Riots Emerge Over World Food Shortages
The head of the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has reported several food riots that have struck impoverished countries around the world, and they believe shortages and high food prices could fan the flames.
Violent protests in a handful of poor countries are due to a combination of high oil and fuel prices, rising demand for food in a wealthier Asia, the use of farmland and crops for biofuels, bad weather and speculation on futures markets that have pushed up food prices.
“There is a growing risk of social instability in countries where families spent more than half their income on food,” said Jacques Diouf, director general of the Rome-based FAO.
Diouf said the problem is very serious around the world due to severe price rises, and riots have been reported in Egypt, Cameroon, Haiti and Burkina Faso.
Unions in the West African nation of Burkina Faso called a general strike over soaring food and fuel costs and five people have been killed in a week of demonstrations in Haiti over high food prices in the poorest country in the Americas.
"There is a risk that this unrest will spread in countries where 50 to 60 percent of income goes to food," Diouf said.
Diouf said world cereal stocks were enough to meet demand for eight to 12 weeks, while grain supplies were at their lowest since the 1980s.
"This is due to higher demand from countries like India and China, where GDP grows at 8-10 percent and the increase in income is going to food," Diouf said after meeting India’s farm minister, Sharad Pawar.
Diouf is advising governments to invest in irrigation, storage facilities and rural infrastructure and increase productivity to meet the challenge of food scarcity.
According to United Nations records, global food prices rose 35 percent in the year to the end of January, accelerating an upturn that began, gently at first, in 2002.
Prices have risen 65 percent since then. According to the FAO’s world food index, dairy prices rose nearly 80 percent and grain 42 percent in 2007 alone.
Some of the world’s more populous countries have felt the impact of higher prices after rice joined a wider rally that has buoyed other grains like wheat and corn.
Thailand, the world’s biggest rice exporter, have doubled rice prices since the start of this year after India heavily restricted and then banned the export of non-basmati rice to ensure it had enough to feed its people.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of Manila unveiled a series of measures to boost rice production as troops armed with M-16 rifles supervised the sale of subsidized grain and the government threatened to jail hoarders for life.
Security personnel were recently deployed to guard warehouses in Pakistan.
According to a recent FAO report, civil unrest over food and fuel prices have been reported in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal over the last several weeks.
In India, wholesale price inflation hit 7 percent in March, the highest in more than three years. This creates a real problem for the ruling coalition in Asia’s third-largest economy with elections for local and national assemblies soon to happen.
Price pressures, driven by foodstuffs, had been building for several weeks and the government has stepped in with a string of duty cuts and export restrictions.
Analysts say fiscal steps were unlikely to roll back prices, and Indian leaders have said ensuring food security by boosting domestic production was a priority.
Diouf said he welcomes economic growth in India and China and hopes they will invest in agriculture because the two countries account for 2.2 billion people out of 6 billion.
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