Riots over food shortages and higher prices

As TimesOnline reports, slowly, rioting over food shortages and higher prices has begun.

Population pressure and increased wealth are mainly to blame for the resurgence of food insecurity. More people are eating meat and dairy products in Asia, which increases the demand on the animal-feed industry.

They also talk about how biofuels is threatening world food production.

And in The Star:

Peter Brabeck, CEO of Nestlé SA, the world’s largest food company, foresees a struggle between the food and biofuel industries over arable land as fresh water supplies diminish.

“We will not find sufficient water to produce all the crops,” Brabeck said while reporting his firm’s financial results last week. “There will be a fierce fight for arable land.”

Arable-land acreage is indeed shrinking, even factoring out its conversion to production of fuel feedstock. Several million hectares of farmland disappear each year, as growing economies convert it into residential subdivisions and industrial parks. Declining fresh-water supplies further diminish the amount of land available for farming.