Agriculture and food snapping up land - EC FR2

[Christophe]

Yesterday was broadcast a Additional investigation special agriculture and food. I saw the last 2 reports, very interesting!

Official website: http://info.france2.fr/complement-denquete/

A review here: http://www.tvzaz.com/streaming_document ... -la-terre/

Monday June 6, 2009 - 22:10 p.m.

Food: low hand on the ground

What if tomorrow we could no longer feed the planet? Polluted land, growing urbanization, declining agricultural yields, and soon seven billion inhabitants to feed ... Where can we find nourishing land? This is the challenge for entire countries that no longer hesitate to buy or rent land from other states. Financial groups and multinationals buy millions of hectares of cultivable land. Peasants everywhere are fighting against speculation and the munching of their land, including in France. Who will feed us tomorrow? Should we be looking for new grains on the other side of the planet? Or use the soil more and more, stuff them with fertilizer until they are sterile? In the aftermath of the world release of the event film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Further investigation into these new wars for the Earth.

reports:

"Africa, the Chinese far west"
Emilie Lançon and Claire-Marie Denis.
Ouyang Riping, CEO of a Chinese agricultural company, has a mission: to transform Senegal into a sesame basket… for China! Dakar gives it 60 hectares to cultivate and export sesame to Beijing. In exchange, the Chinese teach Senegalese peasants to obtain two crops of rice per year. Original cooperation or dupe market?

"Land to give up"
Agnès Gardet and Lionel Langlade.
In France, 50 farms disappear every day! Many of the farmers who have reached retirement age have no successors. What will become of the family lands exploited for generations? In the Var, they whet the appetites of promoters. In Lozère, breeders are struggling to pass on their land.

"Taboo mud"
Florence Griffond and David Da Meda.
What happens to the sludge from treatment plants? To get rid of it, this sludge, considered an excellent fertilizer, is spread for free in the fields. But more and more farmers are wary of it: are heavy metals, chemical residues really harmless? Why has Switzerland banned them?

"Who knows quinoa? "
Thomas Horeau and Marie Cazeau.
It has become the fashionable product in Europe and the United States: quinoa seeds, which have always been known in Bolivia and Peru. And it was a Frenchman who had the idea of ​​cultivating them massively to market them here. But this craze for quinoa is turning the lives of Andean peasants upside down. Will the now over-exploited land hold up?

Jean Ziegler says that the Earth's current agricultural production capacity would be enough to feed 10 billion people... if the rich shared better with the poor and changed their habits a little (less waste, less meat and less "food" per person in general!).

There should therefore be no need to double agricultural production by 2050 as we have heard ... unless we continue to be so selfish and stupid ...

[Ahmed]

I bounce on a line from this post:

In exchange, the Chinese teach Senegalese peasants to obtain two crops of rice per year. Original cooperation or dupe market?

The fundamental principle of any economy, it must not be forgotten, is the exaltation of greed, which is also called in Newspeak: "uninhibited relationship with respect to money".

There is no need to be a great marketing clerk to design the overall project underlying this dupe market.

Africa is in a (very) theoretical position of strength, since it has the land resource that the Chinese lack. The latter will therefore work to turn this situation to their profit in multiple ways: relocation of surplus value (as it is said in the film), dependence on a foreign technique, on the tools and inputs supplied by the Chinese ...

Their trojan horse is agricultural training: they take advantage of the scandalous imperiousness of governments which do not assume their role in this area.

No technique is neutral, it always contains other socio-economic-cultural dimensions ...

What I remember from the current evolution is a non-linearity of history: in the time of the Physiocrats it was estimated that all wealth came from the land, then it was the industrial sector that became preeminent (to the point that "underdeveloped" countries were later deprived of the right to industrialization), recently it was the financial and ntc sector that took center stage, until the (misnamed) "crisis" and today the earth is making a comeback!
Economism, after having consumed earthly resources for the comfort of a minority begins to sign its bankruptcy before the concern of not being able to provide simple basic necessities *.

* What was already true for a long time in a good part of the planet, contrary to the promises of "green revolutions" and other GMOs.

