The Food Crisis

The global food crisis is shaping up to be a huge problem. It threatens to substantially raise grocery bills in wealthy countries such as our own, but it also threatens to send millions of the world's poorest into malnutrition and starvation. And yet you won't hear much about it on the news networks, even though it has been perpetuated by American food and energy policies and will impact us quite directly. That's almost certainly because it's a complicated problem with no easy answers, and no easy targets for blame. But while our talking heads may wallow breezily in their ignorance, you and I have no such excuse. In that vein, I highly recommend this excellent series by the Washington Post on the food crisis; how it happened, what it means, and how it's effecting people the world over, from bagel producers on the East Coast to poor families in Mauritania. Read it and inform yourself as best you can, because it's a problem we're going to be dealing with for years to come and our only hope is to spur our normally pandering Congressmen and women to take what actions we can take to alleviate the problem.