5 million Face Hunger in Zimbabwe

Telegraph

The United Nations has warned that more than five million Zimbabweans could be threatened by hunger next year due to a steady drop in food production coupled with the world's highest rate of inflation.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Food Program said in a joint report that an estimated two million people in Zimbabwe will not have enough to eat in the summer months.

That figure is projected to rise to 3.8 million people after September and to about 5.1 million between January and March 2009, as the impact of President Robert Mugabe's seizure of land from commercial farmers continues to take its toll. The population is just over 12 million people.

Hunger Plagues Haiti and The World

Brad Steiger

Here's a UK April 8 Times online snapshot of the situation in parts of Asia:

-- Filipino farmers caught hoarding rice risk a life in jail sentence for "economic sabotage;"

-- thousands of (Jakarta) Indonesian soya bean cake makers are striking against the destruction of their livelihood;

-- once food self-sufficient countries like Japan and South Korea are reacting "bitterly (as) the world's food stocks-to-consumption ratio plunges to an all-time low;"

-- India no longer can export millions of tons of rice; instead it's forced to have a "special strategic food reserve on top of its existing wheat and rice stockpiles;"

-- Thailand is the world's largest rice producer; its price rose 50% in the past month;

-- countries like the Philippines and Sri Lanka are scrambling for secure rice supplies; they and other Asian countries are struggling to cope with soaring prices and insufficient supply;

-- overall, rice is the staple food for three billion people; one-third of them survive on less than $1 a day and are "food insecure;" it means they may starve to death without aid.