Food Crisis

1
hi it occurs to me that the current global food crisis which is building has a probable relationship to the Mars - Jupiter opposition and its web of further aspect relationships.

Ie Mars transit through the food production sign of Cancer, and in a mixed reception with the commodity planet Venus which is also square, Mars opposes Jupiter in its inhibited fall in Capricorn .

Here we have an interesting aspect at this time of runaway pricing of Rice and staple crops causing real hardship worldwide

any comments?
mike c

Food Scarcity

2
Virgo is the significator of sown crops such as wheat, corn, etc.,

Saturn in Virgo destroys crops, a leftward shift of the supply curve in economic terms.

Mars/Cancer can cause problems within the dairy industry because milk is a Cancer commodity, so I would suspect the opposition you cite would be specifically related to the dairy industry, milk, cheese, yogurt, etc.,
Dr. H.
World Class Research in Medieval Predictive Astrology
www.regulus-astrology.com

3
Re VIrgo - I wonder if it is Virgo , ie this is an issue of the hyper- inflation of a commodity and financial framework that allows the world to feed itself, not the failure of crops in the field which would perhaps be more related to the harvest sign of Virgo?

Also of course Saturn is retrograde in Virgo currently so weakened and is also unlikely to have a hand in hyper-inflation of prices is it?


regards
mike c

4
Re VIrgo - I wonder if it is Virgo , ie this is an issue of the hyper- inflation of a commodity and financial framework that allows the world to feed itself, not the failure of crops in the field which would perhaps be more related to the harvest sign of Virgo?
It's not inflation. Inflation is the loss of purchasing power of a currency. Increased prices are the result of inflation, but increased prices are not only caused by inflation. The current food crises is due to a shortage of food. The supply diminished as demand increased. As you say, the shortage is not due to crop failure, but rather due to the fact it became more profitable to plant for corn for use in bio fuels and convert land used to grow other crops to do the same thing. Even the UN has noted this in a recent report. This led to increased costs for feeding livestock (cattle and chickens) and decreased the supply of food, which put upward pressure on food prices. The first people hit by this sort of thing are always the poorest who have little money in any case. Increased transportation costs didn't help either. Whether or not we use the word "destroyed" or "restricted" to describe the food production situation, they're both good Saturn words that accurately describe the phenomenon.

Tom

5
Tom wrote:
Re VIrgo - I wonder if it is Virgo , ie this is an issue of the hyper- inflation of a commodity and financial framework that allows the world to feed itself, not the failure of crops in the field which would perhaps be more related to the harvest sign of Virgo?
It's not inflation. Inflation is the loss of purchasing power of a currency. Increased prices are the result of inflation, but increased prices are not only caused by inflation. The current food crises is due to a shortage of food. The supply diminished as demand increased. As you say, the shortage is not due to crop failure, but rather due to the fact it became more profitable to plant for corn for use in bio fuels and convert land used to grow other crops to do the same thing. Even the UN has noted this in a recent report.
It's been going on for more than 30 years. Africa was a net exporter of food before US/UK corporations moved in and converted the crop land to non-food crops like coffee, chocolate and sugar cane plantations. While the corporations exported the commodities and the profits, the governments were forced to borrow money from the IMF/World Bank to buy food to import.

The CremerGruppe in Germany does the same in Southeast Asia and Indonesia, where food crops were converted to soy beans, sunflower and other bio-diesel crops, or to bio-fuel crops.

That's a trend that will continue, and resources are shifting very slowly to food crop production. We have 4 Million acres of fallow farmland here in Ohio, along with 2 Million acres of fallow grazing land, with 2.5 Million acres of farm and grazing land lost to urban sprawl. There are no incentives for independent (non-corporate) farm to start and environmental regulations make new entries cost prohibitive, generally taking 11 to 15 years to turn a profit.

The US has 123 ethanol plants using 13% of the US corn crop. 7 plants are expanding, 71 are under construction with 8 opening in the next few months, and 100 more planned before 2012 to meet the E85 Fuel Standard of 7.5 Billion gallons/year by 2012. That will use about 25% of the US corn crop.

I'm expecting the Uranus transit of the US 4th House to wreak havoc, especially once Uranus ingresses Aries about June 2010. Freak weather conditions will create crop shortages and drive up food and fuel prices.

6
In addition to the bio-fuel point raised by Tom I have heard a UN spokesman suggest increased demand for food from China and India is a major factor. As these countries become wealthier they are adopting higher consumption diets. In some respects then this is a long term trend in the world economy.

