The Food Crisis

There's a global warming/climate change crisis.

I know that because NBC's peacock logo is green this week and Jay Leno is having "green" guests on his program to raise awareness. He's also wearing green ties.

But there's a more immediate crisis at hand, and it's one that is inexcusable.

The world faces a "silent tsunami" of soaring food prices.

The world faces a "silent tsunami" of soaring food prices and more must be done to help secure future supply, the UN food agency said Tuesday as experts gathered in London for a special summit on the problem.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said an extra 100 million people who previously did not require help could now not afford to buy food.

It said the soaring prices threatened anti-poverty and health improvement initiatives in the world's poorest nations and left a 755-million-dollar hole in the organisation's 2.9-billion-dollar budget.

"This is the new face of hunger -- the millions of people who were not in the urgent hunger category six months ago but now are," said WFP executive director Josette Sheeran in a statement.

"The response calls for large-scale, high-level action by the global community, focused on emergency and longer-term solutions."

Food prices have risen rapidly since the last quarter of 2007, blamed in varying degrees on rising populations, the use of biofuels to combat climate change, higher demand from developing countries, natural disasters and higher fuel prices.

Price hikes for staples such as rice -- which is now nearing the 1,000 dollars per tonne mark, more than double the cost in early March -- have led to riots and protests in a number of developing countries.

The food crisis isn't just hitting developing countries.

The two biggest U.S. warehouse retail chains are limiting how much rice customers can buy because of what Sam's Club, a division of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., called on Wednesday "recent supply and demand trends."

The broader chain of Wal-Mart stores has no plans to limit food purchases, however.

The move comes as U.S. rice futures hit a record high amid global food inflation, although one rice expert said the warehouse chains may be reacting less to any shortages than to stockpiling by restaurants and small stores.

Sam's Club followed Seattle-based Costco Wholesale Corp., which put limits in at least some stores on bulk rice purchases.

Here's more on the "hoarding epidemic" in the U.S.

Load up the pantry!

For 34 years, Patel Brothers has catered to the city’s South Asian households. Starting yesterday, though, the supermarket decided to restrict bulk purchases of some varieties of rice, limiting customers to two 20-pound bags.

Though shortages of the staple have led to hoarding in recent weeks around the globe, soaring prices have now sparked fears of a coming shortage in the U.S., leading to stockpiling by restaurants and small stores.

The Gates Foundation is responding to the food crisis.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will increase spending on farming projects by 50 percent this year as surging food prices threaten starvation and social unrest in poor countries.

The world's largest charitable foundation will give grants for agricultural programs totaling about $240 million this year, up from $160 million last year, said Rajiv Shah, the foundation's director of agricultural development and a former adviser to 2000 Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore.

``We are ramping up activity,'' Shah said in a telephone interview yesterday from Seattle, where the foundation is based. ``The focus will be on encouraging extra supply, which is one reason global food prices have climbed so high.''

New funding from Gates for agriculture in poverty-stricken countries comes as food prices soar around the world. The Gates programs aim to increase farm productivity, a task that has received less attention from larger aid institutions.

The proportion of global development aid devoted to agriculture is 4 percent, according to figures from the World Bank. The share of World Bank financing devoted to farming dropped to 12 percent in 2007, from 30 percent in 1980.

``The strength of the foundation is that because it is not constrained by politics, it can afford to take a longer view on food supply,'' said Ruth Levine, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, an aid research group in Washington. ``They are working on research and activities that have been very under-funded'' by other groups, she said.

What's sick is that at least some of this "silent tsunami" of hunger is of our making.

The increasing use of crops to produce biofuels has been criticized as contributing to food shortages. While Britain and the European Union have called for greater use of biofuels, Brown said Tuesday that "we need to look closely at the impact on food prices and the environment."

"If our U.K. review shows that we need to change our approach, we will also push for change in E.U. biofuels targets," he said.

So people are starving, but rest easy. You're using ethanol, and that's good. Right?

I wonder what Al Gore has to say about the food crisis. He certainly has played a role in it.

Read Vice President Al Gore's remarks from the Third Annual Farm Journal Conference, Tuesday, December 1, 1998:

My earliest lessons about the environment were about the prevention of soil erosion on our family farm. And what I learned then I believe now: we should not have an either-or, us-versus-them mentality when it comes to agriculture and the environment. We need both. And we need sustainable natural resource policies, incentive-based conservation efforts, and cutting-edge research to make sustainability a real possibility on the farm.

Over the past six years, we have launched and strengthened several programs that promote good farming while protecting the environment. For instance, through the Conservation Reserve Program and the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, we are forming partnerships with states and with growers to protect water quality, by setting aside land along rivers and streams. As of last month, more than 30 million acres were being protected. And last year, more than 8 million acres were protected under the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, although I was disappointed that Congress denied a $100 million increase requested by the President, and actually cut this innovative program by $25 million.

I was also proud to stand up for the ethanol tax exemption when it was under attack in the Congress -- at one point, supplying a tie-breaking vote in the Senate to save it. The more we can make this home-grown fuel a successful, widely-used product, the better-off our farmers and our environment will be.

Similarly, we need to address the challenge of global warming in ways that are market-based, and good for farmers. Certainly, no line of work is more vulnerable to changes in the weather than agriculture. And perhaps no part of our economy has more to gain from serious efforts to reduce global warming. Fortunately, part of the solution can be found right on the farm. We can reduce greenhouse gases through carbon sequestration -- the use of agriculture to suck the carbon out of the air and deposit it into the soil, enriching our farmland and making our air cleaner at the same time. That is why, last month in Buenos Aires, our negotiators won agreement with other nations on a comprehensive approach that we hope will lead to an international consensus on the role agricultural conservation can play in meeting this challenge. In fact, the Chicago Board of Trade is already exploring ways that farmers can profit from emissions trading, by selling carbon credits on the open market.

Yes, Gore bragged about his tie-breaking vote in the Senate when the the ethanol tax exemption was under attack.

"The more we can make this home-grown fuel a successful, widely-used product, the better-off our farmers and our environment will be."

I guess Gore didn't think about the consequences of pushing biofuels without taking into account its impact on the food supply.

STARVATION.