Famine

Ethiopia, perennially one of the world's hungriest nations, now faces what Oxfam, one of dozens of international aid organizations responding to the crisis, calls "a toxic cocktail." Its ingredients: drought that in some places killed the entire spring crop; global inflation that has doubled the price of food; armed rebellion in the Somali region that has disrupted food delivery; and assorted plagues, from insects to hailstones. Since 1985 the population has doubled to almost 80 million, and per-capita farm production has declined. Unlike 1985, when images of a famine that killed 1 million Ethiopians shocked the West — "We are the world!" pop stars sang at the globally televised Live Aid concert that raised more than $250 million — this year aid workers say there probably will be no mass starvation. An expensive, elaborate social welfare apparatus, erected largely by the world's rich nations to avert another 1985, will not permit it. Those good intentions, however, have helped produce another problem: A nation that has long seen itself as the most independent in Africa faces an ever-growing dependence on food aid from countries who now must deal with increasing food problems of their own. At least 14 million Ethiopians — 18% of the nation — need food aid (much of it from the USA) or cash assistance, according to government figures and aid agency estimates.

Famine in North Korea

Flooding and poor harvests have caused North Korea's worst food crisis since the late 1990s and have put millions at risk, the United Nations' food body said Wednesday. The World Food Program said North Korea's food shortage has worsened this year after floods in 2007, followed by poor harvests, leading to the threat of widespread malnutrition. "Millions of vulnerable North Koreans are at risk of slipping toward precarious hunger levels. The last time hunger was so deep and so widespread in parts of the country was in the late 1990s," Jean-Pierre de Margerie, the WFP's country director for North Korea, told a news conference. The WFP had been given permission to launch a widespread new operation to target those most vulnerable in eight of the country's 10 provinces, or 6.4 million people, up from a current 1.2 million. An international appeal for aid would be launched in the next two weeks. While 400,000 metric tons of U.S. food aid have already shipped, there is an urgent need for $20 million to get through the next autumn harvest, de Margerie said. The North has resorted to outside handouts to help feed its 23 million people since the mid-1990s when natural disasters and mismanagement devastated its centrally controlled economy. An estimated 2 million people in the North died of hunger at the time.

Pope Recognizes Food Crisis

ROME (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday said Christians must help to ease the global food crisis which has seen soaring prices increase hunger in many poor countries. "Those who nourish themselves with the bread of Christ cannot remain indifferent in the face of those who, even in our days, lack daily bread," the pontiff said. Catholics believe that they receive the body and blood of Christ when taking the Eucharist bread and wine. The Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in June is hosting a three-day, international summit on the food crisis, which has triggered riots and other protests in some poor nations. Benedict said the Catholic Church, which operates charities worldwide, was committed to initiatives aimed at ensuring that no one lacks life's necessities.

Famine in Africa

Somalia (NYT) — and much of the volatile Horn of Africa, for that matter — was about the last place on earth that needed a food crisis. Even before commodity prices started shooting up around the globe, civil war, displacement and imperiled aid operations had pushed many people here to the brink of famine. But now with food costs spiraling out of reach and the livestock that people live off of dropping dead in the sand, villagers across this sun-blasted landscape say hundreds of people are dying of hunger and thirst. This is what happens, economists say, when the global food crisis meets local chaos. “We’re really in the perfect storm,” said Jeffrey D. Sachs, a Columbia economist and top United Nations adviser, who recently visited neighboring Kenya.

There has been a collision of troubles throughout the region: skimpy rainfall, disastrous harvests, soaring food prices, dying livestock, escalating violence, out-of-control inflation, and shrinking food aid because of many of these factors. Across the border in Ethiopia, in the war-racked Ogaden region, the situation sounds just as dire. In Darfur, the United Nations has had to cut food rations because of a rise in banditry that endangers aid deliveries. Kenya is looking vulnerable, too. A recent headline in one of Kenya’s leading newspapers blared, “25,000 villagers risk starving,” referring to a combination of drought, higher fertilizer and fuel costs and postelection violence that displaced thousands of farmers. “These places aren’t on the brink,” Mr. Sachs said. “They’ve gone over the cliff.”