Food Complacency
Written by Asinus Asinum Fricat on June 2, 2008 – 5:44 pm -This is meant to be highlighting the opening of the Rome Food Conference today. For far too long, we in the developed world have taken food supplies for granted. For decades, ample food stocks, a well-supplied export trade and rapidly rising agricultural productivity seemed to have confined food “insecurity”, in the west at least, to the history bin. Cause and effect: it has proved a costly complacency, the scale of which we are only just beginning to realize (latest diaries here, here and here). Have we forgotten the European famines of the war years, the end of British food rationing in 1953, and the US food shortages of the 1930s?
I’m eagerly awaiting the findings of the Food Summit in Rome (which starts today) organized by the United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) though mixed signals have already been sent by same agency: Food prices to remain high despite higher output. Read more »
Tags: Community, FAO, Food Supplies, Global Food Insecurity, Rome Food Conference
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