Why Food Costs are Climbing by Eric Reguly

Rome - Fatal food riots in Haiti. Violent food-price protests in Egypt and Ivory Coast. Rice so valuable it is transported in armoured convoys. Soldiers guarding fields and warehouses. Export bans to keep local populations from starving.

For the first time in decades, the spectre of widespread hunger for millions looms as food prices explode. Two words not in common currency in recent years - famine and starvation - are now being raised as distinct possibilities in the poorest, food-importing countries.

Unlike past food crises, solved largely by throwing aid at hungry stomachs and boosting agricultural productivity, this one won't go away quickly, experts say. Prices are soaring and stand every chance of staying high because this crisis is different.

A swelling global population, soaring energy prices, the clamouring for meat from the rising Asian middle class, competition from biofuels and hot money pouring into the commodity markets are all factors that make this crisis unique and potentially calamitous. Even with concerted global action, such as rushing more land into cultivation, it will take years to fix the problem.

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In Pakistan,

says Sahib Haq, an official with World Food Programme’s Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping Unit in Pakistan, food prices rose at least 35 percent in the past year compared with an 18 percent rise in minimum wages. “There is a very big gap between the increase in prices and increase in wages … the purchasing power of the poor has gone down by almost 50 percent,” Haq said. The price of wheat flour is expected to shoot up by 40 percent or more in the coming months, according to grain industry officials. “There will be a big crisis,” Haq said. The new coalition government, which took power last month, raised the support price it pays farmers to buy wheat to ensure adequate supplies, but Haq said the move would result in sharply rising flour prices in the months ahead.