Tune in this Saturday July 26th as Radio Diaspora examines the Global Food Crisis, its impact on women in the region and how it relates to human rights and sovereignty. Invited guests include Eric Holt Gimenez, Executive Director of Food First and Father Jean-Juste from Haiti.  Tune in on Saturday July 26th from 5:00pm-7:00pm EST or online at www.wrfg.org. 

The years 2007–2008 saw dramatic world food price rises, bringing a state of global crisis and causing political and economical instability and social unrest in both devepelod and underdeveloped exploited nations in the global south.

Systemic causes for the world-wide food price increase continue to be the subject of debate. Initial causes of the late 2006 price spikes included unseasonable droughts in grain producing nations and rising oil prices. Oil prices further heightened the costs of fertilizers, food transport, and industrial agriculture. Other causes may be the increasing use of biofuels in developed countries and an increasing demand for a more varied diet (especially meat) across the expanding middle-class populations of Asia, and the overconsumption patters in the United States. These factors, coupled with falling world food stockpiles have all contributed to the dramatic world-wide rise in food prices. Long-term causes remain a topic of debate. These may include structural changes in trade and agricultural production, agricultural price supports and subsidies in developed nations, diversions of food commodities to high input foods and fuel, commodity market speculation, and climate change.

Not surprisingly, people have taken to the streets in Mexico, Italy, Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Indonesia, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Yemen, Egypt, and Haiti. Over 100 people have been killed and many more injured. In Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, with food prices increases of 50-100%, driving the poor to eat biscuits made of mud and vegetable oil angry protestors forced the Prime Minister out of office.