Rising Food Prices Is Being Watched Worldwide

Food prices are set to become an increasingly politicial issue. Photo: HEATHCLIFF O'MALLEY

New Age Of Intervention In Food Prices -- The Telegraph

Worries over food prices are gathering pace and triggering alarm among politicians across the world. For there is nothing more likely to bring down a government than ignoring starving citizens.

In India, people are upset about onions. Expensive cooking oil is causing hoarding in China, a practice banned by the government. Meanwhile, flour and bread are the main source of riots in Algeria and now Jordan.

Worries over food prices are gathering pace and triggering alarm among politicians across the world. For there is nothing more likely to bring down a government than ignoring starving citizens, as Marie Antoinette found to her cost during the French Revolution and the Tunisian ruler found this week when he was toppled by rioting protestors.

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My Comment: Living in Canada has desensitized me to the impact that high food prices can have on other countries. It is when I travel abroad that this disparity always hits me right in the face .... because you just cannot avoid people that who you know who are hungry.

On my many trips to China I was always exposed to this suffering .... especially among my translators. Fortunately .... this has changed significantly since my first visits in the 1980s. But while this rush to accept a Western style of diet has brought many gains to the Chinese people, it has also brought pressures on other countries who are not as fortunate as China.

Will there ever be a balance .... this is something that I do not know. I can only hope that with time, better agricultural policies in these developing countries will take hold, and farmers be given the freedom to do what they know best .... which is to farm. But this debate is rapidly becoming ideological .... and if there is one thing that I am certain about, it is that ideology has never been successful in feeding people.