I wonder what would happen if the same thing happened in North America. Would we be complacent and pay more or actually riot?


Riots, instability spread as food prices skyrocket



(CNN) -- Riots from Haiti to Bangladesh to Egypt over the soaring costs of basic foods have brought the issue to a boiling point and catapulted it to the forefront of the world's attention, the head of an agency focused on global development said Monday.


Bangladeshi demonstrators chant slogans against high food prices during weekend protests.

"This is the world's big story," said Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute.

"The finance ministers were in shock, almost in panic this weekend," he said on CNN's "American Morning," in a reference to top economic officials who gathered in Washington. "There are riots all over the world in the poor countries ... and, of course, our own poor are feeling it in the United States."

World Bank President Robert Zoellick has said the surging costs could mean "seven lost years" in the fight against worldwide poverty.

"While many are worrying about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs, and it is getting more and more difficult every day," Zoellick said late last week in a speech opening meetings with finance ministers.

"The international community must fill the at least $500 million food gap identified by the U.N.'s World Food Programme to meet emergency needs," he said. "Governments should be able to come up with this assistance and come up with it now."

The World Bank announced a $10 million grant from the United States for Haiti to help the government assist poor families.

"In just two months," Zoellick said in his speech, "rice prices have skyrocketed to near historical levels, rising by around 75 percent globally and more in some markets, with more likely to come. In Bangladesh, a 2-kilogram bag of rice ... now consumes about half of the daily income of a poor family."

The price of wheat has jumped 120 percent in the past year, he said -- meaning that the price of a loaf of bread has more than doubled in places where the poor spend as much as 75 percent of their income on food.

"This is not just about meals forgone today or about increasing social unrest. This is about lost learning potential for children and adults in the future, stunted intellectual and physical growth," Zoellick said.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, also spoke at the joint IMF-World Bank spring meeting.

"If food prices go on as they are today, then the consequences on the population in a large set of countries ... will be terrible," he said.

He added that "disruptions may occur in the economic environment ... so that at the end of the day most governments, having done well during the last five or 10 years, will see what they have done totally destroyed, and their legitimacy facing the population destroyed also."

In Haiti, the prime minister was kicked out of office Saturday, and hospital beds are filled with wounded following riots sparked by food prices. Watch Haitians riot over food prices »

In Egypt, rioters have burned cars and destroyed windows of numerous buildings as police in riot gear have tried to quell protests.

Images from Bangladesh and Mozambique tell a similar story.

In the United States and other Western nations, more and more poor families are feeling the pinch. In recent days, presidential candidates have paid increasing attention to the cost of food, often citing it on the stump.

The issue is also fueling a rising debate over how much the rising prices can be blamed on ethanol production. The basic argument is that because ethanol comes from corn, the push to replace some traditional fuels with ethanol has created a new demand for corn that has thrown off world food prices.

Jean Ziegler, U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, has called using food crops to create ethanol "a crime against humanity."

"We've been putting our food into the gas tank -- this corn-to-ethanol subsidy which our government is doing really makes little sense," said Columbia University's Sachs.

Former President Clinton, at a campaign stop for his wife in Pennsylvania over the weekend, said, "Corn is the single most inefficient way to produce ethanol because it uses a lot of energy and because it drives up the price of food."

Some environmental groups reject the focus on ethanol in examining food prices.

"The contrived food vs. fuel debate has reared its ugly head once again," the Renewable Fuels Association says on its Web site, adding that "numerous statistical analyses have demonstrated that the price of oil -- not corn prices or ethanol production -- has the greatest impact on consumer food prices because it is integral to virtually every phase of food production, from processing to packaging to transportation."
Analysts agree the cost of fuel is among the reasons for the skyrocketing prices.

Another major reason is rising demand, particularly in places in the midst of a population boom, such as China and India.

Also, said Sachs, "climate shocks" are damaging food supply in parts of the world. "You add it all together: Demand is soaring, supply has been cut back, food has been diverted into the gas tank. It's added up to a price explosion."

