Free Republic

It’s like some surreal scene directly from the pages of an Ayn Rand novel. These are the knuckleheads that created the hunger problem. People like Robert Mugabe, who took the breadbasket of Southern Africa and turned it into a disaster area. He is in attendance, and has actually blamed the West for his country’s food shortages.

Gordon Brown says world 'cannot afford to fail' on food crisis By Tom Peterkin Last Updated: 11:54PM BST 03/06/2008 Gordon Brown warned that the world "cannot afford to fail" to deal with the global food crisis, which is resulting in 9,000 under-fives starving to death each day. Speaking as heads of state prepared to meet for a United Nations summit on soaring food prices, the Prime Minister said it was vital to increase food production in the world's poorest countries. "The fact that food prices have reached record levels can only worsen these already devastating figures," Mr Brown said in...

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World food price crisis 'here to stay' By David Blair in New York Last Updated: 1:43AM BST 19/05/2008EPA Sir John Holme said the world needed a "green revolution" High food prices are here to stay and the world needs a "green revolution" to feed its rising population, the senior humanitarian official at the United Nations has told The Telegraph. Sir John Holmes, Britain's former ambassador to Paris who now serves as the UN's under-secretary for humanitarian affairs, said structural changes in the global economy are the cause of the sudden rise in food prices. "It is possible that in the...

The United States has reached a deal with North Korea to provide 500,000 tons of food aid over the coming year to the isolated communist nation. The U.S. administration says the aid has little to do with its nuclear disarmament deal with Pyongyang, although both have involved an unusual intensity of U.S. diplomacy with North Korea, a nation President George W. Bush once included as part of a rhetorical ``axis of evil.'' ``We don't see any connection,'' State Department spokesman Sean McCormack was quoted as saying. ``We're doing this because America is a compassionate nation and the United States and...

There are "seven meals between civilization and anarchy," says Josette Sheeran, executive director of United Nation's World Food Program. What takes those meals away, driving citizens to base needs and destabilizing countries? Growing demand, changing diets, weather disruption and, sadly enough, restricted trade. There has been little good news for food relief. A forecast today from Goldman Sachs said oil prices could rise to $150 to $200 per barrel in the next two years--dramatically driving up the price of producing and transporting food for the foreseeable future. The rising price of oil makes ethanol and other biofuels more viable, furthering...

Vast amounts of money are flooding the world's commodities markets, driving up prices of staple foods like wheat and rice. Biofuels and droughts can't fully explain the recent food crisis -- hedge funds and small investors bear some responsibility for global hunger. Not long ago, Dwight Anderson welcomed reporters with open arms. He liked to entertain them with stories from the world of big money. Anderson is a New York hedge fund manager, and as recently as last October he would talk with enthusiasm about his visits to Malaysian palm-oil plantations and Brazilian grain farms. "You could clearly see how...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, April 27 (UPI) -- The Rev. Jesse Jackson and several leaders of Florida's Haitian community arrived in Haiti Sunday to study the country's food crisis, Haitian radio reported. Jackson and others are expected to discuss food-price inflation with Haitian leaders, according to officials of his Rainbow Push Coalition. Protests over spiking food prices left at least seven people dead this month and prompted lawmakers to oust Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis. On Sunday, Ericq Pierre, a former senior adviser with the Inter-American Development Bank, was named Alexis' successor.

Here’s an inconvenient truth: Long before man-caused global warming kills people and topples governments, the man-caused scare over global warming is going to have the same effect. Unlike the myth of man-made global warming, the scare is real, and it is here today. The secretary-general of the United Nations told reporters in Austria on Friday that the sudden and steep rise in food prices worldwide has developed into a global crisis. With shortages of affordable food spreading around the world, food-related unrest has broken out in nations as diverse as Egypt, Haiti, Indonesia and Afghanistan. One of the base causes...

The damage that trade restrictions cause is probably most evident in the case of rice. Although rice is the major foodstuff for about half of the world, it is highly protected and regulated. Only about 5 to 7 percent of the world’s rice production is traded across borders; that’s unusually low for an agricultural commodity. So when the price goes up — indeed, many varieties of rice have roughly doubled in price since 2007 — this highly segmented market means that the trade in rice doesn’t flow to the places of highest demand. Export restrictions send a message to farmers...

The globe's worst food crisis in a generation emerged as a blip on the big boards and computer screens of America's great grain exchanges. At first, it seemed like little more than a bout of bad weather. In Chicago, Minneapolis and Kansas City, traders watched from the pits early last summer as wheat prices spiked amid mediocre harvests in the United States and Europe and signs of prolonged drought in Australia. But within a few weeks, the traders discerned an ominous snowball effect -- one that would eventually bring down a prime minister in Haiti, make more children in Mauritania...

