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Haiti, among the countries hit hardest by the global food crisis, should return to more homegrown food staples such as corn, experts say. But in this analysis of why the Caribbean country’s food crisis runs so deep, the Los Angeles Times reports that local farmers see such a path to be riddled with obstacles. Los Angeles Times (free registration) (5/13)
May 12, 2008
We were introduced to freerice.com some time ago and have found the game quite addictive. It’s a great cause and a fun way to test/improve your vocabulary. Doing well by doing good!
Students Fight Hunger with Internet Game
With food prices and world hunger on the rise, some Atlanta students have found a fun way to help - by using an Internet game. FREE RICE IS A VOCABULARY GAME THAT HELPS DELIVER RICE TO COUNTRIES IN NEED. So far, according to the site, the World Food Programme’s total donations is over 32 billion grains of rice [and counting].
CHINA: Buying Farmland Abroad, Ensuring Food Security
BEIJING, May 9 (IPS) - Rattled by rapidly rising global grain prices, China is looking at strategies to ensure long-term food security for its 1.3 billion people such as procuring farmland overseas and opposing the formation of any international grain price- fixing monopolies.
… despite repeated declarations that the country is well equipped to deal with the food crisis engulfing the world, government officials remain worried about China’s long-term abilities to feed its population.
To counter growing domestic challenges in ensuring food self-sufficiency, China is drafting a policy to encourage agricultural companies purchasing farmland abroad.
While Chinese state banks and oil companies have made numerous investments overseas, snapping contracts for oil and mineral resources, there has been little official incentive so far for Chinese agricultural companies to venture abroad.
May 9
Top U.N. human rights forum to examine food crisis
By Stephanie Nebehay
GENEVA, May 9 (Reuters) - The United Nations Human Rights Council will hold a special session on May 23 to examine how the world’s food crisis is undermining the right to food for millions of people, officials said on Friday.
The rights to adequate food and freedom from hunger are enshrined in international law as basic, universal human rights. The request was submitted by Cuba, Egypt and Pakistan and approved by 41 of the Council’s 47 member states.
In a statement, the sponsors said that while middle-class families in the Western world spend about 20 percent of their budgets on food, for families in developing countries it can make up 60 to 80 percent of their incomes.
May 8
What a waste: Britain throws away £10bn of food every year
Global food shortages, soaring prices and alarm over the environment. But every day, Britain throws away 220,000 loaves of bread, 1.6m bananas, 550,000 chickens, 5.1m potatoes, 660,000 eggs, 1.2m sausages and 1.3m yoghurts
We wonder what the figures would be for Canada, let alone the U.S. — and this reminds us of our frustration over what Beryl Wajsman refers to as the “nanny state” laws prohibiting the donation by grocery stores, restaurants and hotels of unused food to soup kitchens and other organizations who feed the poor and hungry.
Investments set to grow in African agriculture
Skyrocketing food prices have prompted several international companies to consider investing more in African farming, the Financial Times reports. The Common Fund for Commodities, a United Nations branch, said it has received inquiries from multinational corporations interested in developing new African agriculture projects. Financial Times (5/7)
May 3
Food crisis overshadows trade talks
(Emerging Markets) US trade representative Susan Schwab this weekend denied that subsidies to rich country farmers are contributing to the food crisis – and said progress in trade talks depended on developing countries giving ground on market access.
Development experts challenged Schwab on the role of rich countries’ domestic agricultural subsidies, and argued that financial speculators are aggravating the food crisis.
In Madrid, ADB president Kuroda – who pledged budgetary assistance to countries hit by the food crisis – said food prices in Asia had almost tripled in four months, despite the fact that supply appears able to cover demand. He attributed the rise to hoarding, rather than speculation, and to export bans some countries have imposed on rice.
