PR FROM THE BEACH

Only the silence seems to grow in face of global food shortages

It is nearly a year since I first blogged about the severe food shortages in North Korea. Today, conditions are much worse, to the point where the cloistered North is even contemplating asking for help from South Korea - so things must be bad. But North Korea is not alone in this predicament. More than three million people face starvation in Nepal, thanks to crop failures caused by climate change. The Solomon Islands face food shortages, again brought about by climate change, and the list grows by the day - Kenya, Sudan and 'closer to home' as well, with warning bells sounding in the UK over the need to address food production and agricultural issues.

North Korea's problems are seeded by its political system but many other places around the world face food shortages because of disaster, climate extremes and price hikes caused by unsustainable practices. Again, glancing back to this time last year, we were teetering at the edge of the global financial meltdown, yet warnings went unheeded and it seemed that everyone was wise only after the event. 

Signs, indicators and trends point towards food security being a major issue for millions of people in the coming year, yet the majority of mainstream media outlets are as slow to catch on to food security as they were the financial blow-outs. In western economies, price is the main issue, rather than scarcity. There is plenty of food in the shops but as jobs disappear and incomes are cut access to that food is reduced. So what's to be done? The 'agencies' - Oxfam, World Vision, the UN and many others - are all doing their part to raise not just awareness of the problem but also stimulate action to prevent conditions worsening. Sadly, as soon as one famine fire looks like it might be extinguished, another takes its place.

Mainstream media seems obstinate in its refusal to' effectively report on famines, food security issues and food shortages yet it is an issue that is going to touch each and every one of us at some point - probably sooner than we think. 

So what can we do? Talk to people about it. Blog about it. Look around and see how you can help. It might mean you decided to grow veggies in the back yard for yourself or it might mean finding a channel to make your voice heard, so that those with the power and resources to help those dying from hunger do so.

Today, 1.02 billion people are hungry. That is a huge number. A ridiculous number. Almost beyond comprehension. So boil it down - see each individual for the person they are, a person just like you but who needs our help. It is easy to imagine one child. Well, one child dies every five seconds from hunger-related causes. So in the time it has taken for you to read this, five children will have died. I think that is something worth raising our voices over, don't you?

Food shortages: Price of food basics triples - 923 million people undernourished worldwide

We are just over a week on from World Food Day.  Statistics published to coincide with the event indicate that 923 million people worldwide are short of food and undernourished. If that number is too big to cope with, or seems meaningless, then think of it as every person in America - North and South - being without food. Or every single country in the European Union, plus a few more for good measure, without the wherewithal to feed that population.

As you know, I have been mithering about food shortages from Iceland to Egypt, Peru to Haiti, for most of this year and over the last week I have monitored what's happening even more closely than normal. For over two million people in North Korea, October looks like it will be the worst month yet as current reports from Associated Press indicate starvation is now a reality in parts of the country, even though the regime is apparently taking draconian steps to prevent the spread of this news to the world at large.

Cold comfort for Iceland as food shortages loom

As a 'ps' to yesterday's post - and in case you were thinking that the whole issue of food shortages is just something for the so-called 'poorer' nations to worry about, take a look at what is in store - or not - for Iceland on the back of the currency woes, according to a Bloomberg report.  With no foreign currency, the country's supermarkets are facing low stock levels and no money to pay for imports.  Looks like it will be a long cold winter unless the IMF steps in to help.

Food crisis looms on back of finance woes - but who will act now?

There were plenty of warnings out there over the last twelve to fifteen months that trust in the global financial markets had weakened and was at breaking point. My ears pricked up permanently and I went to action stations when the UK's Northern Rock foundered and I have no doubt that history will probably mark that as one of the most contagious moments in this viral panic.

Of more concern to me currently is the ever increasing prospect of a 'food meltdown'. Again, the warning signs are there and have been for some time. There has been a small blip of hope as the financial panic pushes the price of commodities down - particularly oil, which impacts on the transport of food and its subsequent cost around the world. The UN has been warning the world for some time, but so absorbed has the media become in conveying the sense of panic over the cash, the issue of food has, somewhat stupidly, taken a back seat.

I say stupidly because we can't eat the notes and the money is still all there - just redistributed in someone else's pocket. The system is foundering because people and institutions now have limited or little trust in each other - or the system itself. This can be corrected and corrected quickly through repaired relationships, a fresh look at the system so that it is 'reengineered' in a format that allows people to work within it with renewed confidence. A system that doesn't permit directors of failed companies to walk off with several million dollars in their trousers, instead one which provides fair return for those who save, invest, borrow, build and repay. Those of us who, despite the hullabaloo, are still going to work, still paying for our mortgages, our credit cards, business liabilities and investments and who haven't yet opted to stash our life savings under the mattress.

What we can't 'turn around' with any great speed is the problem of food. Take a look at some of the reports, listen to what is being said. Get out in the garden and plant some potatoes. Surely to goodness some real attention needs to be paid to this issue and appropriate action taken? Yes, they need to fix the money and this can be done quite quickly if the culture of fear, mistrust, panic and self-protectionism is overcome. But the food? This will take longer, create lasting scars in many countries, result in the deaths of thousands and be the source of far greater global upheaval in the long term.

If there was a job for social media at this point in time, it would be in acting as a viral movement that brings the issue of food shortages - and a call to action - to many millions online who are subjected to mainstream media saturation coverage of the financial markets, the US election and very little else. Unless of course you count the monkey waiters in Japan. All rather reminiscent of Nero playing his lyre while Rome was consumed by the flames...