Severe Food Shortages, Price Spikes

[flashl]

Severe Food Shortages, Price Spikes Threaten World Population

Worldwide food prices have risen sharply and supplies have dropped this year, according to the latest food outlook of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. The agency warned December 17 that the changes represent an “unforeseen and unprecedented” shift in the global food system, threatening billions with hunger and decreased access to food.

The FAO’s food price index rose by 40 percent this year, on top of the already high 9 percent increase the year before, and the poorest countries spent 25 percent more this year on imported food. The prices for staple crops, including wheat, rice, corn and soybeans, all rose drastically in 2007, pushing up prices for grain-fed meat, eggs and dairy products and spurring inflation throughout the consumer food market.

Driving these increases are a complex range of developments, including rapid urbanization of populations and growing demand for food stuffs in key developing countries such as China and India, speculation in the commodities markets, increased diversion of feedstock crops into the production of biofuels, and extreme weather conditions and other natural disasters associated with climate change.

Because of the long-term and compounding nature of all of these factors, the problems of rising prices and decreasing supplies in the food system are not temporary or one-time occurrences, and cannot be understood as cyclical fluctuations in supply and demand.

The world reserves of cereals are dwindling. In the past year, wheat stores declined 11 percent. The FAO notes that this is the lowest level since the UN began keeping records in 1980, while the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has reported that world wheat stocks may have fallen to 47-year lows. By FAO figures, the falloff in wheat stores equals about 12 weeks worth of global consumption

Read Full Text

[opihimoimoi]

1. Real Leaders of the Concerned Kind would start to solve this problem

Ya think we would be seeing some answers right about now....This is what we get when cronies are in there...they don know crap...

[flashl]

2. I am so far beyond accepting terminal ineptitude as a cause

of so much human misery, I could just ... I no longer know what I can do or say that would accurately express my outrage or disdain. :grr:

[Jackpine Radical]

3. I agree, it's time to reverse that old Roosevelt dictum

and never attribute to mere stupidity anything that can be better explained by malign intent.

[opihimoimoi]

4. Causes for food shortages may vary from one aspect to another

Its the Leaders at the Helm who fail to see the Big Picture,k analyze, and solve for answers to lessen the misery/death rate....

Thus far....our leaders of both stripes have failed to impress me....but its the Pubs who really had the power to make change/improve... in that they have failed more than the dems...

What can we small potatos do??? A start is to vote Blue....The Pubs have had their Ops for all these years and have proven to ignore the plight of the masses in favor of their Party and Peeps.

[barb162]

5. The unmentionable thing here is over-population too.

More people occupying once arable land means less crops. Fewer people on less land means more land for crops.