food riots

Prices for cornmeal and rice have doubled in Somalia since January, and on Monday food riots wracked the Somalian city of Mogadishu. Thousands of people protested the insane prices for staple foods, and eventually police shot and killed two protesters. Earlier this year, food riots broke out in the African nation of Senegal as well. What's causing these conditions, which sound like the precursors to the apocalyptic food-shortage flick Soylent Green?

Author Raj Patel explains what is behind the global food crisis and who is profiting from it. NAM Editor Sandip Roy interviewed Patel, author of "Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System."

MIAMI -- Some stores in South Florida and across the U.S. are placing rice restrictions on their customers after an Australian drought crippled rice production. Throughout the U.S. and in Miami, merchants and restaurateurs said the price of rice is high.

As the world faces its first global food crisis since World War II, even American consumers are starting to fret. Media reports are starting to trickle in about grocers limiting some food purchases, while Costco Wholesale Corp. is seeing higher-than-usual demand for staple foods such as rice and flour as consumers appear to be stocking up.

It would be inhuman to understate the global food crisis. With food prices up as much as 45 per cent since the end of 2006, El Salvador's poor eat about half as much food as they did a year ago. In Haiti, a destitute population is turning increasingly to mud patties made of dirt, oil and sugar, which at least quieten the stomach.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Hunger bashed in the front gate of Haiti’s presidential palace. Hunger poured onto the streets, burning tires and taking on soldiers and the police. Hunger sent the country’s prime minister packing. Haiti’s hunger, that burn in the belly that so many here feel, has become fiercer than ever in recent days as global food prices spiral out of reach, spiking as much as 45 percent since the end of 2006 and turning Haitian staples like beans, corn and rice into closely guarded treasures.

A third day of riots in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, had by Friday paralyzed the city with looting and violence. The toll includes a U.N. soldier who has been shot and killed in the capital while delivering food to his unit.

An American freelance journalist and his Egyptian translator were arrested Thursday while reporting on unrest in northern Egypt where economic riots broke out earlier this week. James Buck spoke to The Associated Press by cell phone from inside a police station in Mahalla El-Kobra, an industrial city were laborers and activists have been demonstrating against high food prices.

Food riots seem to be happening around the world on a near-daily basis lately.

Global food prices have continued to rise, placing an extra burden on the poor. The World Food Program (WFP), a UN humanitarian agency, in March 2008 announced a shortfall of $500 million and could have to ration food aid.