NightBlogger

Earlier this week, I witnessed women beaten with horse whips to keep them from entering a food distribution centre. Mother Teresa’s ‘Missionaries of Charity’ were distributing food to hundreds inside but the growing crowds beyond the gate were out of control, even for the locals trying to restrain their people. In another town we found babies lying abandoned in pools of diarrhea, covered in flies, while metres away people literally fought for access to the single water source.

I experienced women, young and old, weeping for their children. One woman buried all five of her children herself because she had nothing to pay someone to do the work for her. She was too scared to tell the authorities of the situation out of fear she would somehow be blamed. More

mainichi.jp
Egyptians are living through the worst food crisis in a generation, caught in a storm of stagnant wages, rising global food prices, rampant corruption, and a quickly advancing inflation rate that hit 16.4 percent in May. The price of basic commodities like bread, wheat, rice, and cooking oil has doubled since this time last year – prompting bread riots.

The riots are why Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was a featured speaker among 40 government leaders at the three-day UN food summit that concluded Thursday in Rome. Mr. Mubarak called for an end to subsidies for biofuels because they are creating a “hazardous distortion to the present system of agricultural trade.” More

Photo by Alejandro Nunez / POLY

The Bullet
In Haiti, where most people get 22% fewer calories than the minimum needed for good health, some are staving off their hunger pangs by eating “mud biscuits” made by mixing clay and water with a bit of vegetable oil and salt.

Meanwhile, in Canada, the federal government is currently paying $225 for each pig killed in a mass cull of breeding swine, as part of a plan to reduce hog production. Hog farmers, squeezed by low hog prices and high feed costs, have responded so enthusiastically that the kill will likely use up all the allocated funds before the program ends in September.

Some of the slaughtered hogs may be given to local Food Banks, but most will be destroyed or made into pet food. None will go to Haiti. This is the brutal world of capitalist agriculture – a world where some people destroy food because prices are too low, and others literally eat dirt because food prices are too high. Read more