Now millions more are faced with starvation. Many were already precariously balanced between subsistence and famine. Global growth in demand for comestibles at a time supply is contracting has hurt Third World populations the most. Finally, rising standards of living in China and India have led to an increased demand for food. The growing demand for oil has led agribusinesses to divert land use to ethanol production, reducing the supply of corn for human and livestock consumption. For example, heavy rains last summer left tens of thousands of acres of farmland flooded in north Korea. Increased emission of greenhouse gasses has created droughts, desertification, and extreme weather, the latter responsible for considerable crop damage.
Downstream, rising oil prices increase the costs of transporting foodstuffs to market. The industrialization of China and India has created growing demand for oil, putting upward pressure on the price of agricultural inputs based on petroleum, from fuel to run farm machinery, to fertilizers and pesticides. The causes of rising food prices are manifold and interconnected. The head of the CIA worries that growing desperation and poverty in the world will degrade “the US security environment.” Food riots have become too frequent to ignore.
Government leaders, corporate board members, the owners of large corporations, are concerned – not because billions are hungry, but because the hunger of billions threatens to destabilize their rule. If that weren’t enough, rising prices are pushing food beyond the reach of numberless more. Some 18,000 children die every day from malnutrition.
One billion people in the world – one-sixth of humanity – have too little to eat.
0 kommentar(er)