7
Many of the above points are factually correct. They all contribute to the problem: bio - fuels, increased demand for food from China and India etc. Poor countries always have problems feeding their population and they contribute to their own problems in many ways. The old Soviet Union turned what was once called the Breadbasket of Europe into a virtual dust bowl. However most recently the governments, chiefly the US, subsidized the production of bio fuels (paid farmers to grow the corn more than the market would have paid them) and thereby made the corn production for bio fuels more profitable than a market would, and pushed the supply from food to fuel. 13% of the current crop and 25% of future crops is a substantive shift and has a worldwide impact. If we want the prices to come down, the supply must be increased. It is always smarter to attack the supply when an economic problem occurs rather than the price. Attacking prices never works, so that is what governments usually try to do.

Blaming "corporations" has become a standard reaction to almost every self imposed problem, e.g. The US refusal to use its own natural resources (oil) to solve its own natural resource problem. Attacing "corporations" is an emotional appeal to the public to get the government to attack prices. I'm waiting (and I know I won't have long to wait) for the first use of the term "big food."

Show me a shortage in a commodity that used to be and can still be plentiful, and I'll show you a government policy that caused it. Africa is the best example. Each country with problems has a planned economy with a dictator at the helm of government. And while we're at it, let's toss in the government policy that has starved some ten million people to date, mostly Africans, beginning long before the current crises: banning the use of DDT. Empowering the various governments to solve these problems is like selling ammunition to the enemy.

Regardless, the astrological point remains. This is Saturn's work. The supply of food has been restricted, so the prices go up and are now beyond the ability of the poorest to pay for them. Increase the supply, and the prices will come down. With Jupiter in Capricorn this doesn't look like it will happen soon.

Tom

8
Tom wrote:Blaming "corporations" has become a standard reaction to almost every self imposed problem, e.g. The US refusal to use its own natural resources (oil) to solve its own natural resource problem.
But it won't solve the problem. The triethanolomine and Neodol in liquid Tide detergent comes from light-weight low-sulfur crude oil in the Middle East, not the syrupy high sulfur California Heavy, or the intermediate grade crude oils in Texas and Alaska.

Those chemicals are made from Saudi light sweet crude by Shell at their refinery in 'Loserana' and shipped by barge up the Mississippi to storage terminals.

Obama and Run Paul and others just don't understand that cutting off foreign oil or reducing dependence comes with a price that most Americans cannot pay or will not pay. All the bright colors in book covers and packaging and clothing comes from inks and dyes from light sweet Saudi crude. All those wonderful pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter drugs and shampoos, conditioners, soaps, body lotions, oils, and cosmetics etc etc all come from light sweet Saudi crude.

The US economy is inextricably linked to Saudi sweet crude and a lot of people will lose their jobs if the US cannot import Middle East crude or find another source of cheap light-weight low sulfur oil.

That's what a I love about it. Americans can run to their hybrids and water-solar-cow manure-Idaho potato-hydrogen-corn oil powered cars and they'll be slitting their own throats. Reducing the quantity of imported oil processed at refineries reduces the quantity of feed stocks and drives the prices up, causing the cost of everything made from oil, which is a bout 95% of the stuff in people's homes and what they wear to rise.

9
If I may can I revisit my original premise ie pivotal aspect relationships between Cancer and Capricorn being pointers to recent food price turmoil. Furthermore the interplay with Venus pointing out commodity/value side of all this (ie the Mars reception).


The land etc is the Fourth House so you could by extension bring in the Lunar sign of Cancer into consideration.

Also consider the nature of Cancer and Capricorn ie the polar opposition of the Fecund and Fruitful Cancer versus the barreness and Scarcity of Capricorn (people who use Pluto might consider its arrival in Saturn's house when Saturn has its ancient connection with agriculture (which of course does bring in the Virgoan residence of weakened Saturn - ie overall looking at Virgo Saturn and all the Capricornian-Cancer activity you have a descriptor of land usage pressures and shortcomings problems etc.


enough of my ramblings cheers
mike c

10
But it won't solve the problem.
Depends on how you define "the problem." We don't only use Saudi crude for those things mentioned, so import that and use the local stuff for heating oil and gasoline. Besides, I've been made to understand that Idaho and Utah have greater oil reserves that Saudi Arabia and a better quality oil that can be retrieved without drilling. The oil is extracted from the ground the way it is done in Alberta, Canada. Now you know why the Edmonton hockey team is called the "Oilers." Canada, not Saudi Arabia is the largest exporter of crude to the US. Mexico is 2nd and Saudi Arabia is 3rd.

Tom

11
Considering the Mars transit of Cancer crossing the opposition to Pluto and Jupiter, it also of course goes on to make the quincunx with Neptune.

Worries over food production and oil production seem very much intertwined at the moment and furthermore all commentators seem at pains to mention the irrational factor in both situations.

Ie its a perception of scarcity and the worry of future scarcity not any actual shortage in the here and now.

I'm intrigued anyway by Neptune in Aquarius with its aspect relationships. Back when we had a more Sag focus Neptune in Aquarius seemed to reflect some kind of loss of faith in wider social structures, and global order, and an irrational fear at the heart of society feeding into the Global upheaval around Sag issues.

