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Food Shortages Lead to Global Rioting
These are hard times for the world's poorest, hungriest people. A growing food crisis has led to riots in places like Haiti, parts of Africa like Egypt, and Asia. There are several reasons for the food shortage. One problem is the rising cost of energy.
People use gas to drive the trucks, trains, ships and planes that carry food from where it's grown to where it's eaten. When the price of gas goes up, so does the price of food. Another problem is global climate change. Australia used to grow enough rice to feed 20 million people each year. But years of drought have cut Australia's rice crop by 98 percent.
All these problems mean that the price of bread and rice is up 45 percent in some places. For most Americans, paying another dollar for a cup of rice isn't fun, but it's not a matter of life and death.
But in some other countries, a family might only have a few dollars a day, or even less, to live on. For those families, these higher food prices mean that kids are going to bed without any dinner. Some only get two spoonfuls of rice a day. When they don't know what else to do, they have riots, break into stores, or do whatever they can to tell the world that they are starving.
I'm Michelle and that's what happened in the world this week.
Photo: AP
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