'Our hungry planet: A time of wantBy MATT McKINNEY, Star Tribune
Last update: December 3, 2008 - 6:19 AM
As world hunger worsened this past year, some blamed countries that limited trading and began to hoard food. Others blamed free trade policies.
SAMPOAH VILLAGE, CAMBODIA
SAMPOAH VILLAGE, CAMBODIA
Some of the worst fallout of the world's food crisis this year hit villages like this one, a ramshackle collection of unsteady huts set next to rice fields.
Here, on a late summer day, Som Samuen stood in her doorway as she considered what had become a daily problem: How would she find dinner for herself and her 12-year-old son, who scampers through the fields on rainy days to hunt for crabs and minnows that dart through the shallow water of the rice paddies.
The washerwoman lays claim to a meager income on most days, and when the price of fish and rice shot up this year during a global food crisis, her tenuous hold on life began to fray. Some days, she and her son don't eat.
Cambodians have a phrase, "the hungry season," for the weeks in late summer that fall just before harvest. This year it hit like a hammer.
People here, some of the poorest in the world, simply couldn't keep up as food prices raced upward this spring, fueled by a food shortage, poor crops and commodity speculation in financial markets around the world.
Food riots broke out in some countries, and dozens of nations began restricting exports to ensure there would be enough to feed their own residents -- which sent food prices even higher in other countries.
Although the crisis has eased, the shocking specter of famine led to a renewed debate about the benefits and limits of free trade, particularly with some food companies and farmers in Minnesota and other developed nations enjoying some of their fattest profits on record.
Today, some 967 million people worldwide -- 44 million more than last year
-- exist in a state of hunger like Samuen and her son, unable to afford the higher prices for the 2,100 calories a day needed to nourish the body. And though food prices can be difficult to predict, the United Nations has forecast that the world by 2050 will need twice the amount of food produced today to feed an expected global population of 9 billion people.
Executives at Cargill and other international food companies say free trade is the only way to meet that demand. But a growing chorus of critics say that global trade policies and practices have left residents of developing nations more vulnerable to market gyrations and calamitous natural events, such as the prolonged drought in Australia that has helped drive up rice prices. Producing food locally is far more efficient than carting it around the world.
Stand at the edge of a Cambodian rice field and it's hard to imagine anyone would go hungry here. The neon green fields stretch to the horizon in some places.
But the need for more food in Cambodia has rarely been more urgent than it is today. About one in five Cambodians don't have enough to eat, some 2.8 million people. A full 44 percent of Cambodian children are malnourished, according to the World Health Organization. Rising food prices tipped 105 million people into poverty, a World Bank economist estimated, with about 210,000 Cambodians counted in that number.
Higher prices for their crops didn't benefit farmers in developing countries enough to counteract the extra burden on their budgets. That's largely because many Third World farmers don't grow enough to feed themselves and must supplement their diet with food bought at market, according to a World Bank analysis published this summer.
The Cambodian government urged farmers to plant more rice this year, hoping to increase the national crop from 6.38 million acres to 6.42 million acres, said Prak Thaveak Amida, a government agriculture minister. That might require more land though since yields have remained steady for a while, according to the International Rice Research Institute.'
Here, on a late summer day, Som Samuen stood in her doorway as she considered what had become a daily problem: How would she find dinner for herself and her 12-year-old son, who scampers through the fields on rainy days to hunt for crabs and minnows that dart through the shallow water of the rice paddies.
The washerwoman lays claim to a meager income on most days, and when the price of fish and rice shot up this year during a global food crisis, her tenuous hold on life began to fray. Some days, she and her son don't eat.
Cambodians have a phrase, "the hungry season," for the weeks in late summer that fall just before harvest. This year it hit like a hammer.
People here, some of the poorest in the world, simply couldn't keep up as food prices raced upward this spring, fueled by a food shortage, poor crops and commodity speculation in financial markets around the world.
Food riots broke out in some countries, and dozens of nations began restricting exports to ensure there would be enough to feed their own residents -- which sent food prices even higher in other countries.
Although the crisis has eased, the shocking specter of famine led to a renewed debate about the benefits and limits of free trade, particularly with some food companies and farmers in Minnesota and other developed nations enjoying some of their fattest profits on record.
Today, some 967 million people worldwide -- 44 million more than last year
-- exist in a state of hunger like Samuen and her son, unable to afford the higher prices for the 2,100 calories a day needed to nourish the body. And though food prices can be difficult to predict, the United Nations has forecast that the world by 2050 will need twice the amount of food produced today to feed an expected global population of 9 billion people.
Executives at Cargill and other international food companies say free trade is the only way to meet that demand. But a growing chorus of critics say that global trade policies and practices have left residents of developing nations more vulnerable to market gyrations and calamitous natural events, such as the prolonged drought in Australia that has helped drive up rice prices. Producing food locally is far more efficient than carting it around the world.
Stand at the edge of a Cambodian rice field and it's hard to imagine anyone would go hungry here. The neon green fields stretch to the horizon in some places.
But the need for more food in Cambodia has rarely been more urgent than it is today. About one in five Cambodians don't have enough to eat, some 2.8 million people. A full 44 percent of Cambodian children are malnourished, according to the World Health Organization. Rising food prices tipped 105 million people into poverty, a World Bank economist estimated, with about 210,000 Cambodians counted in that number.
Higher prices for their crops didn't benefit farmers in developing countries enough to counteract the extra burden on their budgets. That's largely because many Third World farmers don't grow enough to feed themselves and must supplement their diet with food bought at market, according to a World Bank analysis published this summer.
The Cambodian government urged farmers to plant more rice this year, hoping to increase the national crop from 6.38 million acres to 6.42 million acres, said Prak Thaveak Amida, a government agriculture minister. That might require more land though since yields have remained steady for a while, according to the International Rice Research Institute.'
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