Rising Food Prices

In Haiti, the market price of a 50 kg bag of rice doubled in one week at the end of March 2008. The most popular kind of Thailand rice sold for $198 a tonne in 2005 and $323 a tonne in 2009. On April 24, 2010, the price hit $1000.

For most people living in developed countries such as the United States and Canada, these high prices are still manageable. But for the billions of poor people who are living on just $2 US a day, it is catastrophic. They literally can’t afford to eat.

Rising rice prices are a result of droughts in grain-producing regions, rising oil prices, and falling world-food stock piles.

UNFAO says the world produces enough food to feed Earth’s entire population. The availability of food isn’t the problem, it’s access to food. Sometimes, transportation is the problem; sometimes, it’s cost.

Millions of people depend on food basics, such as wheat, maize, and rice to survive. Traditionally, the cost of these food basics depended on what people could afford: lower in poorer countries, higher in richer ones. As transportation and communication have become easier, markets have gone global. Prices are set in one place and applied to the whole world. As a result, hundreds of millions of people in developing countries can’t afford to buy the basics. Why not?