Food & Society Guest Memo: Food Shortages and Civilizations; An Analysis and Opinion By Historian Felipe-Fernandes Armesto

The era of cheap food has been a disaster. We in the West could easily tighten our belts
By Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

The State exists to feed people. Politicians proclaim defence or law and order or social issues or wealth creation or health as their priority. But without food, nothing else matters. For most of history, leaders were those who knew how to get it - sometimes by hunting prowess, sometimes by means of a gift for commanding herds, sometimes by naked power, forcing subjects to work in the fields and dig ditches, and sometimes by mediating with the gods or spirits of nature.

Food gave rulers their legitimacy. Rulers lasted only as long as they kept people fed. Today's leaders - many of whom have gathered in Rome today for a world food security summit - have failed in this most elementary of obligations.

When food gives out, revolutions follow. Famine helped to precipitate the Ming dynasty to power in China. French revolutionaries asked Marie Antoinette for bread before they called for her head. One reason why the British gave up their Indian Raj was an awareness that they could not cope with famine. Food failure can bring down whole civilisations.

The Natufians of Syria - the first sedentary civilisation in the world, whose people once enjoyed such abundance that they could build permanent settlements while living on wild grains and products of the hunt - ran out of food 14,000 years ago. The graves of Minoan Crete, where oil and grain once filled the great palace labyrinths, are full of malnourished bones. Environmental overkill helped to exhaust the soil and empty the cities of the Maya lowlands towards the end of the first millennium, when jungle choked the hundreds of temples that once towered above the treetops.

A couple of centuries later, food failure wiped out the civilisations in the south west of North America. The Aztec empire collapsed when invaders cut off its supplies. Famines checked growth repeatedly in Europe until new crop varieties solved perennial food shortages in the 18th century.

Today's failure to deliver food for the people is worldwide. In the West, it means higher grocery bills. In much of the rest of the world, it means hunger. In at least 30 countries, it means famine. The price of staple grains has risen by an average of 80 per cent over the past two years. Some prices have trebled.

The psychological trauma is acute because the world has gone from comparative abundance to life-destroying dearth in less than a generation. Between the 1960s and 1980s, the “green revolution” - the development of high-yield hybrid staples - stacked up stockpiles and saved millions of lives. At the same time, aid agencies, governments and the United Nations revolutionised distribution and emergency response time. Now that achievement has crumbled. We seem unable to produce enough food, or to get what we can spare to those who need it.

The political convulsions have begun. The world's hunger victims are biting rubber bullets. In Haiti, the starvelings have rebelled. In West Africa, Egypt, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Madagascar they are rioting. In the West, governments' votes fall as grocery bills rise. The pundits' prescription - genetically modified food - will make the problems worse, by increasing wealth gaps, condemning poor farmers to dependency and multiplying environmental risks.

Meanwhile, most economists expect, at best, only a modest easing of prices, So is the world headed the way of the Natufians, Maya and Minoans?

A few comforting facts are worth bearing in mind. Supply will adjust to demand, especially in India and China, where most of the recent new demand has arisen. There are plenty of underexploited food resources in the world, especially in the sea, which constitutes 90 per cent of the biosphere, and is still seriously underexploited. Fish farming seems an unromantic substitute for old-fashioned fishing, but it increases the yield of selected species thousands of times over.

Although it would be disastrous if widely applied to foodstuffs, GM could solve the biofuel problem and save acreage by providing fuel from high-yielding plants. If all else fails, technology could turn plankton, insects and edible bacteria into something palatable. There is enormous scope for rationalising food distribution, and redeploying the food that the rich world wastes. Demand will slacken in any case as world population stabilises - which is bound to happen, although it may happen too late to save us.

It is normal for the world to be short of food. The brief era of cheap eating has been a disaster for the world. People in the rich world have eaten too much food, fattening themselves into obesity and sickness in consequence. Most of us would be better off with tighter belts. To make food cheap, we have poisoned farmland with chemicals, squandered precious water, abused marginal terrain and undermined biodiversity.

