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A man walks through the streets of Dakar, Senegal,
April 26, to protest rising food prices. More than 1,000 people, some
carrying empty rice sacks, joined the demonstration.
CNS PHOTO/NORMAND BLOUIN/REUTERS |
By Barbara J. Fraser
Catholic News Service
LIMA, Peru (CNS) — As protests over rising food
costs spread around the globe, experts warn that high prices are here
to stay, and Catholic bishops are calling for governments to take emergency
measures to keep their poorest citizens from going hungry.
Already this year, demonstrations linked to spiraling food prices have
struck more than a dozen countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Protests forced Haitian Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis out of office
April 12, and demonstrators have been killed in Cameroon, Peru and Mozambique.
The price increases are fueled by a variety of factors that “are
all coming together at once,” said Lisa Kuennen, director of the
public resource group at Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops’
international relief and development agency.
Drought last year in Australia and Canada pushed wheat prices up, while
flooding destroyed crops in various countries, she said. High oil prices
have increased the price of petroleum-based fertilizers and increased
transportation costs.
Another factor is the rising standard of living in China and India, which
has led to increased demand for luxury foods such as meat and milk. Because
it takes seven or eight pounds of grain to produce a pound of meat, increased
meat consumption drives up demand for grain and, therefore, the price.
In China, per-capita milk consumption quadrupled between 1990 and 2000,
while poultry consumption more than doubled and the consumption of fish
nearly doubled. In India, the consumption of meat, milk and fish also
has increased.
Price increases hit poor countries — and their poorest citizens
— hardest.
In Guatemala, the price of tortillas, a staple food, has risen 30 percent
in the past few months. Poor Mexicans, who eat nearly a pound of tortillas
a day per person, have seen the price double in the past two years. Workers
earn the minimum wage of about $4 a day.
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