FOOD CRISIS: Rice-importing countries

The dramatic rise in world food prices has once again enforced lack of food to the top of the humanitarian agenda. The world is passing through a critical food crisis which has not affected the world for many decades. Already social uncertainty, political unrest and riots start off in many developing countries. Aid groups have long been warning about the consequences of trade imbalances and climate change, but food riots in Africa and Asia have finally brought the issue into the limelight.

The United Nations said for an every week100 million people are now urgently at risk of not having enough food to eat -- and that includes people on every continent of the world. The years 2007–2008 saw remarkable world food price rises, bringing a state of global crisis and causing political and economical instability and social unrest in poor and developed nations.

World Bank has warned that the present crisis will deepen and will create further deterioration in law and order situation in those countries.The rise in global food prices has sparked a number of protests in recent year, highlighting the worsening epidemic of global hunger. The World Bank estimates world food prices have risen 80 percent over the last three years and that at least thirty-three countries face social unrest as a result.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned the growing global food crisis has reached emergency proportions.generally causes for the world-wide food price enhance have been at present acknowledged a climate change, rising oil price, which has heightened the costs of fertilizers, food transport, and industrial agriculture, 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. These factors, coupled with falling world food stockpiles and instability brought about by the subprime mortgage crisis, have all contributed to the dramatic world-wide rise in food prices. In most of West Africa, the price of food has risen by 50 percent—in Sierra Leone, 300 percent.

The World Food Program has issued a rare $500 million emergency appeal to deal with the growing crisis. Several causes factor into the global food price hike, many linked to human activity. These include human-driven climate change; the soaring cost of oil food into fuel. Rice-importing countries Bangladesh, Vietnam and Afghanistan have been hit hardest, as the world's biggest rice producers including China, India and Indochina are restricting exports to protect their stocks and limit inflation.Bangladesh is facing its worst food shortages. Twice hit by severe flooding last year and devastating cyclone have left hundreds of families surviving on one meal a day after spending up to 80 percent of their income on food.

A recent riot at a textile factory near Dhaka, demanding higher wages to meet higher food prices, resulted in injuries to dozens of people, including the police. Rice prices are likely to keep rising for some time as production of the staple fails to keep up with soaring demand, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) said. The government failed to build enough stock of food immediately after last year's disasters; Economists estimate 30 million out of the Bangladesh's total population of 150 million could go hungry. It could become a serious political problem for the military-backed government also. The World Bank predicts that global demand for food will double by 2030.