Low prices have impoverished farmers in the developing world. The poorest are locked into poverty - compelled, in effect, to produce surpluses of cheap grains and forgo the traditional and rare crops that might command a decent price in a fussier, pricier world market: the green revolution suppressed such exotic crops as quinoa, tef and

criollo potatoes - which the Western bourgeoisie is avidly rediscovering, now that they are rare and costly.

Mass demand for cheap standard varieties helped to strip traditional foods - including Britain's best apples and strawberries - from greengrocers' shelves. Huge tracts of productive land were smothered for housing, industry and the curse of “leisure” - really just a crass euphemism for mindless forms of expensive idleness. Ironically, cheap food has been a main cause of the present shortages, because it has made food production economically unattractive.

So it is time to put our money where our mouths are. If we valued food more, we would have more of it at higher standards. We would eat more sparingly and more discriminatingly. We would have more of those delicious rare varieties, because we would be willing to pay for them. The present shortages may provoke bloody revolutions as well as harrowing famines. But if they cause a revolution in our attitudes, their longer-term effects will transform the world for the better. We have to get used to paying more for food - and to learn to like it.

Felipe Fernández-Armesto is a historian. His books include Food: A History and Civilizations. You can learn more about Mr. Fernandez-Armesto and his work here.

Natural~Specialty Foods Memo Editor's Note: The opinions expressed in the essay are those of the writer only. This essay also appears in the June 3, 2008 'The Times', United Kingdom.

Food & Society Guest Memo: While It Won't Result in Starvation; Japan Faces Self-Created Butter Shortage None the Less

Butter spread thin in Japan

Bread is buttered on neither side as the milk product has become hard to find. There are reasons, but try telling that to the bakeries.

By Bruce Wallace, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

May 18, 2008

TOKYO -- The food shortage that has hit Japan is announced by the glaring gap on supermarket shelves next to the margarine and the sour cream and just above the cheese.

The butter shelf is empty.

The rich yellow stuff has all but vanished from grocery stores across Japan, with the world's second-biggest economy, where fine foods are prized and aisles otherwise groan with abundance. Some stores have tried to ration the few bricks that occasionally arrive by limiting customers to a pack or two, but in most places merchants have been reduced to posting signs apologizing for having none.

Nor does anyone know when butter will be back. Japanese milk production has dropped over the last two years, leaving less available to be churned into butter.

Even bakeries that buy in bulk are finding it hard to get enough, which crimps their ability to turn out the croissants, cakes and quiches that have shouldered their way into the Japanese diet.

"We're in trouble," says Seiko Nakano, 27, who runs Levain, a small but well-known French bakery in a residential neighborhood of Tokyo, who has been told she will not receive any more butter until Tuesday, a month later than expected.

In an attempt to stretch its stock, the bakery has cut down on the number of pies it produces and cut out the extra croissants it usually bakes for the weekend rush.

"We've had to come up with some new items that use less butter, like cookies," Nakano says, standing in front of cleaned-out shelves on a weekday afternoon. "But you're talking about flavor. How can you replace butter?"

As global food shortages and ballooning prices are rocking the desperately poor from Africa to Southeast Asia, Japan's pastry problems qualify as barely more than an inconvenience. No one expects the famously controlled Japanese to riot in the refrigerated sections of supermarkets.

But the case of the disappearing butter has unnerved people here, delivering a psychological blow to shoppers utterly unaccustomed to dealing with shortages.

The butter deficit arises from a convergence of market factors that has chased hundreds of domestic dairy farmers out of business in the last two years. The sequence began when Japanese consumers began to drink less milk, a decline that coincided with a deluge of media coverage airing claims that milk is bad for your health.

Experts say consumption also has been affected by a low birthrate, which means fewer elementary school students getting a free daily carton.

The shrinking demand left the country so awash in milk two years ago that producers on the northern island of Hokkaido were dumping it down sewers. A Hokkaido beer company tried to use some of the excess by brewing a low-malt beer that was one-third milk. Called "bilk" and described as having a sweet taste, the concoction didn't catch on.

But though popularity has declined for milk as a beverage, its use in the production of cheese is expected to jump 15% this year, and demand for the less profitable butter holds steady. The result, the Japanese dairy association explains, is that there is not much milk left to make butter.

