The Guardian, the UK's mainstream bastion of the liberal left, is doing a great series on the current food crisis.
I'm impressed by the quality of the articles that it delivers. The Telegraph, the right wing equivalent, has its own Earth page at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/index.jhtml . Unfortunately there's a picture of bonnie Prince Charlie wanting to save the rain forests of Brazil. A nobler goal no doubt, but it doesn't compare to the information provided by the Guardian.
Go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/28/food.philippines to check out the story. They follow a local farmer who now spends double on his food bill compared to twelve months ago. At the moment it's about 90 - 100 Philippine Pesos a day. That's about USD2.27 or about GBP1.17 or EUR 1.48 on a good day. Mostly it seems he spends about half that, around 50 Pesos a day. The family diet consists mainly of rice and vegetables with the odd bit of chicken if they're lucky.
To find out what it's worth in your currency, try the fantastic converter at http://coinmill.com/PHP_calculator.html.
Our food bills are about £20 pounds a day, sometimes higher. Part of the cost is in the service provided to deliver it to your cupboard but I'm sure that most people living in big city's don't know how food is produced and couldn't say what it costs.
Moving onto the food summit in Rome we've witnessed another sniveling display of country's promoting and protecting their own agendas without consideration for others. I'm not disappointed by this, it's expected that this grand stages produce any great changes.
What I want is for someone to start talking rationally and logically about how 6.7 billion people extricate themselves from our own mess.
Any takers?
No comments:
Post a Comment