Arab protests show hunger threat to world-economist

[Joanne98]

Source: Reuters

DAKAR, Feb 12 (Reuters) - Uprisings across the Arab world are just a foretaste of the instability facing other poor states unless a global food crisis is tackled, leading development economist Jeffrey Sachs said on Saturday.

Popular anger at rising food prices has been an explosive ingredient in the mix of grievances that triggered the fall of leaders in Egypt and Tunisia, and is now putting the heat on authorities in Algeria and Jordan.

Sachs, a long-time adviser of governments and world agencies on the fight against poverty, said the root causes applied right across an already unstable belt of states stretching from Iraq through the Sahara to the shores of West Africa.

"This isn't just about the Muslim Brotherhood and it isn't just about politics," Sachs said in an interview of what he called an overly narrow concern among some in the West on the current mood benefiting the influential Islamist group.



Read more: http://af.reuters.com/article/egyptNews/idAFLDE71B0A820110212

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It won't happen unless you do something about the commodity speculators. And nobody's going to interfer with the sacred 'free market'.

[Sonoman]

1. Wait until it gets to the Western Hemisphere

Corn prices doubled almost overnight in Mexico.

There will be hell to pay if the Mexicans start rioting.

Can you imagine two million people in the streets of NYC, marching twenty abreast down Wall Street?

I can.

Sonoman

[madrchsod]

3. 2009 us surplus was sold to china

2010 crop was short because of the freak weather across the corn belt and who knows what this year will bring.

ever wonder why multi national corporations do not invest in farming...they can`t control the weather.

[madrchsod]

2. just read about what will cause the beef shortage in the next three years...

seems the price was to good to pass up so the ranchers and growers sold off their breeding stock. so now it`s going to take at least three years to rebuild the nations beef supply.

commodity speculation is a gold mine now that housing is a bust.

[underpants]

4. One desperate person is a crime, ten is an incident, and 100 is a riot

and riots grow quickly.

Profit vs. civil unrest is a balance that most of our business school trainees never learn about.

[WatsonT]

5. Maybe we could stop burning our corn

I'm not a nutritionist but I believe humans are unable to get much nutrition from food that is burned in the gas tank of some SUV.

[aquart]

6. Just figured it out, did he?

[marasinghe]

7. hah!

:P