"We have plenty of milk; just no butter," dairy deliveryman Kazunari Shimakura says as he unloads cartons of milk outside Levain. Shimakura had never seen a shortage in his 20 years of delivering supplies. When he parks his truck these days, people come up to ask whether he can sell them a pack or two of butter on the side.

Last month, the government stepped in to urge the country's four largest dairy product companies to churn out more butter. And the agriculture board is moving up its scheduled purchases of butter imported from Australia and elsewhere by six months in an attempt to get some back on the shelves. Japan imports about 10% of its butter, but usually does not go to international markets until fall.

This year's butter imports are expected to hit an all-time high and are almost certain to send prices sharply higher.

Food & Society Guest Memo: Policies That Are Making Global Food Crisis Worse

Policies that are making food crisis worse
Rich, poor countries alike contribute to the problem
By SEBASTIAN MALLABY

We are now several months into the global food crisis, which is a much bigger deal than the subprime meltdown for most people in the world. Food prices have almost doubled in three years, threatening to push 100 million people into absolute poverty, undoing much of the development progress of the past few years. The hunger has triggered riots from Haiti to Egypt to Ethiopia, threatening political stability; it has conjured up a raft of protectionist policies, threatening globalization. And yet the response to this crisis from governments the world over has been lackadaisical or worse.

Start with the lunatic story of rice stockpiles in Japan. A new paper from the Center for Global Development describes how Japan's government imports rice to comply with its global trade commitments but withholds most of that rice from consumers lest they decide they prefer it to the local sort. Japanese traditionalists view the consumption of sticky, short-grained rice as a patriotic duty. So rather than letting prototypical Mrs. Watanabe corrupt her children's dietary habits, Japan stores much of its imported rice until it has become unfit for human consumption, whereupon it is sold to feed livestock.

From the perspective of Japan, stockpiling rice is a costly exercise in chauvinism, but Japan can afford that. From the world's perspective, the stockpiling is more serious. More than 3 billion people depend on rice as their daily staple, and half of them are very poor. Japan could save many of them from hunger if it released its stocks.

The scandal is not just Japanese, however. For Japan to sell its rice outside its borders, it needs permission from the countries that supplied it -- the United States, Thailand and Vietnam.

A bit of U.S. leadership could deliver that permission easily, but the Bush administration is apparently worried about a backlash from American rice wholesalers, who see no downside in high prices, thank you very much.

Congress passed a farm bill last week with thunderous bipartisan support. The bill includes reasonable subsidies for low-income Americans hit by high food prices, but it also sprays money at farmers who already earn more than the average taxpayer and it contains shockingly little for the world's poor. Congress is considering a separate bill that would boost international food aid more substantially. But that measure has been met with shameful indifference by lawmakers and consequently has stalled.

Congress won't even act on a common sense proposal from the Bush administration that food aid be reformed. If the United States bought some of the food that it donates from other countries, it could get aid to the needy faster and more cheaply. But that would upset American farmers and shipping interests, as a new Council on Foreign Relations paper emphasizes. The president's proposal has few takers on the Hill.

The Europeans, for their part, have their own way of entrenching hunger. Just as Japan is wedded to its rice culture, Europe is irrationally hostile to genetically modified food. Study after study has found no danger in seeds that have been manipulated to grow better, withstand insects or survive in arid soil. But the Europeans still feel squeamish, and their hang-up deters Africans from taking advantage of crop science lest their exports be barred from European markets. Again, a peccadillo that to Europeans is affordable starves people in the poor world.

Finally, poor countries themselves have made things worse. Panicked at the prospect of food riots, countries with crop surpluses have forbidden exports in an attempt to bottle up supply and keep prices down. More than 40 countries have imposed some kind of export restraint, with the result that countries suffering food deficits have seen prices hit the roof. This nationalized hoarding is frustrating international relief efforts. The World Food Program has sought to buy food from countries with surpluses, such as Pakistan, to ship to desperate neighbors such as Afghanistan. But Pakistan drags its feet about selling.

