EXTREME weather is threatening to push the economy into reverse amid fears record-breaking rain in the east and drought in the west will wipe up to $6 billion off bumper grain harvests.
Figures released this week revealed the September-quarter national accounts remained just positive on the back of the booming agricultural sector, which grew 18.5 per cent as it recovered from a decade of drought.
The deluge over the past three months has resulted in most areas of Australia - except drought-ravaged southwest Western Australia - recording their highest spring rainfall, or levels well above average.
The big wet along Australia's eastern and southern agricultural belts is devastating the current winter grain harvest, with rain delaying harvesting and turning prime food-quality wheat worth $300 a tonne into $170-a-tonne wheat suitable only for feed.
There are projections that New South Wales and Victoria could sustain losses to the value of wheat, barley and canola crops of more than $1billion.
In the nation's west, the continuing drought is expected to slash $3bn off farm and farm industry incomes.
The La Nina rainfall pattern is also causing havoc for the coal industry, with the owners of one Queensland mine warning severe weather could put further upward pressure on coal prices.
Australian Bureau of Statistics figures this week showed the economy nosed ahead by a modest 0.2 per cent in the September quarter, helped by substantial growth across the agricultural sector and "strong crop forecasts".
A spokesman for the bureau yesterday confirmed it had used the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics's crop report for the September quarter, which had forecast a "bumper" 40.7 million-tonne crop on the heels of "ideal conditions".
But agricultural economists and experts have indicated those forecasts will have to be revised down by as much as one-third, stripping farmers of billions of dollars of income. ABARE had predicted that NSW would produce a record 14.5 million tonnes of winter crops, while Western Australia's was forecast to be about 9.7 million tonnes, down 20 per cent from the last season.
Global grain prices, already at a two-year high after a drought in Russia, have soared again this week with the persistent rain in Australia ruining crops and fuelling fears of a shortage.
Australian Farm Institute executive director Mick Keogh said the effect of millions of tonnes of sodden crop being downgraded from high-quality milling grade to feed wheat, could push the economy into reverse.
QUITO — Ecuadorean villagers fled their homes after the Andean country's "Throat of Fire" volcano erupted Saturday, spewing rocks, gas and ash that prompted officials to declare a maximum alert for nearby communities.
People living within 5 miles of the eruption have been evacuated, Felipe Bazan, a government official for emergency situations, told reporters.
The Tungurahua volcano, which means "Throat of Fire" in Ecuador's native Quechua language, has been rumbling off and on for more than 10 years since seismic activity began to pick up in the area in 1999.
Located 80 miles southeast of capital city Quito, the 16,500-foot Tungurahua is one of eight active volcanoes in the country.
Parts of Banos, a central Ecuadorean town popular with foreign and local tourists, were among the places evacuated on Saturday.
UN warned of major new food crisis at emergency meeting in Rome
Environmental disasters and speculative investors are to blame for volatile food commodities markets, says UN's special adviserlink
July's wildfires in Russia have led to a draconian wheat ban, pushing up prices. Photograph: Maxim Shipenkov/EPA The world may be on the brink of a major new food crisis caused by environmental disasters and rampant market speculators, the UN was warned today at an emergency meeting on food price inflation.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) meeting in Rome today was called last month after a heatwave and wildfires in Russia led to a draconian wheat export ban and food riots broke out in Mozambique, killing 13 people. But UN experts heard that pension and hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds and large banks who speculate on commodity markets may also be responsible for inflation in food prices being seen across all continents.
In a new paper released this week, Olivier De Schutter, the UN's special rapporteur on food, says that the increases in price and the volatility of food commodities can only be explained by the emergence of a "speculative bubble" which he traces back to the early noughties.
"[Beginning in ]2001, food commodities derivatives markets, and commodities indexes began to see an influx of non-traditional investors," De Schutter writes. "The reason for this was because other markets dried up one by one: the dotcoms vanished at the end of 2001, the stock market soon after, and the US housing market in August 2007. As each bubble burst, these large institutional investors moved into other markets, each traditionally considered more stable than the last. Strong similarities can be seen between the price behaviour of food commodities and other refuge values, such as gold."
He continues: "A significant contributory cause of the price spike [has been] speculation by institutional investors who did not have any expertise or interest in agricultural commodities, and who invested in commodities index funds or in order to hedge speculative bets."
A near doubling of many staple food prices in 2007 and 2008 led to riots in more than 30 countries and an estimated 150 million extra people going hungry. While some commodity prices have since reduced, the majority are well over 50% higher than pre-2007 figures – and are now rising quickly upwards again.
"Once again we find ourselves in a situation where basic food commodities are undergoing supply shocks. World wheat futures and spot prices climbed steadily until the beginning of August 2010, when Russia – faced with massive wildfires that destroyed its wheat harvest – imposed an export ban on that commodity. In addition, other markets such as sugar and oilseeds are witnessing significant price increases," said De Schutter, who spoke today at The UK Food Group's conference in London.
Gregory Barrow of the UN World Food Program said: "What we have seen over the past few weeks is a period of volatility driven partly by the announcement from Russia of an export ban on grain food until next year, and this has driven prices up. They have fallen back again, but this has had an impact."
Sergei Sukhov, from Russia's agriculture ministry, told the Associated Press during a break in the meeting in Rome that the market for grains "should be stable and predictable for all participants." He said no efforts should be spared "to the effect that the production of food be sufficient."
