Global increase in food prices hits impoverished
Apr 10th, 2008 by Jon Posted in Nicaragua News | 4 Comments
Guardian news just released a report that corroborates the observations and accounts I have been hearing on the ground in Nicaragua. With the increase in food prices, the poor are the ones being affected the most. With more income being spent on food, this leaves little for anything else.
In Bluefields, it costs $0.75 USD for a loaf of bread which in itself doesn’t seem like much. But when you consider that a laborer in Bluefields makes $5 USD/day (assuming they have employment), that is a large portion of your income spent on bread alone. This doesn’t even account for other commodities like cooking oil, milk, rice, and beans… all of which are also increasing in price.
According to the Guardian, Nicaragua saw its poverty rate jump 10.7% compared to the 2.6% surveyed from other countries including Bolivia, Cambodia, Madagascar, Malawi, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Peru, Vietnam and Zambia.
The Guardian article cites two factors: increasing commodities cost, and stockpiling. With an increase in commodity demand, cost has gone up and supply has decreased. As a result, richer countries are stockpiling resources to offset cost of commodities. This affects poorer countries because now not only are the costs higher because of increased global demand, but supplies are now even smaller because of both demand and stockpiling elsewhere.
Phew, that’s a run-on paragraph… but the net result is poor countries are suffering because of constantly increasing costs of commodities. The poor get poorer just to survive. Relief needs to come from the outside, but how can that happen if richer countries are looking out for their own priorities?
As one person said to me during my stay in Bluefields in March… “Bluefields is nice as long as you have something to eat”.
Technorati Tags: Nicaragua, food, poor, Bluefields, income, poverty, commodities, cost
April 11th, 2008 at 9:12 am
[...] a delicious twist of irony, following the reports of sky-rocketing food prices having an effect in increasing poverty in Nicaragua, April 13th is [...]
April 11th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Jon, thanks for publishing this information! It is a very sad reality and the good thing about having facts like these is it can perhaps help us all to use them to get more funds in this country to help make a difference.
April 14th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Yes. Numbers are really good to have when approaching would-be supporters. It great to talk about the “soft” problems, but numbers seem to speak to a broader audience. (Money types like numbers. ;).
April 24th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
[...] I have been reporting here on Nicaragua Hope, increasing cost of food is hitting poor Latin American countries hard. Securing a reliable food supply is increasingly [...]