Likelihood that this will be a major consideration in the next farm bill: negligible.

can't even begin to compare until the day north americans start spending 75% of their income on food.

that's kinda what I meant, Cork.

So much ridiculous shit in that article I don't know/care where to begin. I'll just say it's mostly the parts that imply it is someone's "fault" and someone elses "responsibility" to do something about it.

The prices are what they are. No fault to be doled there. I think every country has to take a look at the farm subsidies they give out and the affect this has on developping countries. I think it is all our responisbilities to one another to ensure that we alleviate starvation anywhere and everywhere we can.

I agree that we should take a look at the effects of farm subsidies. I also agree that it is "job" to help alleviate starvation where possible, though I would call it moral responsibility instead. However, I don't think we should be feeding people who can't feed themselves. That isn't alleviating starvation, it is promoting it.

In the short term what do you suggest we do if not feed them?

stop subsidizing and promoting ethanol

ride on their shoulders with a carrot on a stick and lead them to where the food is?

Ethanol is a bad deal in general, yes, but it is certainly not the cause of world hunger. Not even close. If not for ethanol this same thing would still be happening, and in all likelihood with the same severity.


And as to the other question I answer this: Education

is ethanol the cause? of course not, but i would say it is definatly contributing. and i would say ethanol production leads to higher energy costs overall which are no doubt a big contributer to this


JEFFREY SIMPSON

From Friday's Globe and Mail

April 11, 2008 at 3:18 AM EDT

Food riots break out in Haiti, where the average income is $2 a day. Disturbances over the availability and price of food erupt in other very low-income countries. Argentine farmers protest against the government's imposition of an export tax on certain foodstuffs. Tortilla protests hit Mexico.

Central bankers worry about the inflationary push from food prices. The United Nations pleads for more aid.

After higher energy prices now comes higher food prices. The two, in fact, go together, and are changing basic economics. Get used to the changes, for they are worldwide.

Farmers are big energy users. If the price of energy rises - for fuel and electricity - the increase will be included in the price of their products and, eventually, will be felt by consumers.

A growing middle class in Asian countries such as China, India and South Korea begins to consume more and different kinds of food. Demand rises, but supply doesn't keep pace, even for rice. So the prices rise in the consuming country for basic commodities.

Fix increasing demand with more supply? That's what a standard economic textbook would recommend. Except that supply is being hurt by drought in Australia, a big agricultural exporter, and the shift of land from food production to corn for biofuels.

In North America and, to a lesser extent, in Europe, farmers have found a new subsidy or, to put things the other way, governments have found a new way of subsidizing agriculture.

Corn-based ethanol is sold to the public as a way of preventing global warming. Subsidies abound for ethanol production. Demand is so great, and prices for corn and other crops are so high, that some U.S. farmers are chafing to cultivate land they are being paid to keep out of production for wetlands conservation purposes. Ethanol factories carrying huge public subsidies are springing up everywhere. Governments require more ethanol to be used.

Nature magazine recently published the findings of yet another study that demonstrated the limited effectiveness of corn-based ethanol as an antidote to climate change. The emissions savings per unit of ethanol, compared with conventional gasoline, has been thought by most studies to be around 3 per cent. A few studies put the savings higher; Nature's findings suggest less than 3 per cent. In any scenario, on a list of cost-effective measures to lower emissions, corn-based ethanol would be near the bottom.

The effectiveness calculation depends, in part, on how much fuel is used to transport the corn and which fuels are used to generate the electricity needed to run the plants. A plant run off solar power will produce far fewer emissions than power from burning coal.

The subsidies lavished on ethanol are politically irresistible, but they have the knock-on effect of taking land out of food production, thereby limiting supply, thereby pushing up prices. Farmers also switch from other crops to corn, again reducing supply and driving up prices.

The wealthy countries, led by those of the European Union, Japan, South Korea, the United States and Canada (to a lesser extent) have stymied world free trade for decades with outrageous agricultural subsidies.