Part of the solution to the food crisis, as Oxford economist Paul Collier has written, is to promote large-scale commercial agriculture in the poor world. But for that to happen, investors have to know that there will be a market for their exports. They won't risk their money if Congress is going to subsidize their American competitors. They won't risk their money if European prejudice is going to prevent them from using the best seeds that scientists offer.

And they won't risk their money if the governments of developing countries short-circuit their profits with crazy export bans.

In short, the governments of the world are conspiring to undermine farming in developing countries. Do they mean to inflict hunger on tens of millions of people?

Natural~Specialty Foods Memo Editor's Note: Mr. Mallaby is a fellow for International Economics with the Council on Foreign Relations. The opinions expressed in Mr. Mallaby's essay are his. The essay first appeared in the Washington Post.

Retail Memo: Similar to What We've Argued About the U.S., Canadian Grocers and Food Industry Players Say 'Era of Cheap Food' Coming to an End At Home

Like has been the case in the United States, food and grocery prices in Canada have been relatively cheap historically, compared to the rest of the world.

Canada, like its U.S. neighbor, benefits from a robust agricultural sector. The proximity of the two nations, along with strong trading agreements, also allows the two North American countries to trade agricultural commodities like wheat, corn, rice and soybeans, as well as finished food and agricultural products, with each other at low costs because of the free trade agreements and relatively short transportation distances.

Like David Ryzebol, an executive for Safeway Canada said in an article in today's Calgary Herald, a daily newspaper based in Canada's largest agricultural region, "In Canada we have an extremely cheap, efficient foods system."

"We've seen huge increases in prices of fuel, prices of homes, we've seen costs to grocers go up, but as a rule we've kept prices very low," Ryzebol says, regarding how Canada's supermarket operators have been able to hold the line despite soaring prices of agricultural commodities and food and grocery products made from them.

However, like in that other, nearby "era of cheap food" nation the U.S., despite being able to hold the line in terms of dramatic food and grocery price spikes, Canadian grocers too are having to raise the retail prices on fresh and packaged foods across their store aisles regularly, as the costs of wheat, corn, rice and soybeans continue to soar in costs globally.

As we've detailed before in Natural~Specialty Foods Memo, supermarket chains and independents in the U.S. have been holding the line in terms of reflecting the full price increases they get often weekly on food and grocery items. Canadian grocery buyers and category managers have been doing the same, as directed by their bosses.

For example, lets take bread. Since January, supermarket chains in the U.S. and Canada have received a series of price increases from their fresh bread suppliers of about 15%. However, the majority of the grocery chains have only increased their retail prices on bread by about 10-12%, absorbing the remaining the 3-4% out of gross margin.

This behavior can't last forever though, especially in the case of publicly-traded supermarket chains which must meet analysts' guidance for quarterly sales and profit numbers or risk having their stock value plummet.

And, despite holding the line on retail prices, the costs of basic food and grocery products are still soaring at the supermarket.

Eggs for example have increased by 30% since January, 2008. Milk and cheese are up by double-digits as well. And even though the grocers have held the line on bread, a 10-12% price increase is still serious for consumers.

Packaged goods made with wheat, corn, rice, soybeans and other staples also are soaring. It's predicted that overall food costs are about 4% higher in the U.S. and Canada this year, compared to last. Further, food prices are expected to increase by 5% overall this year.

That's significant for consumers who also are faced with a perfect cost of living storm: higher food prices, soaring gasoline and home energy costs, tight credit and rising unemployment.

The 4% overall food price increase, which doesn't look all that bad on the face of it, doesn't tell the complete story however. That's because, as we explained above, most everyday grocery items like bread, milk, eggs and other staples are experiencing double-digit price increases at the supermarket.

In today's Calgary Herald story, Dave Wilkes, the senior vice president of the Canadian Council of Grocery distributors, says Canadian grocers' and food producers' ability to hold the line on huge price increases is wearing thin.

"We really are experiencing a sort of perfect storm--a combination of changing fuel prices and commodity costs--that is changing the costs of the food industry," Wilkes says. "There's a variety of factors leading to this change and none of these are expected to change over the short term for sure."

