KEY POINTS:
Starvation in African countries often stems from food shortages caused by war. Now people in some of the poorest countries in the world fear starvation for another reason - globally spiralling food prices.
Already there have been riots in the streets and high-level warnings of massacres to come.
Africa is not alone. Strife has broken out over pasta prices in Italy, tortilla prices in Mexico and tofu products in Indonesia.
Experts are saying governments had better mobilise quickly or food riots will become more and more common and the world more unstable.
Around the globe food has soared in price by nearly 60 per cent in a year - and 83 per cent in three years. Governments are panicked and some are trying for secret deals with other countries. Ukraine is said to have agreed to put aside 40,500ha purely to grow wheat for Libya. Egypt is said to have agreed to supply Syria with rice in return for wheat. In America there is talk of rationing flour, rice and cooking oil.
The situation is so serious that United Nations Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon last week warned the UN goal to halve world poverty within seven years may be seriously derailed.
He says food prices have risen so high that they threaten world security, economic growth and social progress.
Another UN leader, Jean Ziegler, who specialises in the right people have to food, uses stronger language. "This is silent mass murder," he reportedly told Austrian newspaper, the Kurier am Sonntag. "We have a herd of market traders, speculators and financial bandits who have turned wild and constructed a world of inequality and horror. We have to put a stop to this."
Ziegler has called for a five-year moratorium on the conversion of any more agricultural land for biofuels.
Stark warnings are repeated over and over. Jacques Diouf, head of the UN's food and agriculture organisation, speaks of further violence to come. "Naturally, people won't be sitting dying of starvation, they will react."
And Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund: "Hundreds of thousands of people will be starving. Children will be suffering from malnutrition with consequences for all their lives."
Last week Josette Sheeran, head of the World Food Programme, described the crisis as a "silent tsunami" and called for an international response on a similar scale to that to the Boxing Day tsunami, which killed more than 250,000 people and destroyed many more homes and livelihoods.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said at a summit in London last week that hunger was the world's number one threat to public health, and also a threat to political and economic stability. Deutsche Bank strategists, however, describe the crisis as "a necessary evil" in order for land use to revert back to growing food to be eaten.
The Bloomberg news agency says the strategists cite rampant food demand, a lack of investment in agriculture and low food inventories. "This [the food crisis] may help to reverse agricultural land loss in certain parts of the world."
Poor countries are hit harder by spiralling food prices because people in Africa, for example, spend much more of their income on food.
In industrial countries people spend about 10 to 20 per cent of their income on food compared to 60 to 80 per cent in developing countries.
The UN does give a glimmer of hope, saying the situation could ease in the new 2008/09 season. The forecast is for world cereal production to increase by 2.6 per cent to a record 2164 million tonnes through increased planting by major producing countries.
But this depends on the weather. In an era of climate change, the global food price rise is complicated further by poor harvests. In Bangladesh, rice is the staple, but a cyclone wiped out much of the country's supplies. Australia's grain production has been severely hampered by drought.
The UN says securing global food security in the face of climate change may be one of the biggest challenges the world faces this century.
A high-level conference is scheduled in Rome in June to tackle the intricate challenges of food security, poverty reduction and energy security.
* Responding to the call for international assistance, Japan said yesterday it would donate NZ$126.67 million in emergency food aid, mostly to countries in Africa.
POLES APART
"Silent mass murder"
- UN special rapporteur on the right to food Jean Ziegler
"A necessary evil"
- Deutsche Bank strategists
"Silent tsunami"
- Josette Sheeran, head of the UN World Food Programme
CRISIS TO HIT NZ
Do food riots in far-flung places matter to New Zealand?
Policy expert Jonathan Boston says absolutely. We might be a land of milk and honey and none of us will starve, but growing global unrest will hit home.
Boston, a professor of public policy at Victoria University, says civil strife and political instability in any country of consequence can have ramifications for global peace and security and these things affect us.
At the very least there is the possibility the United Nations will offer to send peacekeeping forces in to countries undergoing unrest and violence, and this may entail contributions from New Zealand.
Civil disturbance in one country can spark flow-on effects in nearby jurisdictions - there can be economic impacts, refugee impacts and possible regional conflicts.
In a world food crisis, perhaps the pressure will be on to take in food refugees from countries where hunger is winning, Boston says.
And in developed countries high food prices can spark consumer disquiet and political angst against governments. This has already begun if you look at Italians angry at pasta prices, he says.
Boston sees little need, right now at least, for New Zealand to have a domestic food policy, but says the international situation must be taken seriously and that New Zealand has an interest in ensuring a stable international community and effective operating markets for food commodities.