Farmers now account for a maximum of 4 per cent of the work force in these countries, yet their political influence has been, and remains, enormous. Now, some of them have found a new way of being subsidized, and governments have been unable to resist.

Advanced industrial countries blocked the importation of cheaper food from developing countries - try getting milk or poultry into Canada, or rice into Japan and South Korea, or sugar into the United States - that could have raised those countries' standards of living and helped consumers at home. Now, the combination of factors, including soaring energy bills, has heightened demand. The rush to corn-based ethanol is driving up food prices in countries where the share of daily income on food greatly exceeds the share in developed countries.

Climate change is doing its bit to create this problem. Global warming is drying up some agricultural land, as in Australia, and reducing water supplies that nourish productive soils. (Over the long term, warming could open up new areas for cultivation.) Third World countries whose land is already marginal are suffering from desertification.

Global warming hits everyone. Warming, and injudicious measures to combat it, tend to hurt the weakest most.

We haven't exactly helped the developing countries become more self sufficient agriculturally when we dump our goods on them. Buffalohed, when you say that we shouldn't take it upon ourselves to feed the world, I'd tend to agree with you, but we should stop harming them with our bad policies.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 15th April 2008

Never mind the economic crisis. Focus for a moment on a more urgent threat: the great food recession which is sweeping the world faster than the credit crunch.

You have probably seen the figures by now: the price of rice has risen by three-quarters in the past year, that of wheat by 130%(1). There are food crises in 37 countries. One hundred million people, according to the World Bank, could be pushed into deeper poverty by the high prices(2). But I bet you have missed the most telling statistic. At 2.1bn tonnes, last year’s global grain harvest broke all records(3). It beat the previous year’s by almost 5%. The crisis, in other words, has begun before world food supplies are hit by climate change. If hunger can strike now, what will happen if harvests decline?

There is plenty of food. It is just not reaching human stomachs. Of the 2.13bn tonnes likely to be consumed this year, only 1.01bn, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), will feed people(4).

I am sorely tempted to write another column about biofuels. From this morning all sellers of transport fuel in the United Kingdom will be obliged to mix it with ethanol or biodiesel made from crops. The World Bank points out that “the grain required to fill the tank of a sports utility vehicle with ethanol … could feed one person for a year”(5). Last year global stockpiles of cereals declined by around 53m tonnes(6); this gives you a rough idea of the size of the hunger gap. The production of biofuels this year will consume almost 100m tonnes(7), which suggests that they are directly responsible for the current crisis. In the Guardian yesterday the transport secretary Ruth Kelly promised that “if we need to adjust policy in the light of new evidence, we will.”(8) What new evidence does she require? In the midst of a global humanitarian crisis, we have just become legally obliged to use food as fuel. It is a crime against humanity in which every driver in this country has been forced to participate.

But I have been saying this for four years and I am boring myself. Of course we must demand that our governments scrap the rules which turn grain into the fastest food of all. But there is a bigger reason for global hunger, which is attracting less attention only because it has been there for longer. While 100m tonnes of food will be diverted this year to feed cars, 760m tonnes will be snatched from the mouths of humans to feed animals(9). This could cover the global food deficit 14 times. If you care about hunger, eat less meat.

While meat consumption is booming in Asia and Latin America, in the United Kingdom it has scarcely changed since the government started gathering data in 1974. At just over 1kg per person per week(10), it’s still about 40% above the global average(11), though less than half the amount consumed in the United States(12). We eat less beef and more chicken than we did 30 years ago, which means a smaller total impact. Beef cattle eat about 8kg of grain or meal for every kilogramme of flesh they produce; a kilogramme of chicken needs just 2kg of feed. Even so, our consumption rate is plainly unsustainable.

