Green Options

Without an additional £100m a year being spent on crop research in Britain, there could be food riots in developing countries as the growing world population fails to find enough affordable food.

Kenya’s government has decided to allow free import and sales of maize to ensure there are enough supplies to get the drought and violence hit country through the next few months.

© Patrick Laverdant | Dreamstime.com

Consumers in the United States struggle with prices rising as much as forty percent for grains and twenty-five percent for eggs, eighty percent for dairy and double-digit increases for other staples. The situation has led to a record number of individuals seeking assistance from food banks nationwide. Globally, however, the crisis has taken on life and death consequences.

As prices have risen, fifty and even three hundred percent in areas like Sierra Leone, these areas have experienced food riots. The growing lists of nations that have had food price protests and riots in the last six months includes Mexico, Haiti, Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Cameroon, Yemen, Indonesia, Uzbekistan and Pakistan.

The situation resulted from what some experts call “a perfect storm” of factors combined; oil prices, the use of farmland for ethanol instead of food, Australia’s drought, crop disease, climate change, U.S. economy, and the growth of a more meat-intensive diet worldwide.