Moves towards a global water commodities market must be stopped. It will push the price of food far beyond the peaks of the past five years, warns Frederick Kaufman.
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References
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Kaufman, F. Wall Street's thirst for water. Nature 490, 469–471 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/490469a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/490469a
David Zetland
Wow. This fishing-expedition-dressed-up-as-an-opinion is wrong in so many ways that I doubt I have enough space to rebut or correct its errors. Let's try a few:
1) The "food derivatives" conspiracy has no grounding in economics, as food needs to be delivered at a point at which market and options price will converge. Speculators may be able to get a bump from "dumb money" in the meantime, but farmers and food processors will meet each other in the end.
2) Water is NOT EVEN CLOSE to fungible. Are you kidding about "icebergs and aquifers" as interchangeable? Go get $1 of tap water (about one cubic meter) and then move it to the other side of the room. Hrd to do? Sure, since 1,000 liters weighs one ton. Water systems — let alone markets — will NEVER be integrated like oil, gold or computer ship markets because the costs of transactions are so high.
3) The greatest distortions in the efficient use of water are caused by political interference. In this sense, bad water management is the same as bad financial management, but don't blame markets for bailing out "too big to fail" fools or failing to get water to efficient farmers or taps in poor countries. Blame politicians.
4) Westlands, btw, stopped trading on its BBS about five years ago. You need to fact-check before you make unfounded claims.
I could add about 5,000 more words on why this is wrong, but I've done that elsewhere and often.
David Zetland, (PhD, UC Davis, Agricultural and Resource Economics)
Author of The End of Abundance and the aguanomics blog
Gerry Atrickseeeker
If ever there was a need for good public policy this is it. Water needs to stay in the public domain and be regulated for the overall well-being of the population, not for the benefit of a greedy few.
http://scienceforthefuture....
Jeolinea Henryna
Great point
Jeolinea Henryna
You know, I do think that speculators may be able to get a bump from "dumb money" in the meantime, but farmers and food processors will meet each other in the end.
Jeolinea
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