Monday, May 12, 2008
Surging food prices bite across Asia
=46rom the rice paddies of Asia to the wheat fields of Australia, the
soaring prices of food are breaking the budgets of the poor and
raising the specters of hunger and unrest, experts warn.
A billion people in Asia are seriously affected by the surging costs
of daily staples such as rice and bread, the director general of the
Asian Development Bank, Rajat Nag, has said.
=93This includes roughly about 600 million people who live on just under
a dollar a day, which is the definition of poverty, and another 400
million who are just above that borderline,=94 he said.
Globally, the World Bank last month estimated that 33 countries were
threatened with political and social unrest because of the
skyrocketing costs of food and energy.
Across Asia, workers made a campaign against high food prices their
May Day battle cry in marches through cities including the capitals of
Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.
While the demonstrations were mainly peaceful, concern is growing over
the potential for political instability and unrest if high prices
persist.
=93Once people get hungry they start also getting quite desperate and
take desperate measures,=94 Damien Kingsbury of Australia=92s Deakin
University told Agence France-Presse.
India=92s top farm scientist and architect of the 1960s =93Green
Revolution,=94 Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan, said India needs a
second agricultural revolution to boost food supplies or face huge
social turmoil.
Experts blame the high food prices on a confluence of factors,
including increased demand from a changing diet in Asia, droughts, the
rising use of crops for biofuels, and growing energy and fertilizer
costs.
In Australia, which usually ranks second after the United States as a
global wheat exporter, several years of drought cut harvests to just
13 million tons last year from an average of 22 million tons.
So while consumers are struggling, Australian farmers are not getting
rich on the backs of the poor, said National Farmers Federation chief
executive Ben Fargher.
=93It=92s been the worst drought in our history and many, many farming
families are under significant financial and emotional stress and it
will take our communities a long time to recover,=94 he said.
And even in a relatively prosperous country like Australia, people are
feeling the squeeze in the supermarkets, prompting the government to
launch an inquiry into how to stem rising grocery prices.
Varying degrees
Around the rest of the region, the impact varies from traumatic to
minimal.
In Afghanistan, millions are finding it =93problematic=94 to meet their
basic food needs with prices of the staple, wheat, doubling in some
areas over recent months, the World Food Program (WFP) has said.
About 400 people demonstrated in eastern Afghanistan last month,
blocking a key road linking the eastern town of Jalalabad to the
capital Kabul, and demanding the government step in to control prices
at food markets.
In Bangladesh, one of the world=92s poorest nations, the prices of the
main staple, rice, in the past year has doubled, and many low paid
workers say they have been forced to make do with only one meal a
day.
Last month about 20,000 garment workers rioted near the capital Dhaka
for higher wages to cover food prices.
In Cambodia, soaring rice prices have forced the WFP to indefinitely
suspend a program supplying free breakfasts to 450,000 poor Cambodian
schoolchildren.
In China, a nation on its way to prosperity, Premier Wen Jiabao told a
meeting of the State Council last month that high prices were the
biggest problem in the domestic
economy.
=93The inflation is led by food price rises, which especially hurt the
poor,=94 said Ma Qing, a Beijing-based analyst with the CEB monitor
group. =93So the pressure [on maintaining social stability] is certainly
quite large.=94
-- AFP
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