Food prices may trigger unrest in developing countries, World Bank warns

Food prices may trigger unrest in developing countries, World Bank warns

Food prices worldwide have surged to alarming levels and have brought an additional 44 million people to abject poverty according to the World Bank.

The rise of food costs have played a substantial role in sparking unrest in Tunisia and Egypt in recent weeks, and a surge in prices in the global food market may trigger instability elsewhere.

"Global food prices are rising to dangerous levels and threaten tens of millions of poor people around the world," said World Bank president Robert Zoellick said in a statement Tuesday.

The Food Price Watch indicates that global food prices have climbed 15 percent from October 2010 to January 2011. For the past 12 months, food costs have already risen 29 percent, just 3 percent lower than peak levels reached in 2008.

"The price hike is already pushing millions of people into poverty, and putting stress on the most vulnerable, who spend more than half of their income on food," Zoellick said.

The extreme poverty threshold as currently defined by the World Bank is $1.25 per day for an individual. More people have been pushed to the brink of extreme poverty and are being forced to eat less often and consume unhealthy foods if they manage to get some at all. In comparison, the extreme poverty limit was $1 per day in 2008, when 105 million people  became extremely poor.

The World Bank, who is implementing its Global Food Crisis Response Program, said the poverty numbers would have been even worse if not for harvest gains in Africa which have tempered the increase in food prices.

Posted by James Fried on Wednesday February 16 2011, 4:54 AM EST. Ref: AFP. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Finance. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0