Wednesday, April 16, 2008

The World is Starving...

More than the normal

I have not seen anyone talk about this, on this blog or on others, and it is fascinating that something as horrible and as wide spread is not gaining the attention of activists or the general population.

Maybe it is just out of control so people shrug it off. Yet the fact that food shortages are spreading across the world, from Cairo to Manila and Haiti to Karachi, is amazing!

Just so our readers are aware there is a food crisis that the "world" not some part of Africa or war torn area of the region is faced with but rather, the world is facing a food crisis.

To the point where Darfur agencies only had food for a week because of inflation of food. Food prices in the US grew not solely to the down turn in the economy but rather also the use of corn in ethanol fuel pushing the price of corn up, which is used in all our food stuff. Flour in Cairo, rice in Karachi- food in general is all of a sudden in short supply.

GLOBAL WARMING? I don't know, you be the judge, but the fact is a major downturn in the economy for the US is linked to the soaring food prices and shortages. Our own government subsidizes farmers to not grow food, to throw food away, and here we are in the beginning of what many analyst say is the worst food shortage in the modern era.

You can read more here, here, here, and here.

Remember major food shortages lead to major civil and societal unrest...so this time the revolution just might be televised?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

all the while a prince in Dubai pays 2.7 million dollars for a camel at a festival...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-04-08-2907398790_x.htm

Yesi King said...

i think about this issue everyday.

Huda Shaka` said...

Same here Yesi...and I've recently had a paradigm shift: I no longer think of this as something that can be solved by donating more money to the 'poor' to buy food. This is a problem rooted in the way our world is being run and in our individual lifestyles. Unless a drastic change occurs on both the macro and micro level, more people will suffer every day.

Anonymous said...

isn't worldwide famine one of the signs of the day judgment?

scary . . .

Unknown said...

anonymous- you know thats one of the things i wanted to look into!!! What is scary is that this crisis is insane. People are hoarding food, food prices are skyrocketing, children are being sold/traded for food!!!

This is a paradigm issue and I concur with Huda, however, I go further to say that we need to reconstruct the system, where we teach people to catch fish for themselves as they say rather then continue to pour money/food (water) at every crisis (fire) that happens to come up.

The crisis (wildfire) is spreading like crazy!