Financial Meltdown Escalates Global Food Crisis

As shock waves from the credit crisis began to spread around the world last month, China scrambled to protect itself. Among the most extreme measures it took was to impose new export taxes to keep critical supplies such as grains and fertilizer from leaving the country.

About 5,700 miles away, in Nairobi, farmer Stephen Muchiri is suffering the consequences.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[munki]

This will raise global food prices...
American farms could get a lift...

[JulieDole]

I'm hoping we listen to people like author Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, etc) - I listened to him on yesterday's Fresh Air (NPR, and he had some brilliant things to say about improving large scale agriculture.

The other thing to note is: that there seems to be a kind of trading freeze in food, similar to the credit freeze. For ex.: There is the same total amount of rice as before this year's price hike, but some of the rice producing countries kept their rice off the market, fearing they would need it at home. Since less "tradable" rice was in the market, and demand stayed the same, the price went up.

Sustainable practice (even large scale ones) can help keep the price of food down as it minimizes petroleum products (fertilizer & herbicides.) Give Pollan a listen on fresh Air - he had some great ideas, incl some very specific suggestions.

[Oldbuck]

The next shortage in the world will be food and we in the United States have done what we have done like in all other industries have destroyed our food production by importing more and more farm products. Then we wonder why our food is not safe. When we have to go back to producing more with our domestic industry we will up creek.

[tc399]

Yet the population continues to increase.

[terramartom]

Bailing out the rich. Why would anyone be shocked by this from the Republican Party? Their moto and goal is wealth through greed! Look what the Republican party have created with McCain and Palin, intolerance, ignorance, hate, fear, racism, divisiveness and bigotry.

[edva]

i am so shocked that Paulsons bail out plan focused on giving more money to the rich but did nothing for the poor and the hungry - must have just been an oversight. I'm sure they're on his mind.

[TrooAmerican]

We need to overproduce food in all continents. Humanity is not equal, but has equal responsibility to take care of others. Nature is not equal. But hunger is equally devastating to any people that have it.

If we overproduce, we'll keep food prices rock bottom low and it will keep a major source of cost of living for all Americans and modern countries as well as poor and middle income countries able to feed their people and donations much less costly as charitable contributions to places like city missions for the poor and soup kitchens to far away poor nations under Drought.
For farmers who are trying to make big bucks, they should do it for the love of farming not profiteering and just be part of a system that pays them a good salary for farming per acre.

[dgscol]

how much food does China export to Africa? I thought that China primarily imports food from Africa.

This piece is to convince you to leave your 401(k) in investment vehicles linked to China, so they can continue to reap large profits.

[dessertsfirst]

Maybe the US better stop paying our farmers NOT to grow wheat etc. If we start growing our own food again, so that we can begin to be self sufficient (and stop importing food from China, South America and Japan, and who knows where else), perhaps we could also help out the countries of the world who are hungry by shipping food to them, besides taking care of our own people. And while we are at it, let's bring back our factories, and our technical jobs being outsourced to India... we wouldn't have near the security problems....

[francoise]

Honestly, most of us are too busy taking care of ourselves and our family to give more than a thought to the poorest ones in faraway failed countries.

And when we give a thought, we feel better because of their worse plight.

Such is human nature, even if it's very politically incorrect to voice it aloud.