Economic Inequality -- Food Crisis
Rising Costs - A Global Perspective
As food and energy costs have been steadily rising this year, all nations are starting to feel the burden of higher costs. However, the problem is more severe in poorer countries, particularly the Philippines and Panama, whose citizens are eating significantly less.
The rising food prices can be explained by several trends:
- Increasing demand and meat consumption, particularly from hundreds of millions of newly rich in the rapidly growing economies of Asia
- Food is competing with biofuels
- Energy costs have been rising
The Facts
- There are 923 million undernourished people in the world according to UN studies. The largest increases in the hungry have occurred in Asia and in sub-Sahara Africa.
- The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) speculates that rising prices account for 75 million of the undernourished.
- A recent BBC global study (October 2008) found that forty-three percent of people in twenty-six countries have had to alter their diets.
Source: BBC News global reports
HOW YOU CAN HELP:
Volunteer at the Emergency Shelter of the Fox Valley
www.emergencyshelterfoxvalley.org
LU contact: Adrienne Gallagher,
gallagad@lawrence.edu
