AFP
From the rice paddies of Asia to the wheat fields of Australia, the soaring prices of food are breaking the budgets of the poor and raising the specters of hunger and unrest, experts warn.
A billion people in Asia are seriously affected by the surging costs of daily staples such as rice and bread, the director general of the Asian Development Bank, Rajat Nag, has said.
This includes roughly about 600 million people who live on just under a dollar a day, which is the definition of poverty, and another 400 million who are just above that borderline, he said.
Globally, the World Bank last month estimated that 33 countries were threatened with political and social unrest because of the skyrocketing costs of food and energy.
Across Asia, workers made a campaign against high food prices their May Day battle cry in marches through cities including the capitals of Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.
While the demonstrations were mainly peaceful, concern is growing over the potential for political instability and unrest if high prices persist.
Once people get hungry they start also getting quite desperate and take desperate measures, Damien Kingsbury of Australias Deakin University told Agence France-Presse.
Indias top farm scientist and architect of the 1960s Green Revolution, Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan, said India needs a second agricultural revolution to boost food supplies or face huge social turmoil.
Experts blame the high food prices on a confluence of factors, including increased demand from a changing diet in Asia, droughts, the rising use of crops for biofuels, and growing energy and fertilizer costs.
In Australia, which usually ranks second after the United States as a global wheat exporter, several years of drought cut harvests to just 13 million tons last year from an average of 22 million tons.
So while consumers are struggling, Australian farmers are not getting rich on the backs of the poor, said National Farmers Federation chief executive Ben Fargher.
Its been the worst drought in our history and many, many farming families are under significant financial and emotional stress and it will take our communities a long time to recover, he said.
And even in a relatively prosperous country like Australia, people are feeling the squeeze in the supermarkets, prompting the government to launch an inquiry into how to stem rising grocery prices.
Varying degrees
Around the rest of the region, the impact varies from traumatic to minimal.
In Afghanistan, millions are finding it problematic to meet their basic food needs with prices of the staple, wheat, doubling in some areas over recent months, the World Food Program (WFP) has said.
About 400 people demonstrated in eastern Afghanistan last month, blocking a key road linking the eastern town of Jalalabad to the capital Kabul, and demanding the government step in to control prices at food markets.
In Bangladesh, one of the worlds poorest nations, the prices of the main staple, rice, in the past year has doubled, and many low paid workers say they have been forced to make do with only one meal a day.
Last month about 20,000 garment workers rioted near the capital Dhaka for higher wages to cover food prices.
In Cambodia, soaring rice prices have forced the WFP to indefinitely suspend a program supplying free breakfasts to 450,000 poor Cambodian schoolchildren.
In China, a nation on its way to prosperity, Premier Wen Jiabao told a meeting of the State Council last month that high prices were the biggest problem in the domestic economy.
The inflation is led by food price rises, which especially hurt the poor, said Ma Qing, a Beijing-based analyst with the CEB monitor group. So the pressure [on maintaining social stability] is certainly quite large.
A billion people in Asia are seriously affected by the surging costs of daily staples such as rice and bread, the director general of the Asian Development Bank, Rajat Nag, has said.
This includes roughly about 600 million people who live on just under a dollar a day, which is the definition of poverty, and another 400 million who are just above that borderline, he said.
Globally, the World Bank last month estimated that 33 countries were threatened with political and social unrest because of the skyrocketing costs of food and energy.
Across Asia, workers made a campaign against high food prices their May Day battle cry in marches through cities including the capitals of Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.
While the demonstrations were mainly peaceful, concern is growing over the potential for political instability and unrest if high prices persist.
Once people get hungry they start also getting quite desperate and take desperate measures, Damien Kingsbury of Australias Deakin University told Agence France-Presse.
Indias top farm scientist and architect of the 1960s Green Revolution, Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan, said India needs a second agricultural revolution to boost food supplies or face huge social turmoil.
Experts blame the high food prices on a confluence of factors, including increased demand from a changing diet in Asia, droughts, the rising use of crops for biofuels, and growing energy and fertilizer costs.
In Australia, which usually ranks second after the United States as a global wheat exporter, several years of drought cut harvests to just 13 million tons last year from an average of 22 million tons.
So while consumers are struggling, Australian farmers are not getting rich on the backs of the poor, said National Farmers Federation chief executive Ben Fargher.
Its been the worst drought in our history and many, many farming families are under significant financial and emotional stress and it will take our communities a long time to recover, he said.
And even in a relatively prosperous country like Australia, people are feeling the squeeze in the supermarkets, prompting the government to launch an inquiry into how to stem rising grocery prices.
Varying degrees
Around the rest of the region, the impact varies from traumatic to minimal.
In Afghanistan, millions are finding it problematic to meet their basic food needs with prices of the staple, wheat, doubling in some areas over recent months, the World Food Program (WFP) has said.
About 400 people demonstrated in eastern Afghanistan last month, blocking a key road linking the eastern town of Jalalabad to the capital Kabul, and demanding the government step in to control prices at food markets.
In Bangladesh, one of the worlds poorest nations, the prices of the main staple, rice, in the past year has doubled, and many low paid workers say they have been forced to make do with only one meal a day.
Last month about 20,000 garment workers rioted near the capital Dhaka for higher wages to cover food prices.
In Cambodia, soaring rice prices have forced the WFP to indefinitely suspend a program supplying free breakfasts to 450,000 poor Cambodian schoolchildren.
In China, a nation on its way to prosperity, Premier Wen Jiabao told a meeting of the State Council last month that high prices were the biggest problem in the domestic economy.
The inflation is led by food price rises, which especially hurt the poor, said Ma Qing, a Beijing-based analyst with the CEB monitor group. So the pressure [on maintaining social stability] is certainly quite large.
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