Hungry for answers: Part I
Global food crisis
Lynda Hurst
Feature Writer
It seemed to happen overnight.
One minute you were tucking into a T-bone and, if you thought about it at all, you probably figured there was food enough for everyone these days – a glut for the West, enough for the rest.
The next minute, angry food riots were breaking out in dozens of countries around the world, the scenes barely credible in the 21st century.
Hungry people desperate for bread or corn or rice, the staples of simple diets. But a shortfall in supplies has doubled and tripled the prices of these basics, shoving them far out of reach of the poorest people on Earth, the one billion who live on less than $1 a day.
The crisis was a shock, but not actually a surprise. Josette Sheeran, head of the World Food Program, likened it to a “silent tsunami” that had taken years to build.
But the unprecedented extent of it – and what that tells us about the world’s two solitudes, the rich and the poor – has stunned complacent North America. Here, obesity is the concern, not chronic malnutrition.
The paradox sticks in the throat.
