Two major issues that directly impact World Food Day are climate change and biofuels. In 2012 climate change induced extreme weather has wreaked havoc on world food prices and threatens to increase global hunger. The use of agricultural lands for Biofuels have also increased the likelihood of global hunger. In the US, 40 percent of maize yields are converted to ethanol to power vehicles. The UN estimates that 1 in 8 people on the planet are now living in chronic hunger conditions.
Grain reserves around the world are dangerously low and key agricultural foods are forecasted to fall dangerously low in 2013 due to devastating droughts that have hit the US, Russia, the Black Sea region and Australia. Conversely excessive rain has destroyed wheat, maize and apple crops in parts of northern Europe.
The inadequacy of agricultural yields is partly attributable to large scale chemical-dependent farming. There is evidence to support the contention that ecological farming methods are more effective than the methods employed by corporate agriculture.
© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.
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