May 1
UN’s Holmes warns against overreacting on biofuels
John Holmes — the United Nations’ humanitarian chief who will head the world body’s new task force on the global food crisis — said Wednesday it’s important to not to have a “knee-jerk response” against biofuels. Fuels made from food crops have come under heavy criticism as food prices have soared over the last year, but Holmes said biofuels were a serious response to the problem of climate change and the world now needs a “careful, sophisticated and differentiated” approach to addressing the food crisis. Google/Agence France-Presse (4/30)

Africa Plays the Rice Card
(Foreign Policy) Farming has suddenly become fashionable again. Once a largely ignored corner of the development business, agriculture is now a hot field among experts more versed in structural adjustments than crop rotations. Record prices for cereal crops such as wheat, corn, and rice have many of them viewing farmers as a key component of economic growth in poor countries and as a supply-side solution to the political instability those high prices have caused everywhere from West Africa to Bangladesh. Researchers should be careful, however, to learn the right lessons from the countries that are already harvesting success.

April 30
(CBC) Ottawa pledges extra $50M for global food crisis

The List: The World’s Most Dangerous Food Crises
(Foreign Policy) Soaring energy prices, growing demand from India and China, the rise of biofuels, and increasingly unpredictable weather have spawned a global food crisis that stretches from Port-au-Prince to Pyongyang. FP looks at the next places likely to be rocked by shortages, riots, poverty, and hunger.
April 29
‘Biofuels frenzy’ hits grain market
Michael Mathes, Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON - A “biofuels frenzy” and other misguided policies have led to the global food crisis in which rice consumption is outpacing production, threatening one billion people with malnutrition, experts said today.
International agriculture researchers warned that farmers will need to double global food production by 2030 to meet rising demand and said countries should impose a moratorium on grain-based ethanol and biodiesel to rein in skyrocketing prices for corn, rice, soybeans and wheat.
UN, World Bank create food crisis task force
United Nations agencies and the World Bank joined forces Tuesday to set up a special task force aimed at tackling the world’s growing food crisis. Soaring food prices are contributing to instability and riots across the globe and driving millions more people to live in extreme poverty. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged donors to provide $755 million in emergency funds for the World Food Programme. BBC (4/29) , Reuters (4/29)
April 26
Canada deaf to global food crisis, expert says
Top UN adviser blasts Harper government
(Globe & Mail) NEW YORK, TORONTO — A key adviser to the United Nations has sharply criticized Canada for abandoning its leadership role in international development, and urged the country to step up its level of aid to poorer countries in the face of soaring food prices.
Jeffrey Sachs, one of the world’s best-known economists, accused the Harper government yesterday of adopting an “antagonistic,” and occasionally “mocking,” tone toward the implementation of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, a group of objectives aimed at alleviating problems ranging from poverty to global warming.
(RCI) U.S. ECONOMIST CRITICIZES CANADIAN FOREIGN AID
A key adviser to the United Nations says that Canada is abandoning its global leadership role in foreign development. U.S. economist Jeffrey Sachs says that the Conservative Party government has essentially done nothing on crucial international matters such as poverty, hunger, disease, climate change, and foreign assistance. Mr. Sachs adds that his pleas for Canada to take a special role in the global food crisis have been ignored since the former Liberal Party government.
April 25
CANADA TO RESPOND TO WORLD FOOD CRISIS
(RCI) The Canadian Press reports that Canada could double the aid that it contributes to the UN World Food Program in response to the worsening international crisis caused by soaring food prices. An unnamed federal official has told the agency that Bev Oda, the minister responsible for the Canadian International Development Agency, will make a “significant” announcement early next week in reaction to an appeal by the UN for help. The source said that the announcement will place Canada’s food aid contribution for 2008 beyond what was given in the previous year. The UN has set a deadline of May 1 for receiving $755 million in emergency food aid pledges. Canada is pledged to provide the WFP with the dollar equivalent of 420,000 metric tonnes of wheat annually. The country has failed to live up to the promise in four of the past eight years but exceeded its commitment in the last two years.
April 22
Placing the Terrorist Threat to the Food Supply in Perspective
(Stratfor) High food prices have sparked a great deal of unrest over the past few weeks. Indeed, the skyrocketing cost of food staples like grain has caused protests involving thousands of people in places such as South Africa, Egypt and Pakistan. These protests turned deadly in Haiti and even led to the ouster of Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis.
