Food Crisis

This article caught my attention because it directly reflects how food shortages are affecting the world. Saudi Arabia appears to be angling to use its massive wealth to grow food in other countries.

Gulf News: Saudi to start growing grains abroad amid food crisis

Abdullah Al Obaid, a deputy agriculture minister (Saudi Arabia), said the government was in talks with officials in Sudan, Egypt, Ukraine, Pakistan and Turkey to allow Saudi companies to establish projects for wheat, barley, soya bean, rice and animal fodder.

The Guardian: Empty threat - Beware ... it isn't only poor countries that will be seriously affected if we don't rapidly address the growing problem of food supply shortages.

In the last 12 months alone, according to the FAO, 100 million have joined the world's hungry, and 22 countries remain particularly vulnerable to chronic hunger.

One of the biggest donors to the World Food Programme, the UN body that distributes food aid to more than 80 countries, was Saudi Arabia, which gave $500m. Writing in the online magazine openDemocracy at the end of the conference, Simon Maxwell, director of the Overseas Development Institute in London, said: "When the price of oil goes up by, say, $30 per barrel, Saudi Arabia is gifted nearly $300m a day in extra revenue, so the gift to WFP represents the windfall profit from one weekend."