Financial Meltdown Worsens Food Crisis

While the world's attention has been focused on rescuing investment banks and stock markets from collapse, the global food crisis has worsened, a casualty of the growing financial tumult.

Oxfam, the Britain-based aid group, estimates that economic chaos this year has pulled the incomes of an additional 119 million people below the poverty line. Richer countries from the United States to the Persian Gulf are busy helping themselves and have been slow to lend a hand.

The contrast between the rapid-fire reaction by Western authorities to the financial crisis and their comparatively modest response to soaring food prices earlier this year has triggered anger among aid and farming groups.

"The amount of money used for the bailouts in the U.S. and Europe -- people here are saying that money is enough to feed the poor in Africa for the next three years," said Muchiri, head of the Eastern Africa Farmers Federation.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 923 million people were seriously undernourished in 2007. Its director-general, Jacques Diouf, said in a recent speech that he worries about cuts in aid to agriculture in developing countries. He said he is also concerned by protectionist trade measures intended to counteract the financial turmoil.

Although the price of commodities has come down in the past few months, Diouf said, 36 countries still need emergency assistance for food, and he warned of a looming disaster next year if countries do not make food security a top priority.

"The global financial crisis should not make us forget the food crisis," Diouf said.

Click here to read the entire article by Ariana Eunjung Cha and Stephanie McCrummen, published in the Washington Post, Sunday, October 26, 2008.