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    Banned Melonie's Avatar
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    Default food riots continue to get 'closer' ...


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    Veteran Member LadyLuck's Avatar
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    Default Re: food riots continue to get 'closer' ...

    I know from reading your postings that you are trying to connect this to biofuels but that is far from the main cause of hunger there.

    If you have ever been to Haiti or have family or friends from there then you would know this kind of thing has happened before biofuels. It's roots go much deeper and have been haunting Haiti for many, many decades.
    There never was a good war or a bad peace.

    Benjamin Franklin

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    Banned Melonie's Avatar
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    Default Re: food riots continue to get 'closer' ...

    Believe it or not, in this case the biofuels diversion of US farmland is just one factor ... along with drought in Australia, snow in China, the effects of US dollar inflation on the UN food aid budget, and a host of others. Indeed Haiti has problems i.e. it can't grow enough food to cover its own consumption needs, both the official and 'unofficial' powers that be make sure that the poor stay poor etc. However, that scenario is not unique to Haiti.

    Actually, there are also currently food riots in Egypt. However, the difference is that the Egyptian gov't has the effective military / police power to put down those riots. There have also been food riots in some Asian countries. However, the difference is that these Asian gov'ts have instituted price controls and gov't subsidies to quell the riots. Haiti doesn't have the military / police power or the foreign currency reserves to take either of these options.

    A larger point that I was trying to make is that there is an increasingly large number of hungry and angry people in 'third world' countries these days. A larger point that I was trying to make is that, as food shortages intensify, the problem is transitioning from one of unaffordable food prices to one of outright food scarcity (at which point the price controls and gov't subsidies option stops working).

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