Food prices at dangerous levels, says World Bank

[Zephie]

Source: BBC

The World Bank says food prices are at "dangerous levels" and have pushed 44 million more people into poverty since last June.

According to the latest edition of its Food Price Watch, prices rose by 15% in the four months between October 2010 and January this year. Food price inflation is felt disproportionately by the poor, who spend over half their income on food.

The Bank called on this week's G20 meeting to address the problem. The World Bank's president, Robert Zoellick, said in a statement: "Global food prices are rising to dangerous levels and threaten tens of millions of poor people around the world.

He also said that rising food prices were an aggravating factor of the unrest in the Middle East, although not its primary cause.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12474021

[phantom power]

1. I'm sure our continuing tax breaks for the rich will fix that any moment now.

[Andy823]

2. As with oil

The speculators are now turning to food in order to make huge profits! We need regulations to stop speculators from manipulating the price of things. Food and energy are things we all have to have to survive and allowing anyone to manipulate prices for their own greedy profits is insane!

[Lorien]

4. Amen! nt

[NickB79]

9. You can only speculate up the price of something if supplies are tight to begin with

While I agree with you that speculators are driving prices higher than they would otherwise be, the overall trend in food and fuel is upward even without their involvement. There have been very real declines in food production this past year due to dangerous climatic events.

As world populations grow, oil supplies decline, and our ability to grow food fails to keep pace due to climate change, what we are seeing is inevitable. Speculators are just icing on the cake of global collapse.

[SpiralHawk]

3. This is going to be THE story of 2011

Watch the RepubliCorp Mutant Seed Pushers & Commodity Speculators manipulate the bejabbers out of this to ensure that they get MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE.

[Xolodno]

5. French and Russian revolutions were started...

...because people had no food. That's perhaps one of the reasons why you won't ever see food subsidies here eliminated.

A hungry populace is dangerous one...the only nation that seems to be bucking the trend is North Korea....but then, the military gets its food rations. If they didn't, then the leadership would be toast.

[Javaman]

6. Start a garden...

I keep saying this. You will be thankful you did.

And for those of you in apartments, there is container gardening.

[Zephie]

7. I've been meaning to do container garden myself

seems like now would be a good time to start.

[fasttense]

8. I wonder if the very heavy people around here who voted

in crazy rabid RepubliCONS would vote another way if they couldn't afford to eat?

[lunatica]

11. There's one in every crowd. Stay classy with your fat bashing.

[lunatica]

10. A few thousand of these all over the world would fix it immediately

and no one would have to ever worry about droughts or freezes and it would be with green technology. It could be done very quickly. Vertical farming buildings. They could be built anywhere, even scattered around in crowded cities which could become self-sufficient.

[cutlassmama]

12. They have those in Asia. Seem to work pretty well.