Wilkes' analysis that these factors are changing the costs of the food industry mirrors our argument here on Natural~Specialty Foods Memo that what has been essentially called the "era of cheap food" in North America and to a lessor extent in other parts of the rich, developed world is coming to an end.

We expect to see continued soaring prices for basic commodities like wheat, corn, rice and soybeans for at least the next two years, before supply starts to better meet demand. At that point we think for a while in the western world at least we will see annual cost of food increases more on the order of 2.8 -to- 3% or so.

However, the huge increases of over 60% for rice in just the last five months, 100-plus% for wheat in the last three years, 50-plus% for corn in the last two years--plus similar whopping price increases to come this year and next--will be built into the costs of such commodities by the time prices level out in two years.

As a result, we think it will be fair to say at that point the "era of cheap food" in North America and in other rich, western nations has come to an end. Food prices in Western Europe are already considerably higher than in North America and are increasing by about the same percentages, for example.

Keep in mind, much if not most of the dramatic price increases in these basic food commodities is because of the soaring costs of oil, gasoline, diesel fuel and other fuel energy sources, which there is no end in site of at this point in time.

Increased demand for more western-like foods by consumers in rapidly-developing China and India also is in part a cause, as is in the case of corn, particularly in North America, the shifting of a significant percentage of crops from food-grade corn to fuel-based corn.

However, the major cause of the escalating cost of food is the soaring price of fuel, which is used in every aspect of farming--from powering farm equipment and trucks to get crops to market, to delivering finished food and grocery products along the logistics chain and more.

With oil now well over $100 barrel, and continuing to climb, fuel--and how much and fast it will continue to increase in price--is the big variable in our analysis in the food price increase situation.

Keep in mind, just five years ago a barrel of oil cost less than half of what it currently is selling for on the market today. Further, for a number of years in the 1990's, we were seeing $10 -to- $15 a barrel oil.

The dramatic climb to $100-plus a barrel oil, with the resulting across the board price increases in gasoline and other energy sources, can't be emphasised too much in our analysis as being the leading cause of soaring food prices.

The silver lining for consumers is that the North American retail food and grocery industry is extremely efficient and competitive. If not for that fact, food prices would be much higher in the stores than they currently are.

Many leading supermarket chains are rapidly adding renewable energy sources like wind and solar to their distribution facilities and even store rooftops as a way to decrease the percentage of fossil fuels required to power their operations.

Grocers and distributors like Safeway Stores, Inc and others also are converting their truck fleets from petroleum-based diesel fuel to bio fuels, which of course begs the corn ethanol question, but is a wise move we believe because the next generation of bio fuels will be made from grasses and other non-food crops.

Leading supermarket chains and independents also are employing efficiencies so they can offer better price promotions on food and grocery items to consumers during this period of soaring food prices.

Hotter weekly retail ads are coming out in both Canada and the U.S. designed to get cash-pressed shoppers in the supermarket doors, where once inside they also will buy some higher margin items it is hoped by the grocers who are willing to reduce margins on the promoted items because the industry is so competitive.

Numerous supermarket and mass merchandising chains like Kroger Co., SuperValu, Inc., Wal-Mart and others in the U.S. are offering consumers a 10% bonus if they redeem their soon to be received tax rebate checks at the stores for gift cards.

Tax rebate checks ranging from $300 -to- $1,200 for every American who filed a 2007 income tax return started going out in the mail last week.

These and many other U.S. grocery chains will add at least 15% onto a consumers gift card if they cash the check at their stores and convert it to a store gift card that must be spent with the grocer. That's an extra $30, to as much as an extra $120, for shoppers who do so.

Such a bonus can go a long way for many consumers right now. It's also a way to gain sales for grocers in these bad economic times. Further, it's an example of that industry innovation in terms of trying to hold the line on price increases we mentioned earlier.

As the "era of cheap food" comes to an end, we will see food and grocery retailers, as well as suppliers, come up with numerous ways--such as the move towards a "greener" food industry, creating increased efficiencies, and other innovations yet to be thought of--to continue to hold the line within reason on increasing food prices.

