Global food crisis finally gets White House’s focus

Had someone in the White House done an Internet search of the topic “global food crisis” months ago, he or she would have found what the administration acknowledged last week: Millions of people around the world are starving, but they’re not willing to curl up and die.

“When you’ve got instability or rioting in the streets of Egypt and Haiti and Indonesia, that will garner significant attention,” an unnamed senior White House official told the Washington Post. “What we’re looking at is a combination of both short- and medium- to long-term policy issues to address this.”

But whether the $200 million in emergency wheat stores for developing countries, or the $200 million more in emergency food aid Congress is pushing will prevent wholesale deaths from starvation and rioting remains to be seen.

Indeed, the food crisis is causing political instability around the globe, as evidenced by the unseating of Haiti’s prime minister, Jacques Edouard Alexis.

And that poses a threat to America’s national security.

People with empty bellies are easily influenced by fakers promising a bountiful tomorrow. In return for such bounty, these leaders will urge the people to take up arms against imagined enemies, such as government leaders who have close ties to western democracies. The blame game is their most powerful tool.

In addition to the $200 million in emergency wheat stores released by the administration, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice revealed that further steps are being planned get more food to the world’s neediest people. According to the Post, among the options are the construction of more storage facilities and roads to prevent food spoilage.

The administration also intends to make the food crisis a top priority at the G-8 summit of industrialized nations in July.

The World Food Program of the United Nations has called for urgent action to tackle what Executive Director Josette Sheeran termed the “silent tsunami” threatening over 100 million people.

Children in danger

Sheeran said that the impact of the crisis is already being felt in many parts of the world, and unless new funding can be found on time, the World Food Program will have to suspend the feeding of 450,000 children in Cambodia by next month.

The global food crisis is the result of prices for rice, corn, wheat and other food staples skyrocketing in recent months. Record oil costs, severe droughts, the diversion of corn for ethanol use and rapidly growing demand for food in China and India have created the problem.

Prices have more than doubled in six months in the poorest countries in Africa and Asia where food costs can consume three-quarters of household incomes.

But there is an opportunity for urgent action with the United States now fully engaged.

Its leadership at the G-8 meeting will be important and necessary.

This humanitarian crisis demands the attention of all the developed nations of the world.