“WITH grain in our hands there is no need to panic,”

Costco and Sam's clubs across the country are limiting the bags of flour and rice that you could buy ! Unbelievable, but harsh truth !!

In the current modern world, we would never think we would live to see a famine.. so where did this sudden shortage of food come from ? Some really interesting articles on the net

The silent sunami, economist.. some excerpts below !!

.. Roughly a billion people live on $1 a day. If, on a conservative estimate, the cost of their food rises 20% (and in some places, it has risen a lot more), 100m people could be forced back to this level, the common measure of absolute poverty. In some countries, that would undo all the gains in poverty reduction they have made during the past decade of growth. ...

some interesting comments on root causes and analysis of this mess (not my own, but publicised feedback to this article)
1. For years, the US and some EU countries, in an attempt to maintain food self-sufficiency, supported the cost of farming through various subsidies. Because of this, food was dumped on the world market for less than it cost to grow. This destroyed the livelihood of farmers all over the world, from Canada to Brazil, Africa to, well, everywhere. The last few rounds of World Trade talks were beset by farmers protesting against these subsidies.
2. It seems obvious that the problem is simply and solely -- too many people.....Malthus reminds us that this is a self-correcting problem, via famine, disease and wars. It would be preferable to manage a reduction in numbers of people ourselves, but society hardly seems likely to embrace this as a direction we are likely to take.
3. Perhaps this is the issue that will test the merits and demerits (and/or phoniness) of globalization which did, and does, benefit considerably the WEST commercially. It could also test the West's ability, and will, to rein in the avarice and plain heartlessness of the so called (but predominantly Western) multinationals who, inter alia, favor and amply recompense, the plantation of coffee beans in Africa for export over corn and wheat for daily sustenance). That, reining in the multinationals and whatever is done by the rich and over abundantly endowed WEST, if substantial at all would be , however , NO act or acts of charity. It could turn out to be the historically preordained due repayment for resources past plundered from the non WEST!
4. There is no shortage of food, at least not yet. The problem is that there are too many poor people that can't afford to buy it. Farmers grow enough food, but they can't afford to sell it for less than it costs to grow. The US and Europe used to subsidise food production and this forced down the price for all farmers while, inadvertently, making food affordable to the world's poor. Now, with ethanol, those subsidies are gone; food is being sold for what it costs to produce. That's a good thing, except that now a lot of people can't afford to buy it.

Finally... this comment nails it " Capitalism doesn't work when 1/6th of the world doesn't have enough capital to participate. That's the problem, and there's no easy solution".