20 Million People Worldwide May Starve In The Next 6 Months

BI - Reuters ^ | 2-16-2017 | Tom Miles

[blam]

GENEVA (Reuters) - More than 20 million people - greater than the population of Romania or Florida - risk dying from starvation within six months in four separate famines, U.N. World Food Programme chief economist Arif Husain says.

Wars in Yemen, northeastern Nigeria and South Sudan have devastated households and driven up prices, while a drought in east Africa has ruined the agricultural economy.

"In my not quite 15 years with the World Food Programme, this is the first time that we are literally talking about famine in four different parts of the world at the same time," he told Reuters in an interview.

"It’s almost overwhelming to comprehend that in the 21st century people are still experiencing famines of such magnitude. We’re talking about 20 million people, and all this within the next six months, or now. Yemen is now, Nigeria is now, South Sudan is now," he said.

"Somalia, when I look at the indicators in terms of extremely high food prices, falling livestock prices and agricultural wages, it’s going to come pretty fast."

The global humanitarian system is already struggling with a historic surge in migration, huge operations in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, and serious situations in Ukraine, Burundi, Libya and Zimbabwe.

"Then you have places like DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), CAR (Central African Republic), Burundi, Mali, Niger, where people are chronically food insecure but ... there’s just not enough resources to go around.”

Humanitarian aid is at record high levels but demand is growing even faster, creating a huge gap. "In northeast Nigeria we’re feeding more than 1 million people and just a few months ago we didn’t even have an office there," Husain said.

(snip)

[blam]

"It’s not just Iowa. There were riots and near riots when ethanol became big in South America and corn/tortillas went up in price. And in Asia when rice went up. And Europe had costs of bread go up (but not the riots in Europe). People all over the world have little money and even without famine the increase in price of basic foods can cause people to starve."

I read a couple years ago that the average Nigerian spent 80% of their income on food.

More recently I read that the average is down to 60% there.

Isn't Nigeria one of the richer countries there?

[Crucial]

Yeah, OK.