Dr Arvind Kumar
There are about 1 billion people currently suffering from chronic hunger world wide. Tragic events like brutal wildfires and crippling droughts in Russia, ongoing floods in Pakistan and some other parts of globe coupled with other climate crises have triggered food-price volatility, disproportionately and adversely affecting the world’s poor. Since early June this year, wheat price has gone up by50 percent. The Food and Agriculture Organization recently cut its 2010 global wheat forecast by 4 percent amid fears of a scramble among nations to secure supplies.
Increase in wheat prices will trigger demand for other essential food crops such as rice as part of a knock-on effect on world food markets, driving up costs for consumers. One cannot forget the 2007-2008 food crises, when prices jumped as much as 100 percent and led to deadly riots in some parts of the globe. Nevertheless, bumper crops in the United States this year, alongside replenished wheat stocks globally, may be adequate to offset shortages due to the fires in Russia, but these short-term measures should not be the cause of complacency or a false sense of confidence. There is still neither a strategy nor a solution to ending global hunger.
