A world of hunger

FROM the villages of Bangladesh to the slums of Haiti, millions of the world's poorest people have been cast into even greater penury by sharply rising food prices. At a stroke, this swift and devastating change in the global economy - which has gone almost unnoticed in the rich world - has inflicted immense suffering.

Rice is the staple diet in these countries and its price has doubled in a year. If you happen to live in Dakar or Port-au-Prince, this effectively means your already meagre standard of living has suddenly been cut in half. Riots and demonstrations have been the result in these countries and more than a dozen others in the past month.
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Why has this happened? Rising food prices stem from crucial structural changes in the world economy. Over the past year, global demand for foodstuffs has risen sharply, caused largely by the rapid emergence of middle-class consumers in China and India.

Taken together, these giant countries have a new middle class of about 600 million - a figure approaching the combined populations of the US and Western Europe.

Then there is the surge in Western demand for biofuels as alarm at climate change has driven policy to cut fossil fuel emissions.

The consequences for the world's poor are brutal: we drive, they starve. The mass diversion of grain harvests into ethanol plants for fuel is reaching its political and moral limits.

The UN says it takes 232 kilograms of corn to fill a 50-litre car tank with ethanol. That is enough to feed a child for a year. Last week, the UN predicted "massacres" unless the biofuel policy is halted.
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