On Apr 29, 7:28=A0pm, blue_collar_worker <GeraldCNew...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
> Already, there is no rice in many cities. =A0It does not matter who is
> elected as the US President because the global food shortages due to
> overpopulation are here today. =A0Every month 6 million new mouths are
> added to this planet. =A0In 5,000 years the population reached 2.5
> billion, but in the last 40 years this has more than doubled to 6.5
> billion. =A0It continues to grow at an exponential rate and will reach
> 9.5 billion by 2050. =A0Global famine is already here as the below
> re****t shows.
>
> From India to Africa to North Korea to Pakistan and even in New York
> City, higher grain prices, fertilizer shortages and rising energy
> costs are combining to spell hunger for millions in what is being
> characterized as a global "silent famine."
>
> Global food prices, based on United Nations records, rose 35 percent
> in the last year, escalating a trend that began in 2002. Since then,
> prices have risen 65 percent.
>
> Last year, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's
> world food index, dairy prices rose nearly 80 percent and grain 42
> percent.
>
> "This is the new face of hunger," said Josetta Sheeran, director of
> the World Food Program, launching an appeal for an extra $500 million
> so it could continue supplying food aid to 73 million hungry people
> this year. "People are simply being priced out of food markets. ... We
> have never before had a situation where aggressive rises in food
> prices keep pricing our operations out of our reach."
>
> The WFP launched a public appeal weeks ago because the price of the
> food it buys to feed some of the world's poorest people had risen by
> 55 percent since last June. By the time the appeal began last week,
> prices had risen a further 20 percent. That means WFP needs $700
> million to bridge the gap between last year's budget and this year's
> prices. The numbers are expected to continue to rise.
>
> The crisis is widespread and the result of numerous causes =96 a kind of
> "perfect storm" leading to panic in many places:
>
> In Thailand, farmers are sleeping in their fields because thieves are
> stealing rice, now worth $600 a ton, right out of the paddies.
>
> Four people were killed in Egypt in riots over subsidized flour that
> was being sold for profit on the black market.
>
> There have been food riots in Morocco, Senegal and Cameroon.
>
> Mexico's government is considering lifting a ban on genetically
> modified crops, to allow its farmers to compete with the United
> States.
>
> Argentina, Kazakhstan and China have imposed restrictions to limit
> grain ex****ts and keep more of their food at home.
>
> Vietnam and India, both major rice ex****ters, have announced further
> restrictions on overseas sales.
>
> Violent food protests hit Burkina Faso in February.
>
> Protesters rallied in Indonesia recently, and media re****ted deaths by
> starvation.
>
> In the Philippines, fast-food chains were urged to cut rice ****tions
> to counter a surge in prices.
>
> Millions of people in India face starvation after a plague of rats
> overruns a region, as they do cyclically every 50 years.
>
> Officials in Bangladesh warn of an emerging "silent famine" that
> threatens to ravage the region.
> According to some experts, the worst damage is being done by
> government mandates and subsidies for "biofuels" that supposedly
> reduce carbon dioxide emissions and fight climate change. Thirty
> percent of this year's U.S. grain harvest will go to ethanol
> distilleries. The European Union, meanwhile, has set a goal of 10
> percent bio-fuels for all trans****tation needs by 2010.
>
> "A huge amount of the world's farmland is being diverted to feed cars,
> not people," writes Gwynne Dyer, a London-based independent
> journalist.
>
> He notes that in six of the past seven years the human race has
> consumed more grain than it grew. World grain reserves last year were
> only 57 days, down from 180 days a decade ago.
>
> One in four bushels of corn from this year's U.S. crop will be
> diverted to make ethanol, according to estimates.
>
> "Turning food into fuel for cars is a major mistake on many fronts,"
> said Janet Larsen, director of research at the Earth Policy Institute,
> an environmental group based in Wa****ngton. "One, we're already seeing
> higher food prices in the American supermarket. Two, perhaps more
> serious from a global perspective, we're seeing higher food prices in
> developing countries where it's escalated as far as people rioting in
> the streets."
>
> Palm oil is also at record prices because of biofuel demands. This has
> created shortages in Indonesia and Malaysia, where it is a staple.
>
> Nevertheless, despite the recognition that the biofuels industry is
> adding to a global food crisis, the ethanol industry is popular in the
> U.S. where farmers enjoy subsidies for the corn crops.
>
> Another contributing factor to the crisis is the demand for more meat
> in an increasingly prosperous Asia. More grain is used to feed the
> livestock than is required to feed humans directly in a traditional
> grain-based diet.
>
> Bad weather is another problem driving the world's wheat stocks to a
> 30-year low =96 along with regional droughts and a declining dollar.
>
> "This is an additional setback for the world economy, at a time when
> we are already going through major turbulence," Angel Gurria, head of
> the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, told
> Reuters. "But the biggest drama is the impact of higher food prices on
> the poor."
>
> According to the organization, as well as the U.N., the price of corn
> could rise 27 percent in the next decade.
>
> John Bruton, the European Union's ambassador to the U.S., predicts the
> current trend is the beginning of a 10-15 year rise in food costs
> worldwide.
>
> The rodent plague in India occurs about every half century following
> the heavy flowering of a local species of bamboo, providing the
> rodents with a feast of high-protein foliage. Once the rats have
> ravaged the bamboo, they turn on the crops, consuming hundreds of tons
> of rice and corn supplies.
>
> Survivors of the previous mautam, which heralded widespread famine in
> 1958, say they remember areas of paddy fields the size of four soccer
> fields being devastated overnight.
>
> In Africa, rats are seen as part of the answer to the food shortage.
> According to Africa News, Karamojongs have resorted to hunting wild
> rats for survival as famine strikes the area.
>
> Supplies of fertilizer are extremely tight on the worldwide market,
> contributing to a potential disaster scenario. The Scotsman re****ts
> there are virtually no stocks of ammonium nitrate in the United
> Kingdom.
>
> Global nitrogen is currently in deficit, a situation that is unlikely
> to change for at least three years, the paper re****ts.
>
> South Koreans are speculating, as they do annually, on how many North
> Koreans will starve to death before the fall harvest. But this year
> promises to be worse than usual.
>
> Severe crop failure in the North and surging global prices for food
> will mean millions of hungry Koreans.
>
> Roughly a third of children and mothers are malnourished, according to
> a recent U.N. study. The average 8-year-old in the North is 7 inches
> shorter and 20 pounds lighter than a South Korean child of the same
> age.
>
> Floods last August ruined part of the main yearly harvest, creating a
> 25-percent shortfall in the food supply and putting 6 million people
> in need, according to the U.N. World Food Program.
>
> Yesterday, the Hong Kong government tried to put a stop to panic-
> buying of rice in the city of 6.9 million as fears mounted over
> escalating prices and a global rice shortage. Shop shelves were being
> cleared of rice stocks as Hong Kong people reacted to news that the
> price of rice im****ted from Thailand had shot up by almost a third in
> the past week, according to agency re****ts.
>
> Global food prices are even hitting home in New York City, according
> to a re****t in the Daily News. Food pantries and soup kitchens in the
> city are desperately low on staples for the area's poor and homeless.
>
> The Food Bank for New York City, which supplies food to 1,000 agencies
> and 1.3 million people, calls it the worst problem since its founding
> 25 years ago.
>
> Last year, the Food Bank received 17 million pounds of food through
> the Emergency Food Assistance Program, less than half of the 35
> million pounds it received in 2002. And donations from individuals and
> cor****ations are also down about 50 percent, according to the re****t.
>
> High gas prices, increased food production costs and a move to foreign
> production of American food are contributing to the problem.
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