Two More Views on the Food Crisis

Cross Posting my Own Blog Post source, how cool is that. What is not cool is the food shortage which is apparently only going to get worse.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Two More Views on the Food Crisis

EGR diocesan contact (& blogger) Carl Hooker pointed us to these entries on the continuing food crisis and its effect on the poorest countries.

First, from Betsy Aviles on the ONE Blog.

In Ethiopia, only enough food for the "hungriest"

The food crisis has taken its harshest toll on the poorest countries, Ethiopia being one of the hardest hit.

From the Christian Science Monitor :

In this African nation, about 10 million people, more than 12 percent of the population, are now in need of emergency food aid after a drought wiped out harvests. But because grain is now twice as expensive as a year ago – if it is available at all – there is not enough food in Ethiopia to feed everyone in need.

The UN estimates that 4.6 million Ethiopians are suffering from “severe malnutrition,”, but the lack of food is so severe that foreign and domestic aid-workers need to “prioritize” who is the most needy. Some have take to weighing children on wooden scales and providing food rations to the most malnourished.

UNICEF has made an appeal for $49 million to go towards “immediate intervention” in Ethiopia. UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Hilde F. Johnson emphasized the severity of the situation:

“We talked to mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers and all actors in the field. This picture was confirmed by all of them and a clear message was conveyed: there is no food. The assistance needs to be taken to scale and it has to happen urgently.”

Next, from yesterday's New York Times

Hoarding Nations Drive Food Costs Ever Higher
By KEITH BRADSHER and ANDREW MARTIN
BANGKOK — At least 29 countries have sharply curbed food exports in recent months, to ensure that their own people have enough to eat, at affordable prices.

When it comes to rice, India, Vietnam, China and 11 other countries have limited or banned exports. Fifteen countries, including Pakistan and Bolivia, have capped or halted wheat exports. More than a dozen have limited corn exports. Kazakhstan has restricted exports of sunflower seeds.

The restrictions are making it harder for impoverished importing countries to afford the food they need. The export limits are forcing some of the most vulnerable people, those who rely on relief agencies, to go hungry.

“It’s obvious that these export restrictions fuel the fire of price increases,” said Pascal Lamy, the director general of the World Trade Organization.

And by increasing perceptions of shortages, the restrictions have led to hoarding around the world, by farmers, traders and consumers.

“People are in a panic, so they are buying more and more — at least, those who have money are buying,” said Conching Vasquez, a 56-year-old rice vendor who sat one recent morning among piles of rice at her large stall in Los Baños, in the Philippines, the world’s largest rice importer. Her customers buy 8,000 pounds of rice a day, up from 5,500 pounds a year ago.

The new restrictions are just an acute symptom of a chronic condition. Since 1980, even as trade in services and in manufactured goods has tripled, adjusting for inflation, trade in food has barely increased. Instead, for decades, food has been a convoluted tangle of restrictive rules, in the form of tariffs, quotas and subsidies.

Now, with Australia’s farm sector crippled by drought and Argentina suffering a series of strikes and other disruptions, the world is increasingly dependent on a handful of countries like Thailand, Brazil, Canada and the United States that are still exporting large quantities of food.
Read the entire piece here.