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UN World Food Programme head warns of “silent tsunami� of hunger |
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 This week Josette Sheeran, Executive Director of the UN's World Food Programme, warned that soaring food prices represented “a silent tsunami threatening to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger”.
2007 saw some of the sharpest rises in food prices in history, with wheat rising 77% and rice 16%. This year, price rises have risen even more dramatically: rice prices are up by 141% and the price of one variety of wheat went up by 25% in a single day. These changes result primarily from growing global demand, particularly from consumers in India and China and new biofuels programmes. The rises may have been exacerbated by export quotas by large grain producers, panic buying by grain importers, and money from hedge funds looking for new markets.
Unrest related to the price rises has already erupted in Haiti, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Ethiopia, Madagascar, the Philippines and Indonesia.
Sheeran commented on the implications of the price rises: "For the middle classes it means cutting out medical care. For those on $2 a day, it means cutting out meat and taking the children out of school. For those on $1 a day, it means cutting out meat and vegetables and eating only cereals. And for those on 50 cents a day, it means total disaster.” Comparing the food crisis to the devastating 2004 tsunami, the WFP head called on the international community to match the aid given to help those affected by that disaster, which totalled around 12 billion US dollars. The European Commission this week announced a further 117.25 million euros in emergency food aid to help the worst affected regions. Sources: |
