says

In a report, the Oakland Institute said hedge funds and other foreign firms had acquired large swathes of African land, often without proper contracts.

It said the acquisitions had displaced millions of small farmers.

Foreign firms farm the land to consolidate their hold over global food markets, the report said.

They also use land to "make room" for export commodities such as biofuels and cut flowers.

"This is creating insecurity in the global food system that could be a much bigger threat than terrorism," the report said.

The Oakland Institute said it released its findings after studying land deals in Ethiopia, Tanzania, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Mali and Mozambique.

'Risky manoeuvre'

It said hedge funds and other speculators had, in 2009 alone, bought or leased nearly 60m hectares of land in Africa - an area the size of France.

In the field

• Umaru Fofana
  
  BBC African Service, Sierra Leone
  
  When I visited Lungi-Lol in rural Sierra Leone I saw men hoeing thousands of hectares of farmland owned by Addax, a Swiss-based bio-energy company.
  
  They are growing sugarcane to produce biofuels.
  
  Campaigners say this contributes to food insecurity, but many people here welcome Addax's presence.
  
  Francis Koroma, who works on the farm, says: "We thank God for Addax. I am gainfully employed and I receive about $70 (£46) a month. Before, I spent a whole year without getting $50."
  
  Villagers are unaware of the controversy surrounding biofuels.

Abdulai Conteh, a local traditional leader, said: "Some people are doing business here but I have no idea what they are doing with our land. I see them growing sugarcane. That's all I know."

"The same financial firms that drove us into a global recession by inflating the real estate bubble through risky financial manoeuvres are now doing the same with the world's food supply," the report said.

It added that some firms obtained land after deals with gullible traditional leaders or corrupt government officials.

"The research exposed investors who said it is easy to make a deal - that they could usually get what they wanted in exchange for giving a poor tribal chief a bottle of Johnnie Walker [whisky]," said Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland Institute.

"When these investors promise progress and jobs to local chiefs it sounds great, but they don't deliver."

The report said the contracts also gave investors a range of incentives, from unlimited water rights to tax waivers.

"No-one should believe that these investors are there to feed starving Africans.

"These deals only lead to dollars in the pockets of corrupt leaders and foreign investors," said Obang Metho of Solidarity Movement for New Ethiopia, a non-governmental organisation in Addis Ababa.

However, not all companies named in the report accept that their motives are as suggested and they dismiss claims that their presence in Africa is harmful.

One company, EmVest Asset Management, strongly denied that it was involved in exploitative or illegal practices.

"There are no shady deals. We acquire all land in terms of legal tender," EmVest's Africa director Anthony Poorter told the BBC.

He said that in Mozambique the company's employees earned salaries 40% higher than the minimum wage.

The company was also involved in development projects such as the supply of clean water to rural communities.

"They are extremely happy with us," Mr Poorter said.

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As food prices reach record highs, how much is the speculation in agricultural commodites to blame?

guardian.co.uk, Felicity Lawrence in Chicago, Thursday 2 June 2011

Traders signal offers in the corn options pit at the Chicago Board of Trade.
Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images North America

With food prices reaching record highs again this year, what goes on inside a 650ft Chicago skyscraper topped by a statue of the goddess Ceres is coming under intense scrutiny.

It is here that the world's oldest futures and options exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), was established in 1848 to serve the great grain belt that had opened up in the American midwest. And it is here that the international price of agricultural commodities is set to this day.

"There's a lot of weather in the market, the northern growing season has been traumatic, with drought in Europe and China and tornadoes and floods in the US. No one is panicked yet, but any additional crop loss, say in Russia, will quickly bring new worry to the market and that could quickly turn to panic. We may be one more event away from panic," Dan Basse, president of AgResource, one of Chicago's most respected commodity analyst companies, warned as we watched the opening of a day's trading last month.

G20 agriculture ministers will meet in Paris on 22 June to discuss food security and prices. Speculative activity and how to contain it is high on their agenda.

Debate has been raging since 2008, when price rises provoked riots around the world, about whether or not the new money that has flooded into the commodities markets since 2003 is the cause of the problem – and if so, how to regulate it.

In Chicago, before the financial day begins, teams of traders pump themselves up outside on chain-smoked cigarettes and outsize McDonald's coffees. The coloured blazers they use to make themselves easily identifiable on the trading floor have been reduced to bright jackets with string-vest backs to counter the heat generated by a day's speculation. They keep on their toes in training shoes.