With global food supplies already tight, many people have begun once again to think (and perhaps even worry) about threats to the U.S. agricultural system and the impact such threats could have on the U.S. — and global — food supply. In light of this, it is instructive to examine some of these threats and attempt to place them in perspective.
April 18
UN meeting to focus on global food crisis
The United Nations said Friday it will focus on ways to rein in escalating food prices and growing malnutrition when Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the UN’s agency heads meet in Switzerland April 28-29. “The main subjects on the agenda will be the food crisis and climate change. They will look at means of coordination,” spokeswoman Marie Heuze said of the next installment of the semi-annual meeting. Reuters (4/18)
April 17
The global food crisis is less about shortages than about bad policy, says food expert Raj Patel.
(Newsweek) The escalating crisis of global food shortages and price spikes has been called the result of a perfect storm of conditions. Droughts, the high cost of fuel, rising inflation and the use of crops for biofuels have left many nations of the world struggling to provide access to affordable staple foods like rice or wheat, and unfortunately, there is no end in sight. A new book by University of California, Berkeley, food expert Raj Patel called “Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System” (Melville House) examines how our food goes from the field to our dinner plates. He delivers a blistering indictment of the policies of multinational agribusiness conglomerates and charges that their drive for profit at any cost has left the developing world starving while wealthy countries like the United States are experiencing epidemic obesity rates and related health problems.
April 15
Feeding the Future:Investing in Agriculture
More than 800 million people suffer hunger today. A new global effort has been launched to solve this complex problem and find ways to double food production in 25 to 50 years in an environmentally and socially sustainable manner under the conditions of climate change.
Reinventing Agriculture
By Stephen Leahy
Will today’s markets be able to cope with future food demands?
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 15 (IPS) - The results of a painstaking examination of global agriculture are being formally presented Tuesday with the release of the final report for the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD).
The assessment has explored how agriculture can be reinvented to feed the world’s expanding population sustainably in an era of multiple challenges — not least those presented by climate change and a growing food crisis that has led to outbreaks of violence in a number of developing countries.
“Increase Agricultural Productivity While Reducing the Environmental Footprint”
Interview with Robert Watson
April 13
World Bank echoes food cost alarm
“We have to put out money where our mouth is now so that we can put food into hungry mouths,” Mr Zoellick said. “It’s as stark as that.”
He called for more aid to provide basic nutrition and for planting crops, and more lending to develop agriculture in the long-term.
He also called on wealthy donor countries to quickly fill the World Food Programme’s $500m (£250m) funding shortfall.
On Saturday, the head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, warned of mass starvation and other dire consequences if food prices continue to rise sharply.
See also Global Monitoring Report
April 10
Zoellick urges world leaders to tackle food crisis
World Bank President Robert Zoellick on Thursday called on the international community to step up its efforts to combat soaring food prices and malnutrition, saying the current crisis has significantly set back recent gains against poverty. “We estimate that the effect of this food crisis on poverty reduction worldwide is on the order of seven lost years,” he said. The Washington Times (4/11) , Spiegel Online (4/10)
Rich world must do more to address food crisis: Some of the reasons for the soaring food prices are beyond the control of developed countries, such as the rise of the middle class in China and India. But rich nations are worsening the situation by increasingly using food products for fuel and hence they must do more to address the growing crisis, the paper argues. The New York Times (4/10)
Britain’s Brown urges G8 to tackle global food crisis
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Thursday said the upcoming Group of Eight summit in Japan should act against spiraling food costs that are spreading hunger and unrest around the world. Brown requested, in a letter to Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, that the industrial countries that make up G8 look at issues such as the role biofuel may play in pushing up food prices. Google/Agence France-Presse (4/10)
9 April
UNEP chief: Agriculture must move in new direction
United Nations Environment Programme executive director Achim Steiner describes the many challenges facing farmers in an interview with the Inter Press Service News Agency. Currently attending a major summit on farming in Johannesburg, South Africa, Steiner here calls for a “broader vision for agriculture.” Inter Press Service (4/9)
April 8
Soaring food costs threaten world’s political stability: UN official
(CBC) Rising food prices could cause political instability worldwide, the UN’s top humanitarian official said Tuesday, as clashes over food costs in Haiti and Egypt continued for a second day.
