Japan’s largest corn processor have started buying PMB corn for human consumption, although Japan have permitted PMBs for animal feed.

63,000 tons of PMB corn arrived in Seoul, South Korea on Thursday last week and officials said that they couldn’t get hold of enough non-PMB corn because the European’s are sweeping the small supply that exists off the market.

The trouble with getting hold of non-PMB crops has hurt inside Europe too, a corner stone factory that processed food oils in my hometown in Norway shut down in 2005, and EU official’s thinks that the rice in food prices might sway the European political opposition against PMBs, we can only hope and see…

My buddy Richard North, author and former food safety inspector blogged about the EU ban on US poultry imports recently, when EU promised to deliver a “progress report” on their efforts to lift the import ban.

According to North, the EU banned US poultry imports because US poultry farmers wash the poultry in a disinfectant to eliminate pathogens such as e. coli and such. This is not allowed in the EU, so they stopped importing poultry from the US. EU’s version of the FDA has said this practice is not only safe, but desirable. EU bureaucrats however, know how angry EU poultry farmers will be if the ban is lifted, so they are dragging their feet, just like they do in every other case of import bans on agricultural products.

North says if it comes down to the safety of EU consumers and the coddling of EU food producers, EU will choose coddling any day. Gods forbid that the benevolent government should protect the consumers they repeatedly claim they protect!

-And the answer to the question in the headline? I don’t know, cause the EU has yet to lift an import ban of importance…

The problem with our political class today is that they build these amazing projects to help poor people, organizations like the UN, the Worldbank, and countless NGO’s create these projects that supposedly will help the people with the fewest options in the world. They are spending millions and millions of dollars and failing miserably.

The Grameen Foundation, with their micro loans and micro utility systems has understood that wealth is created at the individual level. If you help people get credit, so they can do the investments needed to expand their livelihood, their lives will change. Grameen got the Nobel Prize in 2007 for this insight.

Someone else who has understood this is a guy named Paul Polak. After years of being a psychologist, he found that alleviating financial troubles had a profound effect on alleviating their mental illnesses. A trip to Bangladesh inspired him to start up International Development Enterprises, a non-profit that helps adapt modern farming technologies to small rural farms and helps build micro economies and local markets.

In the last 25 years, Paul Polak has helped individuals in the poorest rural communities around the world increase their income by $200 million. No government-to-government program can claim such a success. Polak wrote about his work and his method in a book called Out of Poverty, that was published recently, and you can also learn more about his work by listening to the NPR interview with him.

The Colombia FTA will change that.  Tariffs on most U.S. products exported to Colombia would be duty-free immediately, with others phased out over ten years.

The Tariff Ticker shows that for the 524 days since the FTA was signed but not voted on by Congress, duties on U.S. exports to Colombia totaled over $988,000,000.  Those tariffs are ticking up in real time.

A graphic way to show how Congress’ deliberate delay in considering the trade pact is harming U.S. producers and businesses where it hurts.  See this and other previous posts on the FTA.

Baker says:

The White House and Congress have reached an impasse. As a result, an economically and geopolitically important agreement is hanging in the balance. If our leaders in Congress don’t change their approach, a critical building block for stability in an important region of South America may fall victim to domestic partisan squabbling.

Contrast Baker’s well-reasoned and factual arguments with Sen. Sherrod Brown’s (D-OH) piece  in the same issue, titled “Don’t call me a protectionist.”  

Well, you could have fooled me.  In his attack on trade in general and the Colombia FTA in particular, Brown dredges out the same old “race to the bottom” arguments that have been the slogan of anti-trade activists – led by trade unions – over the past 10 or more years:

Trade agreements with no rules to protect our health, the environment and labor rights inevitably create a race to the bottom and weaken health and safety rules for our trading partners and for our own communities.

Sen. Brown seems to forget that Democratic policymakers last summer forced a “deal” – misguided that it was – to include extensive and enforceable environmental and labor standards in trade agreements that had already been negotiated and signed, including the Colombia FTA.   He also conveniently doesn’t mention that most Colombian goods come into the U.S. duty-free already, and the pending FTA would have Colombia reduce or eliminate most of its high tariffs.

As Brown bewails “unregulated trade,” he shows little understanding of what trade is – an exchange of goods and services by buyers and sellers that benefits both parties.

Although some of our current ailments are based on ill conceived ethanol mandates, subsidies that skew the food markets, and increased consumption in India and China, a recent op ed in the Telegraph joins a more and more unified Brittish demand for adopting PMB’s. The op ed also points the finger in the direction of OPEC, and the hypocrisy of leaders like Hugo Chavez. Chavez is supposedly a champion of the poor, but the high oil prices caused by the cartel’s price fixing are part of the problem with the rise in the cost of food.

Parts of the Arab world are harvesting the riches from the price fixing, it is important to remember that not all countries in the Arab world have oil. The region is balancing on a precarious edge between civil unrest and political chaos by choosing either of the options available to alleviate the situation.

Zimbabwe is again looking at starvation, not only due to the food prices, but also due to new bouts of drought. Last time they faced this situation, about 6 years ago, the government in Zimbabwe refused to accept aid shipments of maize because the grains came from PMB’s. This is the same corn that Americans eat every day. Luckily the starving population would not stand for this decision, spurred on by jet-setting environmental activists from Europe and USA. They raided the food containers, so the grain eventually got the people it was intended for, but what will the misguided leaders in Zimbabwe do this time around?

On the good news side, Ethopia opened up its first commodity exchange last week, which will lower the transaction cost for several major commodities in the country. Hopefully that will help Ethiopian farmers and consumers with lower cost for important foodstuffs.

Ok, so granted, Sweden has done a great job at meeting their Kyoto goals, because they do not have oil and have relied on nuclear power for so many years. Sweden is also a rich country, and this is where NBC’s reporting fall way short. If you look at the environmental performance index, it is easy to see that the countries that are ranked high on environmental performance with few exceptions are countries with a high GDP per capita.

The conclusion is the one that you will hear the amazing policy fellows at CEI repeat over and over again, wealthier is healthier and richer is cleaner. The greenest thing you could have done to celebrate Lenin’s birthday today, eh…, I mean to celebrate earth day today is to help increase free trade, help do something to get another poor farmer or factory worker in a developing country get out of poverty. If they get rich, they can afford to clean up their environment, just like the countries on top of the environmental performance index have been able to do.