[bamboo]

I watch the report on quinoa: here is the answer of why it is not cultivated here: it needs salt!

[Ahmed]

@ Indy49:
What do you mean by that? What is the relationship between * quinoa and salt?

* quinoa would be feminine ...

[bamboo]

@ Indy49:
What do you mean by that? What is the relationship between * quinoa and salt?

* quinoa would be feminine ...

Hello Ahmed,

I admit that for the kind of "quinoa", I am puzzled.
We see it a lot in the feminine in some cases, but in others, it's more masculine ...
Besides, Robert (you know, not very tall), he says it's a masculine name.
In fact, I would bet that quinoa is feminine in Spanish and masculine in French. That would explain a lot the confusion which reigns around this not very common name (*).

Getting back to the bottom, I don't know the link between salt and le ( ) quinoa, but the commentator of the report states (provided my memories are correct):
[...] to find la (re ) quinoa you have to go to the salt desert [...]

Note (*): check with wiki, I seem it right: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinoa#cite_note-0 see note 1.

[Ahmed]

I took the precaution of using the conditional for the genre of this word ... moreover, it hardly matters.

The indication of the "salt desert" seems to me thin enough to draw solid conclusions, whereas this plant, close cousin of amaranth and lamb's quarters, would be cultivated without problem (very hardy) in our latitudes.

[bamboo]

The indication of the "salt desert" seems to me thin enough to draw solid conclusions, whereas this plant, close cousin of amaranth and lamb's quarters, would be cultivated without problem (very hardy) in our latitudes.

That is true...
But why don't they grow it in France?
Too expensive ??

[Christophe]

The stream of FR2 is HS, as well as the page of the show (pfff can not archive?), Here is the stream on another site:
http://www.tvzaz.com/streaming_document ... -la-terre/

What if tomorrow we could no longer feed the planet?

Polluted land, increasing urbanization, declining agricultural yields, and soon seven billion inhabitants to feed ... Where to find nourishing land? This is the challenge for entire countries that no longer hesitate to buy or rent land from other states. Financial groups and multinationals buy millions of hectares of cultivable land. Peasants everywhere are fighting against speculation and the munching of their land, including in France. Who will feed us tomorrow? Should we be looking for new grains on the other side of the planet? Or use the soil more and more, stuff them with fertilizer until they are sterile? In the aftermath of the world release of the event film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Further investigation into these new wars for the Earth.

reports:

"Africa, the Chinese far west"
Emilie Lançon and Claire-Marie Denis.
Ouyang Riping, CEO of a Chinese agricultural company, has a mission: to transform Senegal into a sesame basket… for China! Dakar gives it 60 hectares to cultivate and export sesame to Beijing. In exchange, the Chinese teach Senegalese peasants to obtain two crops of rice per year. Original cooperation or dupe market?

"Land to give up"
Agnès Gardet and Lionel Langlade.
In France, 50 farms disappear every day! Many of the farmers who have reached retirement age have no successors. What will become of the family lands exploited for generations? In the Var, they whet the appetites of promoters. In Lozère, breeders are struggling to pass on their land.

"Taboo mud"
Florence Griffond and David Da Meda.
What happens to the sludge from treatment plants? To get rid of it, this sludge, considered an excellent fertilizer, is spread for free in the fields. But more and more farmers are wary of it: are heavy metals, chemical residues really harmless? Why has Switzerland banned them?

"Who knows quinoa? "
Thomas Horeau and Marie Cazeau.
It has become the fashionable product in Europe and the United States: quinoa seeds, which have always been known in Bolivia and Peru. And it was a Frenchman who had the idea of ​​cultivating them massively to market them here. But this craze for quinoa is turning the lives of Andean peasants upside down. Will the now over-exploited land hold up?

Guests:

> Jean-Louis Etienne,
nutritionist doctor

> Olivier De Schutter,
UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food

> William Villeneuve,
president of “Jeunes Agriculteurs”

> Marcel Mazoyer,
agricultural engineer and professor emeritus at AgroParisTech