Right now, I’m hungry. It’s almost 7pm and I still haven’t shoved anything into my esophagus for the past five hours — which reminds me of the moment I arrived at my mother’s house in Batangas last weekend. And the first thing that got my attention? The two sacks of rice lying on the floor. Hmmm. Someone did some panic buying, I thought. My mum said it would last for four months, which means we won’t be worrying about the “rice price rise.”

When I came back to the city, I dined at my favourite carinderia near my apartment. It didn’t come as a surprise to me when the waitress told me that a cup of rice costs 10 pesos. That’s PhP4 higher than the last time I was there.

It’s really sad that we experience rice shortage. I mean, I don’t know, it’s just sad that a country as agriculture-based as the Philippines has to import something as staple as rice. RICE. RICE. RICE. Something that a Filipino meal isn’t without.

But what’s more saddening is the fact that this crisis isn’t ours alone. Global food crisis is a reality. According to United Nations statistics, food prices have been increasing by over 50% over just a year. The skyrocketing costs of this very basic necessity have spurred ministers from 185 countries to take action and declare that the problem is serious. In fact, the International Monetary Fund even said that casualties could be hundreds of thousands if the condition is not improved soon.

In many areas, especially in China, the problem has been aggravated by calamitous winter weather which has caused massive damage to infrastructure and has ruined crops over a vast area, propelling the furious increase of food prices.

Here’s the twist. Ironically, humanitarian service organization Oxfam International has been criticising the IMF for its role in supporting and promoting biofuels, which has led to the diminishing amount of crops being grown. In many areas, especially in the United States, crops are being grown not for food but for fuel, creating further adverse impact on food prices. Biofuels, particularly ethanol, have been the subject of many debates over the past few months. Many environmentalists claim that this supposedly “green fuel” is actually dirtier and produces more harmful effects than fossil fuels. I’ve seen several documentaries about ethanol on Discovery and CNN insisting that ethanol is not as “clean and green” as many politicians claim. They all seem believable.

The global food crisis is a serious issue. It has to be resolved as soon as possible. If you think hunger is the only problem that comes with it, think again. Niger, Cameroon and other countries have seen the abrupt rise of food prices foster civil unrest. In Haiti, Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis was removed from power by the Senate after weeks of several food-related riots which led to five deaths.

*a portion of this post was originally written for onlinebankpro.com
**cartoon courtesy of caglecartoons.com

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