Earth Equity News

Politics and Hunger. Editorial, NYTimes, June 9, 2008. "One might expect that food riots in Egypt and Haiti would convince the world's wealthy nations of the need to do more to feed the world's poorest. If not, maybe the threat of 100 million more people falling into poverty due to soaring food prices would spur them to help. Yet at last week's U.N. food summit, the world's more-developed nations proved, once again, that domestic politics trumps both humanitarian concerns and sound strategic calculations. Over the past year, the prices of grains and vegetable oils have nearly doubled. Rice has jumped by about half. The causes include soaring energy costs, drought in big agricultural producers, like Australia, and rising demand by a burgeoning middle class in China and India. But misguided mandates and subsidies in the U.S. and Europe to produce energy from crops are also playing an important role. The IMF estimated that biofuels -- mainly American corn ethanol -- accounted for almost half the growth in worldwide demand for major food crops last year. About a third of this country's corn crop will go to ethanol this year. Yet at the summit meeting in Rome, the Bush administration insisted that ethanol is playing a very small role in rising food prices and resisted calls to limit the drive to convert food into fuel. The U.S. wasn't alone."