In an “unforeseen and unprecedented” shift, the world food supply is dwindling rapidly and food prices are soaring to historic levels, the top food and agriculture official of the United Nations warned Monday.
The risks of food riots and malnutrition will surge in the next two years as the global supply of grain comes under more pressure than at any time in 50 years, according to one of the world’s leading agricultural researchers.
The pressures in global food markets have grown so intense that, for the first time in its history, the World Food Programme is finding it hard to procure supplies of essential commodities, senior officials at the United Nations body said yesterday.
The world’s rush to embrace biofuels is causing a spike in the price of corn and other crops and could worsen water shortages and force poor communities off their land, a U.N. official said Wednesday.
Nuclear reactors across the Southeast could be forced to throttle back or temporarily shut down later this year because drought is drying up the rivers and lakes that supply power plants with the awesome amounts of cooling water they need to operate.
Consumers all over the world can expect to pay more for food in coming years. The Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture expects prices to rise another 4 percent this year. If the projected increase for 2008 proves true, consumers will see the highest increase in food prices since 1990.
Food prices are - globally - at a record high. And they are here to stay. Record food prices are unlikely to ease in the foreseeable future, as high grain demand and low stocks mean the world remains vulnerable to possible food shocks.
To avert a food crisis facing Venezuela, the Latin American nation imported 74,000 tons of food items. The state is tapping the government-owned oil corporation Petroleos de Venezuela to oversee the distribution of the food import across Venezuela.
2007 was a breakout year for agricultural commodities like corn, wheat, and soy. According to this piece on Market Oracle, a key indicator of the U.S. commodities market rose 31 percent last year—compared to single-digit growth in the greater domestic economy.
Many scientists agree. A vast flotilla of industrial trawlers from the European Union, China, Russia and elsewhere, together with an abundance of local boats, have so thoroughly scoured northwest Africa’s ocean floor that major fish populations are collapsing.