Developing Nations Struggle to Cope with Rising Food Prices, Once Again The Poor Get Screwed

I live on the edge of town, with real farmland about a quarter mile away. The fields in one direction have been in alfalfa for a decade. Around the corner, in a second field, they’ve been growing tomatoes for about as long. A couple of months ago, I drove past and saw machinery in both places, and thought for a dark moment that it was another suburb going in–but no. With the housing market collapse, those days are gone. Instead, wheat sprouted and grew, hundreds of acres of it. The wheat is now tall enough that, when the wind blows through the fields, it looks like it should have its own inspirational soundtrack.

Why did they switch to wheat? Because the price has gone through the roof, which is having grim repercussions all over the world. From the International Herald Tribune:

Egypt’s government is struggling to contain a political crisis sparked by rising world food prices. Violent clashes have broken out at long lines for subsidized bread, and the president, worried about unrest, has ordered the army to step in to provide more.

The crisis in the world’s most populous Arab country and a top U.S. ally in the Mideast is a stark sign of how rising food prices are roiling poorer countries worldwide….

The issue in Egypt centers on subsidized versions of the flat, round bread that is a staple of people’s diets. Acute shortages of subsidized bread, which is sold at less than one U.S. cent a loaf, have caused long lines at distributors, prompting violence at some sites in poor neighborhoods in recent weeks.

At least seven people have died, according to police.

At first, one might hold Egypt’s kludgy government responsible, but as the article explains, economists place the blame “mainly on the rising cost of wheat on the world market, where prices have tripled in the last 10 months.” World food production has been a single integrated entity for a long time now, and it does respond to prices; hence, the ketchup tomatoes down the block from me made way for wheat. The problem is that it will still take months for that food to reach mouths in, say, Egypt, and hunger won’t wait that long.

Link [International Herald Tribune]

Photo Credit: Flickr user MrBologna