The Silent Tsunami Campaign

A Persistent Human Crisis

Over the past two years or so, a host of factors has caused the price of food to rise sharply. No doubt you saw your grocery bills increase dramatically last year, and continue to see sustained high prices as you browse the food aisles this year. You may have had to cut back on certain purchases. If you are a working person in the Washington area, the price increases have made it even harder to make ends meet in the face of a global recession and record national job-loss and unemployment numbers. If you are among the two-and-a-half billion around the world who live on two dollars a day or less, the struggle to reconcile your daily needs with the reality of your income opportunities could be a matter of life and death.

 

The food crisis is not the result of a sudden, deadly strike by nature.  Rather, it is an evolving storm caused in part by natural phenomena, such as droughts or floods, and in part by government of business policies -  some poorly designed but often conceived with the best of intentions.  The combined effects has pushed tens of millions of people deeper into poverty and desperation — what the Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme called a “silent tsunami.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Together these events, among others, have created a perfect storm of causes for the resultant tidal wave of misery. 

 

While food prices have come down from their spikes of 2008, the factors that led to the food crisis persist and millions of people are in a precarious situation.  History could repeat itself without serious improvement on the international level in scientific research in agricultural fields, international trade policies and practices, biofuel policy, and more.  Even as prices stabilize and if governments mobilize to better coordinate policies that affect food pricing for the long term, millions of people will continue to struggle for a daily meal for the foreseeable future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Factors that have been attributed to causing the widened gap between the price of food and income include:

High job-loss and unemployment rates as a result of the global recession

Higher energy, transportation, and fertilizer costs

Changing weather patterns related to climate change 

Large-scale shifts to biofuels amid concerns about climate change

Increased consumer demands for meat, and therefore consequent increased demands for grain to feed livestock, in Asia

Increased prices for food staples, such as rice and other grains, as governments restrict food exports to maintain supplies and head off price hikes at home