High Food Prices Hamper Hunger-Relief Efforts

With skyrocketing food and fuel prices, food-aid programs worldwide are unable to feed the growing number of hungry people, reports The Los Angeles Times.

Josette Sheeran, executive director of the United Nations World Food Program, cites high food and fuel prices, demand for biofuels, a faltering dollar, and poor harvests as factors that have greatly increased the costs associated with feeding the hungry, even as the numbers of needy people swell.

Confronting a half-billion-dollar deficit, the agency issued an emergency appeal for funds last month and is considering reducing rations or removing people from its program completely. In an analysis of 121 countries, the World Food Program found 40 nations to be suffering from serious hunger or in danger of doing so.

In the near future, the U.N. program anticipates riots and political unrest, such as happened recently in Egypt and Pakistan, with reductions in health and education levels for affected countries in the long term.

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