Key to doing so across the board though is finding a solution and alternative to North America's heavy reliance on petroleum and the fuels which are made from it.

That's why, as one example, it's essential that food and grocery retailers and suppliers move even faster in the areas of renewable energy sources, conservation, alternative fuel uses and other "green" practices.

Doing so is an economic necessity as much as an ethical or environmental imperative. After all, there is no question the "era of cheap fossil fuels" has ended.

Food & Society Memo Global Food Crisis Special Feature: Bloomberg: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Will Double Global Farm Aid as Food Crisis Worsens

Gates Foundation to Boost Farm Aid 50% as Food Crisis Deepens
By Christopher Swann

April 24 (Bloomberg) -- The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will increase spending on farming projects by 50 percent this year as surging food prices threaten starvation and social unrest in poor countries.

The world's largest charitable foundation will give grants for agricultural programs totaling about $240 million this year, up from $160 million last year, said Rajiv Shah, the foundation's director of agricultural development and a former adviser to 2000 Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore.

``We are ramping up activity,'' Shah said in a telephone interview yesterday from Seattle, where the foundation is based. ``The focus will be on encouraging extra supply, which is one reason global food prices have climbed so high.''

New funding from Gates for agriculture in poverty-stricken countries comes as food prices soar around the world. The Gates programs aim to increase farm productivity, a task that has received less attention from larger aid institutions.

The proportion of global development aid devoted to agriculture is 4 percent, according to figures from the World Bank. The share of World Bank financing devoted to farming dropped to 12 percent in 2007, from 30 percent in 1980.

``The strength of the foundation is that because it is not constrained by politics, it can afford to take a longer view on food supply,'' said Ruth Levine, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, an aid research group in Washington. ``They are working on research and activities that have been very under-funded'' by other groups, she said.

Boosting Output

The foundation plans to plow the additional funds into existing projects, including developing more resilient crops, training farmers and helping small producers gain greater access to markets for their goods, Shah said.

For the past two years, the group has invested in seeds that better resist disease and drought, particularly in Africa, where productivity lags behind other developing nations. The effort has already led to more disease-resistant maize varieties for East Africa and sweet potatoes fortified with extra vitamin A, Shah said.

As the global economy accelerated in the past five years, the number of people living on $1 or less a day declined by 150 million, according to the World Bank. Those gains may be reversed unless rich countries step up their donations, officials said.

Global food prices surged 57 percent last month from a year earlier, according to the United Nations, and the World Bank warns civil disturbances may be triggered in 33 countries.

Farm Subsidies

Governments from Guatemala to the Philippines to Indonesia are seeking to combat food inflation by curbing exports or removing import duties on basic food staples such as rice. Brazil called for an end to farm subsidies in developed countries that create price distortions and leave millions of agricultural producers in poorer nations unable to compete.

African countries are expected to be among the most vulnerable to rising food prices. About 70 percent of the continent's population works in farming, according to World Bank figures. Even so, Africa is dependent on foreign producers, importing a net $12.7 billion a year in food.

According to the Gates Foundation, 16 of the 18 most undernourished countries are in Africa.

``The challenge is to ensure that they can sell enough of their goods so that they have an economic incentive to use better techniques,'' Shah said. ``We are helping them to meet formal food standards demanded by bigger food producing firms and also talking to these companies in order to link them up with smaller farmers.''

He declined to say which food companies the foundation is negotiating with.

Radio Waves

The Gates crop-improvement program encompasses 16 African countries that aim to give farmers access to better-quality seeds through a network of 9,000 seed dealers.

Gates is also funding projects to provide information through radio broadcasts to help train farmers in Mali, Ghana, Malawi, Uganda and Tanzania. The foundation is funding the development of hermetic storage technology to protect cowpea -- one of the most important crops in West and Central Africa.

``Almost no country has achieved a rapid ascent from hunger and poverty without raising agricultural productivity,'' the foundation says on its Web site.

The charity, created in 1994 by the founder of Microsoft Corp. and his wife, focused initially on health and education. In May 2006 it created launched a drive for a ``Green Revolution'' in Africa, in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation.