Inside, when the bell announces the start, there is a frenzy of noise. Traders yell at one another and wave their arms in violent gesticulation, palms out to signal sell, palms in to signal buy. There are "scalpers" who buy and sell within seconds, "floor brokers" hedging for corporate accounts, and hundreds of runners rushing orders to the recorders.

At the end of May, the price of corn was up again – most traders and analysts expected it to continue rising along with other commodities.

Basse is one of those who thinks underlying fundamentals – a serious mismatch between supply and rapidly growing global demand – are behind this year's price rises.

"Speculation is the easy thing to point the finger at and it's easy to fix. Back in 2008, when prices were up and there was lots of money pouring in, that may have pushed prices up, but today we don't see that as having a significant effect," Basse said.

"Look at growth in world livestock demand and in biofuels demand, and you can see what's been driving the agricultural bull market."

He painted a troubling picture of what is likely to come. He estimates the world needs to bring around 10.3m hectares of new land a year into food production "just to keep stocks steady", but he says that will be increasingly hard to do as the land that remains available is reduced to what is environmentally fragile.

A "weekend" farmer of GM crops himself, Basse admits the promise that biotech seeds would deliver big increases in yields has turned out to be illusory. He also fears that "superweeds are coming on so fast with GM that US farmers are going to have to go back to more traditional cultivation methods [as opposed to the practice with GM seeds of not tilling the soil and simply spraying to control pests] – but they don't have the capacity to do that."

Europe, Basse said, will soon have no choice but to lift its ban on imports of GM crops for animal feed. With its own crops suffering drought, it will have to turn to Brazil, the only major supplier of non-GM imports. However, the Chinese have already bought up large chunks of the Brazilian crop. The policies in the US and the EU of promoting biofuels will be unsustainable.

The company that owns CBOT, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange group (CME), also rejects the notion that the enormous rise in speculation in agricultural commodities in recent years has caused food price rises.

Farmers and processors of physical goods have long used commodities exchanges such as Chicago's to hedge against risks such as bad harvests. Speculators willing to take the risk perform a useful role in providing liquidity. But much of the recent growth in speculation has been through new "structured" products invented by banks and sold to investors.

After intense lobbying, banks won deregulation of commodities markets in the US in 2000, allowing them to develop these new products. Goldman Sachs pioneered commodity index funds, which offer investors a chance to track changes in a spread of commodity prices including key agricultural commodities.

Between 2003 and 2008, investment in commodity index funds rose from $13bn to $317bn (£193bn). But the CME's head of product development, Fred Seamon, said: "There is no credible evidence that suggests index funds or any group of traders are a cause for high prices or increased volatility. There may be a correlation, but that's a completely different thing."

CME argues that the volume of speculation is not a problem, because the overall composition of the agricultural commodities market has not changed; the increase in activity by index funds has been matched by an increase in trading by those who are commercial participants, that is those who have a direct interest in the physical goods.

"That's an indefensible position," Chicago–based hedge fund manager Mark Newell of Quiddity retorted. He and another hedge fund manager, Mike Masters, prepared testimony to the US Senate when it was looking into the effect of speculation on food prices in 2008.

"When billions of dollars of capital is put to work in small markets like agricultural commodities, it inevitably increases volatility and amplifies prices – and if financial flows amplify prices of food stuffs and energy, it's not like real estate and stocks. When food prices double, people starve ," Masters said.

The UN rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter, added his weight to Masters' side of the debate at the end of last year when he concluded a speculative bubble was responsible for a significant part of the food price rises.

An OECD study, however, did not find a link. Aid agencies such as Oxfam and Christian Aid are calling for reregulation.

In the US, the regulator – the Commodities Futures Trading Commission – has until July to produce a new framework for the commodities markets for Congress. It has been looking at imposing limits on the size of positions that traders can take, and at regulating the commodity index fund trades that are currently unregulated because they take place "over the counter"; that is, between investors and banks. But the financial industry has proved resistant to reforms. G20 ministers will have to decide their own position soon, too.

Newell, meanwhile, remains convinced that without action prices will continue to go up, partly because of underlying fundamentals, but also because, just like in 2008, "the game's afoot again".

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