"The emergency UN meeting in Rome is a clear warning sign that we could be on the brink of another food price crisis unless swift action is taken. Already, nearly a billion people go to bed hungry every night – another food crisis would be catastrophic for millions of poor people," said Alex Wijeratna, ActionAid's hunger campaigner.
An ActionAid report released last week revealed that hunger could be costing poor nations $450bn a year – more than 10 times the amount needed to halve hunger by 2015 and meet Millennium Development Goal One.
Food prices are rising around 15% a year in India and Nepal, and similarly in Latin America and China. US maize prices this week broke through the $5-a-bushel level for the first time since September 2008, fuelled by reports from US farmers of disappointing yields in the early stages of their harvests. The surge in the corn price also pushed up European wheat prices to a two-year high of €238 a tonne.
Elsewhere, the threat of civil unrest led Egypt this week to announce measures to increase food self-sufficiency to 70%. Partly as a result of food price rises, many middle eastern and other water-scarce countries have begun to invest heavily in farmland in Africa and elsewhere to guarantee supplies.
Although the FAO has rejected the notion of a food crisis on the scale of 2007-2008, it this week warned of greater volatility in food commodities markets in the years ahead.
At the meeting in London today, De Schutter said the only long term way to resolve the crisis would be to shift to "agro-ecological" ways of growing food. This farming, which does not depend on fossil fuels, pesticides or heavy machinery has been shown to protect soils and use less water.
"A growing number of experts are calling for a major shift in food security policies, and support the development of agroecology approaches, which have shown very promising results where implemented," he said.
Green MP Caroline Lucas called for tighter regulation of the food trade. "Food has become a commodity to be traded. The only thing that matters under the current system is profit. Trading in food must not be treated as simply another form of business as usual: for many people it is a matter of life and death. We must insist on the complete removal of agriculture from the remit of the World Trade Organisation," she said.
PayPal cuts Wikileaks access for donations So the PTB don't want the truth out in the open, so what do they do???
Try to make out the founder is a rapist!!!
Destroy his credibility!!!
Try to order an assassination (like MATT SIMMONS RIP)
Try to shut down his site and destroy any thing that he has got
And Y are the PTB doing this Because he is telling the truth, and they don't like it!!!!
Just what else have the PTB been lieing about????????? 2012, financial system, oil spill????
They are all corrupt and only care about their agenda governed by the ELITE!!!!
The online payments processor, PayPal, says it has cut access for donations to the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks.
PayPal said its payment service cannot be used for activities "that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity".
Wikileaks' latest releases - of US diplomatic cables - has caused considerable embarrassment to the US and its allies, correspondents say.
It has been forced to change its web address after sustained cyber attacks. In a statement, US-based PayPal said donations could no longer be made to Wikileaks because of "a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy"
Earlier, the company providing Wikileaks with its domain name, EveryDNS.net, cut off service because the domain wikileaks.org had become the target of "multiple distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks".
The company said: "These attacks have, and future attacks would, threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other websites."
Wikileaks later reappeared using a Swiss web address.
It had earlier turned to the online store Amazon to host its site but the company ended the agreement on Wednesday - a move welcomed by US officials.
Amazon said Wikileaks had failed to adhere to its terms of service.
"It's clear that Wikileaks doesn't own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content. Further it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that Wikileaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren't putting innocent people in jeopardy," Amazon said on its website.
Oil prices reach post-crisis two-year highIs this the start of peak oil??? watch a documentary called collapse, it will all make sense, and you will see the truth of what is coming and Y oil prices are set to double in the coming years, and we all know y the USA are trying to start war in the middle east, to get all of the resources for the west!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oil prices have hit their highest level since the bursting of the commodity bubble in 2008
The price of oil on both sides of the Atlantic has hit its highest level since the financial crisis.
In Europe, Brent crude futures rose to $91.58 per barrel, while in the US, West Texas Intermediate hit $89.35 - the highest levels since October 2008.
Despite the market rally, prices still remain 40% below their pre-crisis peak.
Among the factors driving prices higher are rising demand because of the global economic recovery and cold weather in Europe, as well as the weak US dollar.
Meanwhile, temperatures are also expected to fall in the eastern United States, according to the US National Weather Service. Weak dollar The rising price was only briefly dented in early trading, after the release of weaker than expected US jobs data for November. Continue reading the main story
However, the data - and comments from US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke - raised expectations of further monetary easing by the US central bank.
Any increase in the Fed's "quantitative easing" - printing new dollars to buy up US government debt - is likely to depress the dollar's value further, raising the price of oil in dollars.
Many banks have recently raised their forecasts for the oil price over the next two years, with Goldman Sachs now saying it will rise to $100 in 2011.
The current oil price is already significantly above the levels experienced prior to 2007.
During 2007-08, oil and most other commodities were subject to a speculative bubble that pushed the price of Brent crude up to $147.50 at its peak in July 2008.
This time the rising oil price is also being shadowed by price rises in only a handful of other commodities - notably grain and cotton.
2nd big snowstorm in Munich - 3rd one on the way 1 Dec 10 - Reader asks, "Is this the beginning of our
little ice age in Europe?"
See 2nd big snowstorm in Munich
Sweden braces for record freeze 30 Nov 10 - Stockholm forecast to experience its
coldest seasonal temperatures in more than 100 years
this week.
See Sweden braces for record freeze
Coldest in Norway in 222 years - since 1788 ! 30 Nov 10 - And the would-be dictators in Cancun
keep screaming about global warming. See Coldest in Norway in 222 years
Wikileaks took donations through PayPal 
Oil prices have hit their highest level since the bursting of the commodity bubble in 2008 
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