NDP Candidate Plagiarizes Der Spiegel in Commons Speech?

RELATED: Stephane Dion plagiarizes AP article in policy speech

February 1, 2008 [Direct link here]

Mr. Alex Atamanenko (British Columbia Southern Interior, NDP):

For the first time we are seeing the emergence of a truly global agricultural market driven by the underlying force of all economic activity. The scarcity of goods, wheat supplies for example, have reached a 30 year low. In only one year, inventories in the European Union have dropped from 14 million tonnes to only 1 million tonnes.

We need to ask ourselves how humankind will be able to feed itself in the future and at what price. How can agriculture feed the world that grows by 80 million people each year? When we take land out of food production to produce fuel, we obviously complicate this matter and we need to find a balance.

January 24, 2008

Spiegel Online – “Our Hungry Planet” by Alexander Jung, Jens Glüsing, Frank Hornig and Wieland Wagne :

Worldwide flows of goods are shifting and becoming reorganized. For the first time, we are seeing the emergence of a truly global agricultural market driven by the underlying force of all economic activity: the scarcity of goods. Wheat supplies, for example, have reached a 30-year low. In only one year, inventories in the European Union have plummeted from 14 million to one million tons.

Given this situation, the meteorological forecast of a drought in Australia, an important wheat exporter, can trigger a minor earthquake on the world’s futures exchanges, where commodities prices are constantly hitting new all-time highs. Nothing fuels the fantasies of commodity traders quite as effectively as a bushel of wheat or a hectoliter of rapeseed oil.

Of course, the current uproar over rising food prices revolves around a lot more than consumers paying a few extra euros for milk, cheese and bread. The real issue is how mankind will be able to feed itself in the future — and at what price.

How can agriculture feed a world that grows by 80 million people each year? A world that is increasingly exposed to climatic extremes? And, most of all, a world that doesn’t just need food for people and feed for livestock, but is increasingly consuming fuel derived from plants?

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