The Land of Plenty [of hungry people]

Could When Will Food Riots Break Out Across the U.S.?

40,000 hungry people in 11,000 vehicles harvest 300 tons of free crops at Platteville, Colorado

Joe and Chris Miller were in for a big surprise when they allowed people to pick up free vegetables left over after the harvest —40,000 people showed up.

“Overwhelmed is putting it mildly … People obviously need food.” Chris Miller said.

The couple had expected up to 10,000 people to show up Saturday to pick free crops including carrots, leeks and potatoes. Instead, 40,000 people arrived in an estimated 11,000 vehicles turning some 30 acres of the 600-acre farm 37 miles north of Denver into a parking lot.

“Everybody is so depressed about the economy … This was a pure party. Everybody having a great time getting something for free.” Said Sandra Justice of Greeley who works at a technology company. She, her mother and son picked 10 bags of vegetables. Denver Post reported.

The hungry guests picked an estimated some 300 tons of produce Saturday. “Joe and Chris Miller’s fields were picked so clean Saturday that a second day of gleaning—the old practice of picking up leftover food in farm fields—was canceled Sunday.” The Post said.

Whereas the Millers had previously allowed schoolchildren and some church groups to harvest their own food, they opened the farm to the free public harvest this year after learning that food was stolen from churches.

Let’s hope the party spirit doesn’t deteriorate too quickly into pitch battles between competing crowds as the harvests start shrinking!

Related News Links:

• Farm’s Open Harvest Draws 40,000 in Colorado
• Weld County Farmer Shares Bounty From Platteville Fields
• Today’s food giveaway at Miller farm in Platteville canceled

Related Links:

• Food Crisis
• 2009: The year of steep food price rises
• Topsoil

• Desertification: A Most Powerful Mechanism of Collapse
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• Fight For Food!

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Japan: The land of rising . . . err . . . Prices!

More than 40 percent of Japanese households hit hard by consumer price rises

(Mainichi Japan) April 16, 2008

More than 40 percent of households in Japan have been “significantly affected” by recent increases in the price of daily necessities, a survey announced by the Cabinet Office has shown.

The survey for March showed that 42.4 percent of people serving as monitors in the survey answered that their household finances had been significantly affected by price increases — 5.2 percentage points higher than the figure for the previous month.

It was the first time for the figure of those significantly affected by higher prices to exceed 40 percent, showing that escalating costs of food and other items are putting pressure on household finances.

In the survey, people across Japan designated as national lifestyle monitors investigated the price of 17 types of products sold at stores, and answered a questionnaire. The survey started in January, and 1,625 people responded to the February and March polls.

The survey showed that the biggest price increases were in products such as pot noodles and spaghetti. While the price of tissue paper, gasoline, kerosene and other items went down after earlier price rises last year, more than half of the surveyed products rose in price.

Shaping up to the reality?

Sumo wrestlers, some weighing as much as 280kg, gather in a circle around the Referee in the ring-entering ceremony. Sumo wrestlers eat 5 meals a day including more than 20 eggs for breakfast!

The combined percentage of people who answered that they were “significantly affected,” “affected to a certain degree,” or who would say they were affected if they had to give a yes or no answer surged to 96.7 percent.

Related links:

• Corn for Food, NOT for Fuel
• We Need Food!
• Emerging Food Crisis

• Riots across Egypt amid rising food prices

Emerging Food Crisis

Since February 2008, riots and protests concerning rising food prices or food shortages have been reported in Bangladesh, Bolivia, Cameroon, Egypt, El Salvador, Haiti, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique, Philippines Senegal, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.

According to AFP Report: “Analysts have said economic misery in crushingly-poor Myanmar was a force behind protests which drew up to 100,000 people into the streets of the military-ruled country last year.”

Poorer countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia and in which 60-70 percent of the income is spent on food are particularly hard hit by soaring food prices.

“In the Philippines, one of the world’s biggest importers of rice, the government deployed troops last week to deliver grain to poor areas of the capital Manila amid worries about shortages.”

Grain prizes have risen by 42 percent and dairy products 80 percent since2007. The head of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization said: “There is a risk that this unrest will spread in countries where 50 to 60 percent of income goes to food . . .”

Elsewhere, soaring food prices are leading to political instability and humanitarian crisis:

In China, the price of pork, their staple diet, has risen by more than 60 percent in the last 12 months.

In Vietnam, consumer prices rose by about 17 percent (YoY) in the first quarter of 2008. Up to 20,000 workers at a Vietnamese shoe factory opted for a a two-day strike last week “because of the increase in prices which has hit people hard recently,” according to union official Nguyen Thi Dung.

In Singapore, one of Asia’s wealthiest countries, ten people were arrested by police last month for holding a rally, without a permit, to protest rising living costs.

Rising food (and fuel) prices have triggered protests also in India, Malaysia and Pakistan causing seismic shifts in political and social policies.

The World Bank anticipated last week “heightening political tensions” throughout Asia should “rising inflation stalls poverty reduction measures.”

Related Links:

• High food prices seen leading to strikes, protests in Asia
• Now, the world’s problem is food: Here come shortages, rising prices and riots
• Food Riots Grip Egypt, Haiti, El Salvador
• Corn for Food, NOT for Fuel

• Topsoil
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• The First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities