Re: Understanding Food Prices

The consensus around the world is that there is a food crisis upon us, and that the world simply cannot produce enough food to feed the growing population.

The New York Times contributes as it continues to substitute hyperbole for information in its reporting on rising food prices:

Hunger bashed in the front gate of Haiti's presidential palace. Hunger poured onto the streets, burning tires and taking on soldiers and the police. Hunger sent the country's prime minister packing.

Haiti's hunger, that burn in the belly that so many here feel, has become fiercer than ever in recent days as global food prices spiral out of reach, spiking as much as 45 percent since the end of 2006 and turning Haitian staples like beans, corn and rice into closely guarded treasures.

Read more from Chris Blattman here.

Kinda Blah

Kenya has been so dunked in political drama, transport frustration and security chaos in the last few months that it feels really strange when I wake up to no news. Still, there is always something going on.

Bus fares have gone up. I have taken to eating left-over ugali in the morning with bad tasting tea made from tea dust that I buy from a roving vendor because it’s a lot cheaper than what I would get from a regular store. I cannot miss breakfast because the label on my box of medicines says "2 after meals twice a day'. Lunch does not exist in my lifestyle. Dinner is on my mother, if it wasn't for her I would be in a spot of trouble.

Read more from Juliet Mararu here.

Here and now; the global food crisis

My mind has of late been engrossed in such matters as the Safaricom IPO, the Kenyan cabinet fiasco, and the elitism of Senator Obama. The world, meanwhile, is on the brink of a food disaster, such a major one that the very definition of hunger will soon be changed forever.

Images of malnourished children will no longer be the face of starvation. We will instead see food labelled with extraordinarily exorbitant prices, shortages that force even the wealthy into long queues for food and total anarchy as countries in different parts of the world spiral out of control as the hungry demand that they be sated.

Read more from Brian Mogaka here.