These are a few articles published in the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star this morning; this is a critical issue that really needs a lot of pondering and prayer about our own consumption patterns... it's actually starting to frighten me, at our complacency in the issue...
"Why Food Costs are Rising"
"The Coming Hunger"
1 comment:
Thanks for providing those two links. I didn't understood what was going on after only hearing bits of it from the news, so this helped me understand it a bit better. It's a scary situation, and I agree, we have the capability to do something about it. I hope public awareness increases on this topic.
When you say pondering our consumption patterns, did you mean our food consumption patterns? Like eating too much meat or demanding cheaper foods through imports? Both of the articles seemed to emphasize that this is a supply-side problem. Countries like India, China, etc are reducing their exports, reducing the global supply and causing the prices to increase. They mentioned a lot of coalescing contributing factors, like bio-fuels, drought, water shortages and destruction of crops due to extreme weather. Both of the articles suggested that a de-emphasis on bio-fuels would go a long way to help out in this crisis. That would be the easiest leg of this chair to shoot out, because there's practically no environmental gain from bio-fuels anyways. Presently, I don't see how changing our consumption habits would change production shortages abroad.
I'm beginning to see how we may be too opportunistic with how we manage food here, but from what I've just read, I'm not convinced that what Canadians are eating is a major contributor to this particular global problem.
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