Climate change and water grab

 Capitalism grinds to a halt in the US Mid West.

'Mississippi low water levels threaten price of farm goods' – Robert Wright and Gregory Meyer write in The Financial Times, 6th December 2012:  “Grain and petrochemicals worth billions of dollars risk being marooned far from market as falling Mississippi water levels threaten to close the river to navigation on a crucial shallow stretch 200 miles long between St Louis and Cairo, Illinois.
The low water levels result from a combination of reduced rainfall during this year's record-breaking Midwestern drought (global warming makes extreme weather more common) and the actions of the US Army Corps of Engineers, which operates dams controlling the river system. The corps has followed its seasonal practice of reducing water flow at several dams on the Missouri despite the problems downstream.
The low water is already affecting traffic and operators' ability to fulfil their end-of-year role of bringing Midwestern farmers' harvest of grain, soya beans and other commodities to the US gulf coast, according to Rick Calhoun, president of marine operations for Cargill, the commodity trader.
Navigation could come to a halt altogether, however by December 22 if water levels keep falling at the current rate of about 1ft a week.
That would leave about $3 billion of agricultural products and $2 billion of oil products trapped. Mr Calhoun said “There's an estimate; it's about $7 billion worth of products which are going to grind to a halt here.
The agricultural coalition wrote to the White House: “The Mississippi river 'superhighway' is essential to US agriculture, serving as the primary means for transporting essential agricultural inputs, such as fertiliser, and providing access to domestic and international markets for US farmers' production”.
The National Grain and Feed Association, which represents companies that handle 70% of US grain could depress farm gate prices. Barack Obama faces competing pressures. Politicians from North and South Dakota, Kansas and Montana have written to him to demand that the engineers continue to restrict the Missouri's flow”.

Janet Surman in the Socialist Standard in December 2012 wrote :  'Water grab' is a relatively new term. It refers to the different ways in which outside actors divert water from its traditional uses and users and appropriate it for their own benefit by a number of means. Use can be denied in many ways. The most obvious is to physically divert the water via pipes or canals, reducing or stopping the original flow. It may be privatised and monetised, cutting off those who can't pay. Sources may be overused by industrial development schemes causing contamination of local wells and water courses. Rivers, streams and lakes may be seriously contaminated by mining run off or industrial and agricultural effluent affecting local and downstream populations. Huge quantities of water are locked up in the production of crops intended as food for humans, animal feed or, increasingly, bio fuels. With the rapid increase of international investment in overseas lands for agricultural production for the export market has also come the realisation of just how much water is being denied to traditional local users and how much 'virtual' water is being diverted by moving it around the world locked up in crops and animals."