25,000 Indian farmers committed suicide in 2007 over debt, grain prices, says World Food Programme, as famine spreads to 36 countries and food-vs-fuel in spotlight
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said it will need $500 million in extra funding to solve a food crisis in 36 countries, triggered by a 75 percent rise in food prices since 2000. The organization said that new outbreaks of famine were occurring in cities, where food was widely available, but residents could not afford the increased prices.
The group said that biofuel production could make the situation worse by diverting production and increasing prices.
The group said that more than 25,000 Indian farmers committed suicide last year over food shortages and debts, where India was experiencing an all-time low rate of agricultural growth.
Meanwhile, an area of fertile soil the size of the Ukraine is disappearing each year because of drought, deforestation and climate change. The group also said that rising oil prices have caused fertilizer costs, which account for 25 percent of US agricultural expense, to rise more than 150 percent in the past five years.
An editorial by David Ridenour of the National Center for Public Policy Research, has identified biofuels as the root cause of higher retail food prices in the US, and “chronic hunger, malnutrition and starvation” in the poverty-stricken nations of Africa and Southeast Asia, has been widely syndicated in the United States.
The Raleigh News & Observer, the Sacramento Bee, the Fresno Bee, the Billings Gazette, the Washington Tri-City Herald, the Press of Atlantic City, the Bellingham Herald, the Anchorage Daily News, Hilton Head Island Packet, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the Oakland Tribune, the Alameda Times-Star and the Argus have run the story so far.
