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.
But the yen, and yuan, and euros, and pounds are substantially keeping pace (let alone the various pesos).
ANWR, drilling of the east and west coasts, nuclear energy, clean coal and coal gasification would solve this problem.
There are plenty of solutions, just democrats blocking them at every twist and turn.
Suggestion. Do not drill for petroleum in ANWR. The problem is the price of corn. The solution is to drill for corn oil in ANWR. A large corn oil strike will cause a drop in the price of corn oil. More supply and lower prices, too. The UN will surely get behind that one.
If we hit something other than corn oil when drilling, we may opportunistically exploit that resource, whatever it may be, as well.
This years garden for me will be huge. I even planned CORN! lol
Up until a year or two ago it was under very tight reign,
The farmer was generally assured that as long as he produced enough crops to keep food cheap, he wouldn’t be driven out of business. Importantly, he also had to agree not to produce too much. As long as he did that, he would be sent enough money to struggle on until the next year.
The consumer benefited because they got abundant, cheap food. The farmer benefited, because he wasn’t driven out of business.
Ethanol has thrown a monkey wrench into that system. Right now the farmer doesn’t need that government money. As a result, he’s free to produce as much as he wants, and sell it for much more than the government controlled system paid.
You post was a litttle confusing, are you suggesting that we continue the cheap food system, or try to force the farmers to work under the new system (the one with ethonal) by eliminating the farm programs ?
That's true for oil as well. The subsidies for oil are (understandably) much higher.
Remember Gulf War I? The war fought for the free flow of oil? Imagine that the US military had not fought that war, or fought the war and sent the bill to the oil companies?
Sometimes the subsidies we complain about are not as out in the open as we might imagine.
Yeah but wheat grows like mad in cooler tempatures and we have plenty of it. Yummy wheat pasta and some butter is all you need to stay alive a long, long time.
Speak for yourself. I'm gluten intolerant. I avoid wheat, barley and rye. It destroys my digestive tract and causes my sinuses to become congested.
OK, everyone knows that, and agrees, so what?
Are you saying that that makes the oil subsidies OK?
BTW, it takes several, 4 to 10 crop cycles to bring an ethanol plant on-line, depending on the resistance of the enviro-nazis.
This reminds me of the early 1990’s—local governments were all rushing to convert their buses and municipal vehicles to natural gas. (I heard this morning that they’re doing it again). At the same time, they were demanding all coal fired plants convert to natural gas burners. I.e., gas was “the thing”.
Fast forward a few years and, of course, natural gas prices were through the roof and California was having rolling blackouts.
Now they’re screwing up the corn market with their ethanol subsidies. Beware the politician meddling in commodity markets.
When the snow doesn’t melt in the summer across the corn belt, then there will be a problem.
As humans, we possess the ability to assess what happened and try to settle areas that are out of harm's way. Somehow, I don't think we are quite that bright.
I whole heartily agree with you.
However, no matter which way you want to describe it, it comes down to the US Government digging into it's pocket to help the oil companies.
But, oddly, the currencies of many Gulf states whose primary export is petroleum and whose currencies are pegged to the dollar are having record inflation.
Consider the following story:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1976495/posts
This can't be true unless the currency is actually being devalued. If it weren't, the net effect on the gulf states would be a wash.
Are you stating that there would be no inflation with the Gulf state currencies if they were pegged to the Euro or Pound, or that there would be inflation, but less.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.