Posted on 02/24/2008 3:21:25 PM PST by DeaconBenjamin
The United Nation’s agency responsible for relieving hunger is drawing up plans to ration food aid in response to the spiralling cost of agricultural commodities.
The World Food Programme is holding crisis talks to decide what aid to halt if new donations do not arrive in the short term.
Josette Sheeran, WFP executive director, told the Financial Times that the agency would look at “cutting the food rations or even the number or people reached” if donors did not provide more money.
“Our ability to reach people is going down just as the needs go up,” she said.
WFP officials hope the cuts can be avoided, but warned that the agency’s budget requirements were rising by several million dollars a week because of climbing food prices.
The WFP crisis talks come as the body sees the emergence of a “new area of hunger” in developing countries where even middle-class, urban people are being “priced out of the food market” because of rising food prices.
The warning suggests that the price jump in agricultural commodities – such as wheat, corn, rice and soyabeans – is having a wider impact than thought, hitting countries that have previously largely escaped hunger.
“We are seeing a new face of hunger in which people are being priced out of the food market,” said Ms Sheeran.
Hunger is now “affecting a wide range of countries”, she said, pointing to Indonesia, Yemen and Mexico. “Situations that were previously not urgent – they are now.”
The main focus of the WFP to date has been to provide aid in areas where food was unavailable. But the programme now faces having to help countries where the price of food, rather than shortages, is the problem.
Ms Sheeran said that in response to rising food costs, families in developing countries were moving in some cases from three meals a day to just one, or dropping a diverse diet to rely on one staple food.
In response to increasing food prices, Egypt has widened its food rationing system for the first time in two decades while Pakistan has reintroduced a ration card system that was abandoned in the mid-1980s.
Countries such as China and Russia are imposing price controls while others, such as Argentina and Vietnam, are enforcing foreign sales taxes or export bans. Importing countries are lowering their tariffs.
Food prices are rising on a mix of strong demand from developing countries; a rising global population; more frequent floods and droughts caused by climate change; and the biofuel industry’s appetite for grains, analysts say. Soyabean prices on Friday hit an all-time high of $14.22 a bushel while corn prices jumped to a fresh 12-year high of $5.25 a bushel.
The price of rice and wheat has doubled in the past year while freight costs have also increased sharply on the back of rising fuel prices.
The world’s poor countries will have to pay 35 per cent more for their cereals imports, taking the total cost to a record $33.1bn (in the year to July 2008, even as their food purchases fall 2 per cent, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.
The US Department of Agriculture warned this week that high agricultural commodities prices would continue for at least the next two to three years.
“Food prices are rising on a mix of strong demand from developing countries; a rising global population; more frequent floods and droughts caused by climate change; and the biofuel industry’s appetite for grains, analysts say. Soyabean prices on Friday hit an all-time high of $14.22 a bushel while corn prices jumped to a fresh 12-year high of $5.25 a bushel.”
Might be time for the UN to step in and force the US to drill ANWR so the rest of the world can have low corn prices.
LOL! Good one.
I was shocked last week when I saw the usual 89C loaf of white bread was $2.45
Everything seems on the rise
It’s not that food and everything else is more expensive; it’s that our dollars are getting smaller.
Coulda fooled me.
Interesting - not one word in the article about this agency cutting overhead expenses. Do you think Josette works for free, or flies coach?
That's going to be hard to do. Feedstuff prices respond to the laws of supply and demand very nicely.
That's how the National Cheap Food Policy became to be so successful. The USDA carefully crafted programs to stimulate large crops, which drove down food prices due to large supplies. However, they were careful not to generate such large crops as to drive too many farmers out of business in one crop cycle. As a result, farmers have been held captive for decades. And we've had cheap food.
With the advent of ethonal, farmers are now more free of the USDA farm programs. It is going to cost a lot of money to get the farmers to cooperate with the USDA again. That, or huge over production, always a problem for farmers.
I just put in my order for all my veggie seeds. My pantry, next fall, will look quite Amish. Too many people looking for gubmint handouts instead.
We live in the city and I have a garden every year. When I used to not actually plant a garden I had pots all over my patio with tomatoes, green onions, etc. in them. lol
The UN crooks are not getting a big enough cut from this program. They will therefore institute a ‘crisis’ so that fearful people will submit to even greater gouging.
Gotta love their inclusion of "caused by climate change" in there.
I wish we could get the UN on board for support of ANWR drilling.
That's heresy. The worshippers of the earth mother goddess and their NGOs would never allow such a vote to take place.
Except my paycheck. And the Dow.
Ditto that
Ditto that
The UN is merely playing the cards that the “liars for Jesus” delt out.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1969627/posts?page=22#22
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1969627/posts?page=31#31
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