Thursday, January 12, 2023

Food insecurity

Global poverty and famine have declined greatly over the past few decades. A bigger portion of the people of the world are fed and educated than ever before. It's been reported many times in recent years, though many still don't know about it.

But that progress has stalled because of pandemic consequences and the Ukraine war. Now the United Nations is talking about a "food crisis." In an official message last October, they said that "A staggering three billion people cannot afford a healthy diet; the war in Ukraine has triggered surging food, fertilizer, and energy prices . . ."

Very inflated prices of food are already here, and there will be more. We in the West can manage the inflation and mostly sustain our diet. But countries with less robust economies will struggle. There won't be as much wheat or sunflower oil going to those countries as foreign aid because Ukraine produces a big part of the world's supply - and you know that Ukraine is hugely disrupted now.

You could say that The Netherlands, also a big exporter of food, picked a bad time to forcibly cut food production. They're going to shut down farms, restrict meat production, and make life more difficult for their farm families.

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