World food prices - A looming challenge

The food riots of 2008 were a reminder of our infallibility and of how precarious life can be for the great swathes of humanity living at the very edge of subsistence.

All of a sudden the basic staples of life, which we take for granted, were not guaranteed.

Millions of people, and not just in the developing world, went hungry because the price of basic foods escalated. Civil unrest and riots followed, millions more bore it in silence.

Unfortunately we may be at that 2008 point again. Yesterday the UN warned that food prices in August reached levels close to those that provoked the food crisis of four years ago. Poor harvests around the world will exacerbate the situation.

Speaking at the Democratic convention to nominate President Barack Obama’s candidature for a second term Bill Clinton criticised winner-take-all policies and social structures that leave the vulnerable on their own.

The looming food crisis will challenge an economically struggling world but it will ask us if we support or abhor the policies so criticised by President Clinton.