World food crisis hits home

As the world faces its first global food crisis since World War II, even American consumers are starting to fret.

· Restaurants raise prices on rice; Costco, Sam's limit sales

Media reports are starting to trickle in about grocers limiting some food purchases, while Costco Wholesale Corp. is seeing higher-than-usual demand for staple foods such as rice and flour as consumers appear to be stocking up.

Costco Chief Executive James Sinegal told Reuters news service in an interview Tuesday that the Issaquah-based wholesale company is managing the situation. "If we run out, we're usually back in stock the next day," he said.

The Reuters story followed a Monday article in The New York Sun, which reported that certain food sellers, including a Costco warehouse in California, were limiting purchases of flour, rice and cooking oil. Sinegal, through an assistant, declined further interviews Tuesday.

Such problems in the U.S. pale in comparison to what is happening in desperate countries.

The World Food Program says that rising food prices -- and a corresponding food shortage -- threaten 20 million of the planet's poorest children.

Food prices have risen 40 percent on average since mid-2007, and have led to riots in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia.

At a summit in London on Tuesday, the executive director of the World Food Program said that a "silent tsunami" of hunger is sweeping the world's most desperate nations.

"What we are seeing now is affecting more people on every continent," Josette Sheeran told a news conference.

The price of rice has more than doubled in the past five weeks, she said.

The World Bank estimates food prices have risen by 83 percent in three years.

President Bush has released $200 million in urgent aid and Britain pledged an immediate $59.7 million on Tuesday.

The causes are scattered -- rising fuel prices, unpredictable weather, and demand from India and China -- and the solutions are controversial -- ration cards, genetically modified crops, the end of pile-it-high, sell-it-cheap supermarkets.

Many analysts, including Britain's opposition leader David Cameron, claim that people in the West will need to eat less meat -- and consume, or waste, less food in general.

Some expect the shift in attitudes to herald the end of supermarket giveaways and cost-cutting grocery stores that stack goods to the ceiling and sell in bulk.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Tuesday that the spiraling prices threaten to plunge millions back into poverty and reverse progress on alleviating misery in the developing world.

"Tackling hunger is a moral challenge to each of us and it is also a threat to the political and economic stability of nations," Brown said.

Unrest over the food crisis has led to deaths in Cameroon and Haiti, cost Haitian Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis his job, and caused hungry textile workers to clash with police in Bangladesh. Malaysia's embattled prime minister is already under pressure over the price increases and has launched a major rice-growing project. Indonesia's government needed to revise its annual budget to respond.

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said more protests in other developing nations appear likely. "We are going through a very serious crisis and we are going to see lots of food strikes and demonstrations," Annan told reporters in Geneva. Yet while angry street protesters call for immediate action, long-term solutions are likely to be slow, costly and complicated, experts warn.

And evolving diets among burgeoning middle classes in India and China will help double the demand for food -- particularly grain-intensive meat and dairy products -- by 2030, the World Bank says.

Robert Zoellick, the bank's head, claims as many as 100 million people could be forced deeper into poverty. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said rising food costs threaten to cancel strides made toward the goal of cutting world poverty in half by 2015.

"Now is not too soon to be thinking about the longer-term solutions," said Alex Evans, a former adviser to Britain's Environment Secretary Hilary Benn.

He said world leaders must help increase food production, rethink their push on biofuels -- which many blame for pushing up food prices -- and consider anew the once taboo topic of growing genetically modified crops.

The World Food Program's Sheeran believes many already understand the impact.

"Much of the world is waking up to the fact that food does not spontaneously appear on grocery store shelves," she said.

WORLD FOOD CRISIS

Sept. 7, 2007: Vietnam, the world's third-biggest rice exporter, restricts rice exports to slow inflation.

Dec. 4: Argentina temporarily restricts grain exports.

Jan. 1: China, the world's biggest grain producer, starts to curb overseas sales of wheat, corn and rice by issuing export permits.

Jan. 19: Egypt bans rice exports.

Feb. 8: The American Bakers Association asks the U.S. Department of Agriculture to curb wheat exports.

Feb. 27: At least four people are killed during three days of protests over high commodity prices in Cameroon.

March: Philippines authorities begin to crack down on hoarders.

March 17: India halts all exports of non-basmati rice. It also extends an existing export ban on crops such as peas and beans.

March 28: Vietnam extends rice export restrictions.

April 4: Haitians riot over rising food prices. At least three people are killed.

April 6: Egyptians riot over rising food prices.

April 9: Corn commodities on the Chicago Board of Trade reach a record $6.16 a bushel.

April 12: Police clash with 10,000 workers in Bangladesh who smashed vehicles and attacked factories, demanding higher wages to pay for food.

The Haitian prime minister is forced to step down in an attempt to defuse anger over food prices. A U.N. police officer bringing food to his unit in Port-au-Prince is killed.

April 14: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says that a global food crisis has reached "emergency proportions." The World Bank has forecast that 33 nations from Mexico to Yemen may face social unrest.

April 16: Malawi plans to restrict corn exports.

April 17: Kazakhstan, the world's sixth-largest wheat exporter, bans wheat exports between April 27 and Sept.1.

April 18: India permits rice exports to Bhutan.

Indonesia, the world's third-largest rice producer, says it will hold back surplus rice.

Tuesday: Thailand, the world's largest rice exporter, is under pressure to restrict exports. A World Bank official likens any restriction to Saudi Arabia reducing oil exports.

Source: The Associated Press and Bloomberg

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