The Gates Foundation's agriculture staff has only about 35 employees, compared with about 250 staff working on agriculture at the World Bank, the Washington-based lender and grant-maker that's owned by its 185 member countries.

Last year the World Bank devoted $3 billion to agriculture projects.

``The sums of money might be small compared to the World Bank but they get a very big bang for their buck because they are focusing on long neglected areas,'' Peter Timmer, a visiting professor at Stanford University's Program on Food Security and the Environment. ``They have chosen a perfect time to focus on this area.''

Food & Society Memo Global Food Crisis Special Feature: Opinion: 'Food Crisis--But it's No Surprise'; Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein

Natural~Specialty Foods Memo Editor's Note: Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein has been invloved in the issues of global poverty and hunger for many years as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nation's World Food Program.

Princess Haya is the daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan, and the wife of the Ruler of Dubai.

In her opinion piece, Princess Haya tells a story her father told her as a young girl about a promise former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made at the World Food Conference in Rome during the 1974 global food crisis 34 years ago.

She doesn't blame Kissinger, but then goes on to discuss how the promise he made regarding world hunger sadly hasn't come to pass more than three decades later.

Princess Haya also goes beyond that single espisode and comments on what she believes are some of the causes of world hunger and the current global food crisis.

While we are pro-democracy rather than pro-monarchy, we none-the-less recommend Princess Haya's opinion piece on world hunger and the current global food crisis. She's dedicated much of her adult life to working to raise awareness of global hunger and related issues.

Read Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein's opinion piece on world hunger and the global food crisis here.

Food & Society Memo Global Food Crisis Special Feature: Nations Throughout the World Are Curbing Food Imports to Secure Supplies and Limit Inflation

The commodity prices of the world's basic foods--rice, wheat, corn, soy and edible oils--are soaring. Rice is up about 68% since just January of this year. The cost of wheat has increased a whopping 30% over last year's prices, and the price of corn is not far behind. Soy prices are also seeing double-digit price spikes.

These price increases are just the beginning, most experts believe. As a result of these double-digit hikes, nearly every food product--from rice, bread and tortillas, to milk, eggs, cereals and pasta--is soaring at the supermarkets and food stalls of the world.

The world's stockpiles of rice, wheat and corn also are near 50-year lows.

These real price hikes, combined with the decreased stockpiles and lots of government and consumer uncertainty over the global food supply, has resulting in numerous food exporting countries curbing the quantities of basic foodstuffs they export overseas, despite the fact most of these nation's rely on food exports to bring in much needed revenue.

As we reported earlier, Asia's rice exporting countries are curbing rice exports to various degrees. However, it's not just rice exports that are being curbed, nor is it just Asian nation's that are doing the export curbing.

Rather, numerous countries throughout the world have started to limit the types and quantities of the foods the export. Below is a brief summary of some of those nations, and the types of basic foods they have started to limit in terms of exporting overseas:

Thai farmers dry rice grains at a rice farm in Suphan-Buri, Thailand. (Photo: courtesy Getty Images.) Thailand is the world's largest exporter of rice, with 31% of the global market. Last year it exported 9.4 million tons of rice, out of a total of 20 million tons produced. Thus far, unlike numerous Asian nations, Thailand hasn't imposed any import restrictions on rice.

Argentina: The nation is the world's four-largest exporter of wheat. Argentina has extended the closure of its wheat export registry by pushing back the date that new wheat shipments can start to leave the country. This has had the effect of extending the time when wheat exports scheduled to be shipped to other countries takes effect, thus creating a greater stockpile of wheat for domestic use and consumption.

Cambodia: The Southeast Asian nation has announced a two-month ban on rice exports.

Vietnam: the nation has banned all rice exports until June, 2008, at which time it says it will evaluate the policy.

Egypt: The country is banning all rice exports until October of this year.

India: India has banned exports of all varieties of rice except Basmati rice. India also has dumped the normal import duties it charges exporters on edible oils as a way to increase imports of the foodstuffs into the nation.

Indonesia: The Southeast Asian nation has stopped exporting all exports of medium-grade rice.