Pointing to a 40 per cent average rise in food costs worldwide since mid-2007, John Holmes, the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief co-ordinator, said the trend is likely to exacerbate both the incidence and depth of food insecurity worldwide.
6 April
Governments meet to tackle global food crisis
Officials from some 60 governments are meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, this week to discuss what can be done to counter the soaring food prices that are threatening millions of people with hunger. Scientists and others at the conference, hosted by the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development, are expected to tout a more sustainable model for farming and development.
Towards a New and Improved Green Revolution
By Stephen Leahy
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 6 (IPS) - As food prices soar and hundreds of millions go hungry, experts from around the world will this week present a new approach for ensuring food security, at the intergovernmental plenary for the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD).
In the past year the price of corn has risen by 31 percent, soybeans by 87 percent and wheat by 130 percent. Global grain stores are currently at their lowest levels ever, with reserves of just 40 days left in the silos. Meanwhile, food production must double in the next 25 to 50 years to feed the additional three billion people expected on the planet by 2050.
The IAASTD brought together more than 400 scientists who examined all current knowledge about agricultural practices and science to find ways to double food production in the next 25 to 50 years and do so sustainably, while helping to lift the poor out of poverty.
The findings of the three-year IAASTD indicate that modern agriculture will have to change radically from the dominant corporate model if the world is to avoid social breakdown and environmental collapse …They concluded that the way to meet these challenges is through combining local and traditional know-how with formal knowledge.
The Clean Energy Scam
(TIME) … by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.’s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency. Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices have destabilized Pakistan, which wasn’t exactly tranquil when flour was affordable.
4 April
Rising Grain Prices Panic Developing World
By Ariana Eunjung Cha
(Washington Post Foreign Service) SHANGHAI — A spike in the price of rice and other food staples is triggering consumer panic, including food riots in Yemen and Morocco, and hoarding in Hong Kong.
Governments around the world have taken radical measures in recent weeks to control their countries’ supplies of rice. Egypt last week said it would ban all rice exports for six months. Cambodia has stopped all private-sector exports of rice, and India and Vietnam also have imposed restrictions.
The price of grains — corn, wheat, and rice — has been rising since 2005 under pressure from farmers who would rather plant crops for biofuels than for food, the lack of technological breakthroughs in crop yields, and drought and disease. The sharpest increase has been this year, with the price of Thai rice, a world benchmark, nearly doubling since January, to $760 per metric ton. Some analysts expect that price to reach $1,000 in the next three months.
Tang Min, a former chief economist for the Asian Development Bank, said the price increase is the inevitable consequence of supply and demand. “The world population is increasing, but the increase in the planting of rice has not been as fast,” he said.
Despite efforts by governments to increase public-sector wages and introduce food subsidies, price increases and shortages have led to violent clashes along supply lines, in food distribution centers and at supermarkets.
Food Prices To Rise For Years, Biofuel Firms Say
LONDON - Staple food prices will rise for some years, but should eventually fall to historical averages as harvests increase, biofuel company executives said on Thursday. [Hardly reassuring for the panicking consumers; in fact the tenor of most of the reported remarks from this Outlook 2008 Conference is appallingly coldblooded vis à vis the rising costs of food.]
Soaring demand for better quality food from rapidly industrialising emerging markets such as China, supply shortages, increased demand for biofuels, and a surging appetite for food commodities by investment funds, have combined to push prices of basic foods higher and higher in recent months.
Stephane Delodder, managing partner of Netherlands-based consultancy iFuel Corporate Advisory, told a conference the problem of rising food prices would persist for some years. Market forces should eventually help rebalance supply and demand, especially in markets which are not highly regulated, but this could take some time.
12 March
Ban: World must counter growing hunger problem
As prices for wheat, corn, rice and other food staples have soared in recent months and global food stocks are lower than usual, malnutrition is threatening ever more people around the world, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon writes in The Washington Post. The international community must respond better to this “new face of hunger,” for example by boosting donations to the World Food Programme and strengthening several UN humanitarian programs, he says. The Washington Post (3/12)