Thursday, April 17, 2008

Global Food Prices and Hunger

A critical issue that has arisen recently around the world (and in the United States, with some 35 million Americans going hungry--for information on this listen to Bill Moyer's PBS report on 4/11/08 Hunger in America). As Australia's rice production comes to a grinding halt, the effects are being felt around the world, most potently in Haiti. In Dakar, Senegal, the government dispersed rioters protesting skyrocketed food prices in the street, angry at their government's seeming inability to deal with pressing issues, distracted by the development of five star hotels and other such gentrifying processes. People are hungry, and subsequently angry around globe, in every continent. Despite all of this chaos and riotous outrage, Mark Lacey states that "most of the poorest of the poor suffer silently, too weak for activism or too busy raising the next generation of hungry."
So IMPACTers, what's to be done? Is it aid, investment and growth? Is it proactive NGO involvement and investment in human capital? Is it a concerted international effort to promote "stability" in the political realms of such conflict-embroiled nations as Haiti or Sudan?

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