In his magazine The Land, Simon Fairlie has updated the figures produced 30 years ago in Kenneth Mellanby’s book Can Britain Feed Itself? Fairlie found that a vegan diet grown by means of conventional agriculture would require only 3m hectares of arable land (around half the current total)(13). Even if we reduced our consumption of meat by half, a mixed farming system would need 4.4m hectares of arable fields and 6.4 million hectares of pasture. A vegan Britain could make a massive contribution to global food stocks.

But I cannot advocate a diet I am incapable of following. I tried it for about 18 months, lost two stone, went as white as bone and felt that I was losing my mind. I know a few healthy-looking vegans and I admire them immensely. But after almost every talk I give, I am pestered by swarms of vegans demanding that I adopt their lifestyle. I cannot help noticing that in most cases their skin has turned a fascinating pearl grey.

What level of meat-eating would be sustainable? One approach is to work out how great a cut would be needed to accommodate the growth in human numbers. The UN expects the population to rise to 9bn by 2050. These extra people will require another 325m tonnes of grain(14). Let us assume, perhaps generously, that politicians like Ms Kelly are able to “adjust policy in the light of new evidence” and stop turning food into fuel. Let us pretend that improvements in plant breeding can keep pace with the deficits caused by climate change. We would need to find an extra 225m tonnes of grain. This leaves 531m tonnes for livestock production, which suggests a sustainable consumption level for meat and milk some 30% below the current world rate. This means 420g of meat per person per week, or about 40% of the UK’s average consumption.

This estimate is complicated by several factors. If we eat less meat we must eat more plant protein, which means taking more land away from animals. On the other hand, some livestock is raised on pasture, so it doesn’t contribute to the grain deficit. Simon Fairlie estimates that if animals were kept only on land that’s unsuitable for arable farming, and given scraps and waste from food processing, the world could produce between a third and two thirds of its current milk and meat supply(15). But this system then runs into a different problem. The FAO calculates that animal keeping is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions. The environmental impacts are especially grave in places where livestock graze freely(16). The only reasonable answer to the question of how much meat we should eat is as little as possible. Let’s reserve it - as most societies have done until recently - for special occasions.

For both environmental and humanitarian reasons, beef is out. Pigs and chickens feed more efficiently, but unless they are free range you encounter another ethical issue: the monstrous conditions in which they are kept. I would like to encourage people to start eating tilapia instead of meat. It’s a freshwater fish which can be raised entirely on vegetable matter and has the best conversion efficiency - about 1.6kg of feed for 1kg of meat - of any farmed animal(17). Until meat can be grown in flasks, this is about as close as we are likely to come to sustainable flesh-eating.

Re-reading this article, I see that there is something surreal about it. While half the world wonders whether it will eat at all, I am pondering which of our endless choices we should take. Here the price of food barely registers. Our shops are better stocked than ever before. We perceive the global food crisis dimly, if at all. It is hard to understand how two such different food economies could occupy the same planet, until you realise that they feed off each other.

http://www.monbiot.com

That article is fucking stupid.

Really stupid. That guy is twisting all sorts of words and making assumptions left and right. I most likely agree with a lot of his philosophies at a basic level but that paper is nothing but bullshit propaganda.

How Daniel Quinn of you.
That is so cute.

The funny thing is in one sentence he/she says we have a "moral responsibility" and then the very next sentence he/she says "I don't think we should be feeding people who can't feed themselves". So I'm left wondering if he/she thinks our moral responsibility to to sit and watch them die for the betterment of humanity.

Quick! Feed them so they can reproduce! Instead of a generation starving and struggling, we can help it stretch out for decades, like in Ethiopia.

I'd sure hope this is an issue we can find more than just an A-B option setting in. It really ought not boil down to either feed or don't...nor do I find it appropriate to call food relief efforts a "short term solution," since historically once that's enacted pretty much nothing else is done.

That's inherently racist, don'tcha think?
There's not a lot of white people who "can't feed themselves".



Sounds reasonable, however if you want to withhold food aid for...decades...while we try and fix centuries of institutionalized corruption, violence, foreign hegemony in Africa you have more...courage...than I.

One might think we should clean our own house before complaining about another's.