FAO Director-General - Haitian Food Riots Only The Beginning - Unrest Possible Throughout 3rd World

[hatrack]

The Haitian capital was paralysed by food riots yesterday as the United Nations gave warning that soaring food prices were spurring unrest around the world.

Rioters returned to the streets in Port-au-Prince a day after UN peacekeepers had to fire rubber bullets to prevent hungry Haitians from storming the presidential palace. Columns of thick smoke rose over the city as demonstrators, demanding that the government take action over the rising price of foodstuffs such as rice, beans and oil, set fire to barricades made from tires. Protesters compared the burning hunger in their stomachs to digesting bleach or battery acid.

EDIT

The UN says that global food prices have risen 65 per cent since 2002, with grain rising 42 per cent and dairy products 80 per cent in 2007 alone. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a recent report that Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal have all seen unrest in recent weeks linked to food and fuel prices. "There is a risk that this unrest will spread in countries where 50 to 60 per cent of income goes to food," Jacques Diouf, the FAO director-general, said yesterday in Delhi.

John Holmes, the top UN humanitarian official, gave warning this week of a "perfect storm" of rising food and fuel prices and the negative effects of climate change. "Current food price trends are likely to increase sharply both the incidence and depth of food insecurity," he told a conference in Dubai. His comments followed two days of rioting in Egypt, where prices of many staples have doubled in the past year, and as UN workers in Jordan staged a day-long strike for pay rises because of a 50 per cent rise in prices there.

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http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=45d85b6c-b1cf-4387-9f9f-63cb4520c164

[LynzM]

1. I don't even know what to say about this...

It's so awful to me to think about the fact that people, millions of them, are starving in this world, and it's all about money and resources. I can't possibly see how this is going to get better, either, only worse as the climate gets worse and crops are harder to grow and more expensive to transport :(

[gulfcoastliberal]

2. The Malthusian result of our wildly (human) overpopulated world manifesting.

Gee, maybe there isn't enough water, food, oil, etc because there are way too many people? I'm afraid that the root cause of all this environmental destruction isn't being addressed. I guess we've decided to let nature handle it her way.

[GliderGuider]

3. You realize that the fact that we've finally started admitting this

means that the process is essentially complete? It's been too late for this realization for at least the last 100 years.

[gulfcoastliberal]

4. Yeap.

When the alien archaeologists excavate the layers of plastic, beer cans, and hummers they'll figure out why we're gone.