Food Alarm!

The global food crisis is a "silent tsunami" with an extra 100 million people facing poverty, the UN said.

"This is the new face of hunger - the millions of people who were not in the urgent hunger category six months ago, but now are," said the head of the United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP), Josette Sheeran.

The international price of rice - a staple food for half the world - has risen about 68% since the beginning of the year. (Excerpts from bbc news)

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Although starvation and malnutrition have affected millions of people for decades, there is a new and real crisis in feeding the world's poorest and most vulnerable people. The new pressures arise from the diversion of traditional food crops to energy in Europe and elsewhere, and animal feed in the emerging economies. It is a predictable man-made crisis which is also threatening the political stability and peace in the world.

In addition, climate change is real and will have very great effects in those parts of the world where food supply is already under threat. There is a compelling argument for Europe to stop using crops, traditionally used for food, as sources of fuel. National and regional policies must be immediately reviewed in this regard.

As stated at the conference: "Stop burning poor people's food to power rich people's cars". (Excerpts from medical news today)

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EXPERTS MAKE GRIM PREDICTIONS FOR GLOBAL FOOD SUPPLY

Science journalist Julian Cribb fears global food production is not keeping pace with demand.

"The amount of food available has dropped fairly precipitously since about the year 2000," he said.

"There's drought, there's biofuels, which is taking over a lot of agricultural land area, where we are burning millions of tonnes of grain in our cars these days, which we could be eating or feeding to animals," he said.

"There is the impact of climate change and particularly we are running out of land and we are running out of water."

He says Australia, despite its strong agricultural sector, will feel the effects.

"As food prices go up worldwide, you can expect the price of staple food in Australia to go up," he said. (Excerpts from abc news)

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A new crisis is emerging, a global food catastrophe that will reach further and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen. The credit crunch and the reverberations of soaring oil prices around the world will pale in comparison to what is about to transpire, Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group said at the Empire Club's 14th annual investment outlook in Toronto on Thursday.

"It's not a matter of if, but when," he warned investors. "It's going to hit this year hard."

Mr. Coxe said the sharp rise in raw food prices in the past year will intensify in the next few years amid increased demand for meat and dairy products from the growing middle classes of countries such as China and India as well as heavy demand from the biofuels industry.

"The greatest challenge to the world is not US$100 oil; it's getting enough food so that the new middle class can eat the way our middle class does, and that means we've got to expand food output dramatically," he said. (Excerpts from financial post)

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The world is an odd place. A tight global food situation with record-high grain prices presents the possibility of increasing malnutrition, perhaps famine, in parts of Africa and South Asia. Yet an estimated 1.6 billion adults, about a quarter of the world's 6.7 billion people, are overweight, some of them obese.

As a result, chubby Americans are spending roughly $1 billion a year to lose a few pounds with special diets, treadmills, etc., while hundreds of millions in poor nations are scrambling to buy enough food to add a little weight. "You couldn't write any stranger fiction," says Joseph Chamie, former head of the United Nation's Population Division.

The possibility of a world food shortage is causing more and more concern. "It's likely to get worse in coming years," reckons Mr. Chamie, now research director at the Center for Migration Studies, a New York think tank.

His fear is partly based on the fact that the world's population is growing by about 78 million people a year, with projections of an additional 2.5 billion people by 2050 – a generation away. (Excerpts from csmonitor.com)

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FOOD CRISIS THREATENS GLOBAL SECURITY

ROBERT ZOELLICK, PRESIDENT, THE WORLD BANK: In the US and Europe over the last year, we've been focused on the prices of gasoline at the pump—$2.50, $3.00, $3.50, and more. While many are worrying about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs, and it's getting more and more difficult every day. In many developing countries, the poor spend up to 75 percent of their income on food. When prices of basic foods rise, it hits hard. (Source: The Real News)