Our Awful Situation

Archive for the ‘Famine’ Category

Are You Watching the Food Riots?

Posted by Charlie Kilo on May 24th, 2008

Global civil unrest over skyrocketing food prices gives us an unpleasant glimpse at what human nature can do:

Watching civil unrest and riots spreading nation to nation like a communicable disease raises some important questions. We do ourselves no favors by ignoring them.

Rising energy and food prices are hitting pocketbooks worldwide. Developing countries—which tend to be the most populous—are hurt worst, as staple foods grow too expensive or too scarce. Global grain supplies are dangerously low. Exporting nations, out of self-preservation, are getting stingy and turning the export spigot way down.

Mideast reels as hunger outgrows oil earnings

Posted by Charlie Kilo on May 9th, 2008

Middle east food problems:

For years, food policy in the Middle East and North Africa was very simple: hydrocarbon exports paid for carbohydrate imports.

Rising agricultural commodities prices and a large population increase mean that the traditional policy is now untenable even if crude oil trades at about $120 a barrel, forcing countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia, to reconsider how it feeds its population.

Asia fears lost decade, unrest from food price shock

Posted by Charlie Kilo on May 4th, 2008

The food crisis is global in its reach and implications: 

Soaring food prices may throw millions of Asians back into poverty, undo a decade of gains and stoke civil unrest, regional leaders said on Sunday as they urged a boost to agricultural production to meet rising demand.

Asia — home to two thirds of the world’s poor — risks rising social tension as a doubling of wheat and rice prices in the last year has slammed people who spend more than half their income on food, Japanese Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga said during the Asian Development Bank’s annual meeting.

If food prices rise 20 percent, 100 million poor people across Asia could be forced back into extreme poverty, warned Indian Finance Secretary D. Subba Rao.

“In many countries that will mean the undoing of gains in poverty reduction achieved in the past decade of growth,” Rao told the ADB’s meeting in Madrid.

Rising food prices prompt anger and unrest

Posted by patriot on April 18th, 2008

The most compelling part of the article:

“Take one,” she said, cradling a listless baby and motioning toward four rail-thin toddlers, none of whom had eaten that day. “You pick. Just feed them.”

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