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May 01, 2008
Pricing People Out of the Food Market
Posted by Jack
"The tiny country of Burkina Faso was brought to the edge of chaos by food riots. You probably didn't notice. In Morocco, 34 were sentenced to prison for participating in food riots. In Yemen at least a dozen have died in violent food riots.
A month ago, Indonesia had to call out federal troops in order to quell protests against the rising cost of basic food items. Last November food riots in Mauritania claimed the life of an 18-year old boy. The Indian state of Bengal also saw massive food riots. In Italy, residents are protesting the rising cost of pasta.
"This is the new face of hunger. There is food on the shelves, but people are priced out of the market."
Disaster food relief also hit: USAID officials said that a 41 percent surge in prices for wheat, corn, rice and other cereals over the past six months has generated a $120 million budget shortfall that will force the agency to reduce emergency operations. That deficit is projected to rise to $200 million by year's end.
"The state of food banks, I think, in America -- and in Los Angeles in particular -- is really in dismal shape," said H. Eric Schockman, president of Mazon, a Los Angeles nonprofit group that funds hunger relief agencies in the U.S. and abroad. "Our emergency food system has really been unraveled over the last few years."
In California, the drop has been precipitous. Since 2002, donations of cheese, canned corn and beans, all longtime food bank staples, have been cut by more than half, from nearly 100 million pounds a year to 40 million. The difference, say officials from the California Assn. of Food Banks, translates into 44.7 million fewer meals for hungry people around the state. (Source Los Angeles Times and News Bits)
Locally rice has gone up 70% and some stores have limited the purchase to one bag per customer. And this from the Hong Kong Standard..."This week's 5 percent jump takes prices to nearly three times their level at the start of the year, intensifying fears of social unrest in Asia as millions of the region's poor find themselves struggling to pay for staple goods.
The surging price of fuel and food, which some analysts attribute to panic buying by both consumers and governments rather than a dire shortage of supply, has so far sparked riots in Africa and Haiti, but not Asia.
Having started with India's imposition of export curbs to protect domestic supplies last year, Brazil became the latest country on Wednesday to suspend rice exports. The crisis was also felt in the United States this week.
The Philippines, a country of more than 90 million people, is the world's largest rice importer. And the United Nations World Food Program warned that rising food prices mean Asia's poorest risk a "silent famine."
Posted by Post Scripts at May 1, 2008 08:38 AM
Comments
Well the important thing is that once again politicians took it upon themselves to try and "fix" the obvious failures in the free market; and as a result creates a much bigger problem.
maybe the environmentalists who helped pushed for this legislation should let go of a tree and go hug a starving child.
It seems that only 2 things were achieved through this legislation:
1. A pay off for certain farmers and the politicians they vote for.
2. And liberals got to "feel" good about "trying hard" to do something positive for the environment.
Unfortunately politicians (both Democrat AND Republican) decided to ignore what history and a little analysis has taught us time and time again.
The unintended negative consequences of messing with the free market tend to supered what ever "noble" intension's were the reasoning behind its approval.
And secondly, liberals really don't care about results. They would rather just "feel good" about trying. Even if that means that poor people around the world starve, or are tortured , or murdered and raped, etc. etc. After all, if our policy results in thousands of victims, well hell, thats just one more reason to throw a Green Day concert, and come up with another "solution" which will inevitably look allot like the one they have just implemented.
Good Job, collectivists, environmentalists, meddling politicians (Democrat and Republican). You implemented a policy which us conservatives and libertarians suggested you shouldn't, and the end result was exactly what we said would happen.
If only we had sweetened our argument with a little "Extract of Obama Hope", maybe we could have gotten through to you.
Posted by: Nick Freitas at May 1, 2008 03:49 PM