Ukraine's Pursuit of Genocide Designation Upsets Russians Who Say Others Died, Too MOSCOW -- Relations between Russia and Ukraine, bedeviled by disputes over natural gas supplies and NATO expansion, have lately been roiled by one of the great tragedies of Soviet history: the famine of 1932-33, which left millions dead from starvation and related diseases. Ukraine is seeking international recognition of the famine, which Ukrainians call Holodomor -- or death by hunger -- as an act of genocide. When Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin forced peasants off their homesteads and into collective farms, special military units requisitioned grain and other food...

Reporting on the food crisis in Haiti last week, The Washington Times introduced its readership to the term "Clorox hunger," described as "a hunger so painful it feels like your stomach is being eaten by bleach or battery acid." It's horrifying stuff. But that's what the global food crisis -- which many economists now believe will push 100 million people into "absolute poverty," and which will do far worse to those already below the absolute poverty line -- looks like. Higher food prices mean less food. In America, that's an annoyance. In other countries, that's a death sentence. And it's...

Despite bumper crops in Vietnam and India, export limits and bans have created a global shortage and driven up prices. At the Costco in San Francisco, rice is all the rage. Not long after the 10 a.m. opening on Apr. 24, the warehouse club was well on its way to selling out the day's supply of Thai jasmine rice. Within an hour, customers cleared three pallets loaded with 50-lb. bags of Super Lucky Elephant brand jasmine rice from Thailand. Real estate broker Mary Jane Galviso snapped up two bags—the limit imposed by this particular store. "This is very frightening," says...

The current food shortage is going to get worse before it gets better – at least that’s the way the founder of CNN sees it. Ted Turner was interviewed by CNBC’s Bob Pisani on the April 25 “Closing Bell.” He addressed the recent food shortages causing rationing and riots all over the globe and said it’s just a sign of things to come. “There are a lot of different problems being caused by an ever-increasing number of people in a finite-sized world,” Turner said. “The resources of the planet just can’t keep up with the demand and I’m afraid this...

An escalating global food crisis could bring the problem of hunger home to the US and other developed countries. Millions of poor Americans risk going hungry if food prices continue to rise and food agencies struggle to cope with rising costs, dwindling resources and a huge increase in demand. Already more and more poor people in the US are turning to charity and government assistance as they struggle with rising food costs and soaring fuel bills. Even some stores are restricting bulk rice purchases as the grain reached a fresh high on Thursday. Laurie True, executive director of the California...

David Kotok, chairman and chief investment officer of Cumberland Advisors, said the deadly fungus, Puccinia graminis, is now spreading through some areas of the globe where "crop losses are expected to reach 100 percent.” Losses in Africa are already at 70 percent of the crop, Kotok said. "The economic losses expected from this fungus are now in the many billions and growing. Worse, there is an intensifying fear of exacerbated food shortages in poor and emerging countries of the world,” Kotok told investors in a research note. "The ramifications are serious. Food rioting continues to expand around the world. We...

Food Crisis Eclipsing Climate Change By JOSH GERSTEIN, Staff Reporter of the Sun | April 25, 2008 The campaign against climate change could be set back by the global food crisis, as foreign populations turn against measures to use foodstuffs as substitutes for fossil fuels. With prices for rice, wheat, and corn soaring, food-related unrest has broken out in places such as Haiti, Indonesia, and Afghanistan. Several countries have blocked the export of grain. There is even talk that governments could fall if they cannot bring food costs down. One factor being blamed for the price hikes is the use...

UNITED NATIONS - The World Food Program appealed for hundreds of millions of dollars to cope with rising food prices that have sparked protests and food riots and led to bans on food exports in dozens of countries. Josette Sheeran, the WFP's executive director, said the U.N. agency is facing a 40 percent increase in the cost of food and requests for food aid from countries unable to cope with the rising prices. It expects additional requests from nations like Haiti whose citizens are becoming part of "the new face of hunger," she told a video news conference from Rome...

World consumption of rice continues to rise and outpace production. The trend will continue in 2008, bringing with it a host of factors that will impact U.S. rice producers. Speaking at the recent Mid-South Farm and Gin Show in Memphis, Tenn., Carl Brothers, senior vice president of Riceland Foods, outlined the current status of the U.S. rice industry and gave a summary of key issues on the horizon. Global ending stocks finished in December 2007 at 72 million tons, an all-time low in supply/use comparison. “If we look at these low stock numbers and the demand we’re seeing around the...