Food crisis coming back!
From Fazle Rashid | Tuesday, 3 March 2009
NEW YORK, March 2: A World Bank (WB) agriculture adviser said yesterday that food crisis has not gone away, in fact it is coming back. He said the corn price now is at least 40 per cent more than what it was during 2003-06 and price of rice is 100 per cent higher than what it was during the same period.
A key concern continued to be the export bans that some big sellers of agriculture commodities have imposed in the past 18 months. Vietnam, the world's second biggest exporter of rice has slapped a four-month ban on export of rice, a reputed paper said today.
The US department of agriculture ( USDA ) after its annual meeting said food commodities prices this year will remain above historical levels hitting poor countries for third year in a trot. This is going to be a tough year for poor countries an analysts predicted The climbing price will trigger a global food crisis.
USDA said the prospect of higher prices is a particular concern for developing countries. The number of hungry people in the world last year jumped to 1.0 billion. The long term impact of food crisis is to push countries towards more protectionist food policies. Many countries with surplus arable lands but with no means of investment are leasing out lands to food deficit countries. Many Arab nations are taking vast areas of lands on lease for which they will pay rent. The Arab nations will make huge investments for modern agriculture devices to accelerate production.
On the other side of the Atlantic, European Union (EU) vowed to conquer the financial crisis and the economic recession gripping their economies by extending financial help to struggling east European nations on a country by country basic by keeping intact the rules governing the single European market. The Southeast Asian nations who are already grouped under ASEAN are gearing up for creating a economic group modeled on the line of European Union (EU) as the economic meltdown slows their export driven economies.
Leaders from 10-member ASEAN gathered in Thailand for their annual meeting and signed trade deals and agreements to form an integrated economic community without a currency by 2015, the New York Times (NYT) reported today using a Bloomberg news report. Asian nations now agree that their economies depend more on demand in US and other Western countries. Exports from China, South Korea and Taiwan have fallen by 50 per cent.
A key concern continued to be the export bans that some big sellers of agriculture commodities have imposed in the past 18 months. Vietnam, the world's second biggest exporter of rice has slapped a four-month ban on export of rice, a reputed paper said today.
The US department of agriculture ( USDA ) after its annual meeting said food commodities prices this year will remain above historical levels hitting poor countries for third year in a trot. This is going to be a tough year for poor countries an analysts predicted The climbing price will trigger a global food crisis.
USDA said the prospect of higher prices is a particular concern for developing countries. The number of hungry people in the world last year jumped to 1.0 billion. The long term impact of food crisis is to push countries towards more protectionist food policies. Many countries with surplus arable lands but with no means of investment are leasing out lands to food deficit countries. Many Arab nations are taking vast areas of lands on lease for which they will pay rent. The Arab nations will make huge investments for modern agriculture devices to accelerate production.
On the other side of the Atlantic, European Union (EU) vowed to conquer the financial crisis and the economic recession gripping their economies by extending financial help to struggling east European nations on a country by country basic by keeping intact the rules governing the single European market. The Southeast Asian nations who are already grouped under ASEAN are gearing up for creating a economic group modeled on the line of European Union (EU) as the economic meltdown slows their export driven economies.
Leaders from 10-member ASEAN gathered in Thailand for their annual meeting and signed trade deals and agreements to form an integrated economic community without a currency by 2015, the New York Times (NYT) reported today using a Bloomberg news report. Asian nations now agree that their economies depend more on demand in US and other Western countries. Exports from China, South Korea and Taiwan have fallen by 50 per cent.