Pakistan: The country is more worried about the food imports it relies on than on its food exports. Currently, the nation says it needs to double its wheat imports in order to meet domestic demand. In order to generate additional income to purchase more wheat, Pakistan is considering putting a value-added fee or tax on all of the rice it exports.

Russia: The nation's government just approved extending its already high tariffs on wheat and barley exports. These tariffs were set to expire next month in May.

Ukraine: This eastern European country suspended all wheat exports for the first week of April and is considering doing so again. It also has reduced its barley exports significantly.

Kazakhstan: the nation has suspended all wheat exports until September 1, 2008.

Malawi: Malawi has halted all corn exports except those to the nearby nation of Zimbabwe.

Guinea: This less-developed county has banned the export of all agricultural, forestry, livestock, fishing and oil products.

Food & Society Memo Global Food Crisis Special Feature: How You Can Help the Hungry At No Cost to You; Just Spend A Few Minutes At FreeRice.Com

What if we told you there was a way you could help those people in the poorest nations in the world who are currently suffering the most with the growing global food price crisis without spending a penny of your own money?

Additionally, what if we told you you could do so without even leaving the computer where you are currently reading Natural~Specialty Foods Memo?

Further, what if we added that spending just ten minutes of your time playing a fun and educational online vocabulary-building game would result in a donation of rice to hungry people who desperately need it?

Yes, all it takes is a little bit of your time!

Like us, we hope you would say...tell me about it, so I can play the game and get free rice to hungry throughout the world.

Here is what you do:

First, go to the website http://www.freerice.com/.

Once there, you will be at the home page of the vocabulary game. There you will see a word for you to define. There are four possible answers. Just click on the word/answer that best defines the vocabulary word.

If you get the correct definition, you move on to the next word. There's actually no losing, because if you get the answer wrong, you still move on to another word choice. It's a win-win situation--both for you in building your vocabulary skills, and more importantly for the world's hungry.

For every word definition you get correct, FreeRice.com's sponsors (you can see the sponsors' ads across the very bottom of the web page) donate 20 grains of rice to the United Nation's World Food Program to feed hungry people in the world's most food-challenged regions and nations.

We just spent 15 minutes playing the FreeRice vocabulary game. Even though we aren't all that bright, we still managed to get lots of word definitions correct, resulting in a donation of lots of free grains of rice thanks to the sponsoring companies.

Since we know Natural~Specialty Foods Memo's (NSFM) readers are much brighter than its writers and publishers are--we expect you to do even better than we did in your 10 or 15 minutes playing the vocabulary game on the website.

We also ask our readers to please email this piece from NSFM to as many people as you can so that as much free rice as possible can get donated.

Just imagine if a just a couple thousand people get the link from Natural~Specialty Foods Memo and each play FreeRice.com for just ten minutes each. The result would be lots of free rice for those most in need at this time of soaring global food prices and growing hunger.

We invite you to take some time to play the vocabulary game--and to share this piece with all those on your email list so they can play it as well and generate free rice for those most in need of basic food.

Click here to go to the FreeRice website.

Food & Society Memo Global Food Crisis Special Feature: Asia Limits Rice Exports As Prices, Supply and Uncertainty Rise

Natural~Specialty Foods Memo Editor's Note: Asia accounts for about 76% of the 30 million tons of rice exported annually. The price of rice is soaring globally, in part because many exporting countries like those in Asia have dramatically reduced exports of the food staple do to fears of shortages at home.

Asia is divided into two nation camps so to speak in terms of rice production: The "rice haves," those Asian nations that are able to produce enough rice to meet domestic consumption, and the "rice have-nots," which are the countries in Asia that can't produce enough rice for their people and therefore must import varying amounts of the food staple.

Christian Science Monitor correspondent David Montero provides a look at domestic rice production in Asia and those Asian "rice have" nations and those countries in Asia that can't produce enough rice to meet domestic consumption needs and thus must rely on imports.

Read Mr. Montero's report and analysis here.

The Christian Science Monitor also has a number of related stories and Podcasts about the global food crisis linked on the article here which offer additional knowledge and insight about the pressing issue.