Now that Neptune quincunx seems to reflect that loss of faith in the future and the irrational and unknowable factors driving the uncontrollable inflation of pricing.
mike c

12
MikeCoop wrote:If I may can I revisit my original premise ie pivotal aspect relationships between Cancer and Capricorn being pointers to recent food price turmoil.
These three short periods occurred in Russia in the same years as three world economic recessions, which Braudel discusses at some length in another chapter without making the connection. In still another chapter, Braudel reproduces a graph of Britain's trade balance with its North American colonies between 1745 and 1776 that shows sharp declines in British imports, and lesser declines of exports in the same years, 1761-63 and 1772-73. But again Braudel does not look for connections between these recessions. This omission is curious since about the first of these recessions he writes that "with the currency shortage, the crisis spread, leaving a trail of bankruptcies; it reached not only Amsterdam but Berlin, Hamburg, Altona, Bremen, Leipzig, Stockholm and hit hard in London." Regarding the next recession Braudel observes catastrophic harvests in all of Europe in 1771-72 and famine conditions in Norway and Germany. Moreover, he asks:
Was this the reason for the violent crisis, aggravated possibly by the consequences of the disastrous famine which hit India in the same years 1771-72, throwing into confusion the workings of the East India Company? No doubt these were all factors, but is the real cause not once more the periodic return of a credit crisis? . . . Contemporary observers always connected such crises to some major bankruptcy.
Finally, in the chapter on the North American colonies, Braudel also refers to the Boston Tea Party in 1774. Once again, he makes no connection between this event and those he analyzes elsewhere in the world at the same time. He might not have made such connections because he took his several world-economies too seriously or doubted the wisdom of one historian being able to "bring together in a single analysis the scattered fragments of a history still insufficiently explored by research." Wallerstein briefly refers to a "slump" after the Seven Years War in 1763, and in passing to "the immediate postwar trade depression" in the 1780s, but makes no mention at all of the intervening recession in the 1770s.(18) Such economic conditions and British policies led to the American Revolution, but not before

halfway around the world, the British East India Company's ravaging administration of its newly conquered Indian territories has brought on, simultaneously, the severe famine of 1770-72 and the virtual bankruptcy of the company. . . . [In] Britain the parliament was persuaded to safeguard the national interest and that of the company's stockholders by finding a suitably profitable market for the stock of otherwise unsalable tea on hand. The result was the Tea Act of 1773, which sought to dump the tea under what amounted to monopoly privileges for the company on the market of the Americans. The Americans reacted by dumping it in Boston Harbor during the Boston Tea Party.

The British response, the Quebec and Intolerable Acts of 1774, escalated economic conflict into political repression and rallied support for the Declaration of Independence.(19)

In Braudel's third period of crisis, he notes changes in both British and Russian balances of trade, which were generated by these recessions (and not just increased Russian arms imports). The same recession, however, also had more important repercussions in France, where it led to revolution in 1789, and in the new American confederation. There, hard times in the early 1780s and "the more acute economic downturn of 1785-86 and the [resultant] massive popular political movements, such as Shays' Rebellion in 1786, renewed and increased political support for the federalists" and the replacement of the Articles of Confederation by the American Constitution in 1787.(20)

To return to Russia, it hardly seems that its economy could have been so remote if these three crises were connected to simultaneous events in Europe, North America, and India during what should be termed a world-wide economic crisis from 1762 to 1790. Fifty-year, or Kondratieff, cycles in the world economy have been identified elsewhere, with some scholars counting as many as nineteen such cycles. A study of Kondratieff cycles in Tokugawa Japan since 1600 demonstrates that their timing coincided with those in Europe. Moreover, one scholar notes that "prices in China were pay roughly in sync with prices in Europe. . . . If we take this movement of prices as a gauge, China could be considered a part of the 'world economy' at this time."(21)
Uranus in Aries starting March 1760 or so along with Pluto teasing Capricorn. Freak weather conditions caused food shortages (not famine) in the colonies that forced many into barter trade to survive during the Uranus transit (4th House w/Sagittarius rising)

Saturn enters Virgo August 1772. If we go back to January 1771 Uranus is in Taurus.

Neptune in Virgo 1776-1778. Uranus in Cancer 1772-1778.

Pluto is in the USA 2nd House 1769 - 1792 (although it entered Aquarius in 1778).

Uranus opposition Pluto occurs in 1793, but that's after everything is over.

There was Saturn (in Cancer) opposition Pluto in 1769 that may have been a portend. Saturn conjunct Neptune in Virgo 1773 (but that was after the world food crisis).

Mars transits are too fleeting to cause long term damage. I don't see anything unusual.

There'll be a minor recession or series of recessions globally, with Pluto on Capricorn, but the US and perhaps a few other countries will have a repeat of the 1762-1792 Depression with long term economic depression through 2038 (no world war to save the US this time and no one willing to finance a US war).