In this 12 minute piece from Inside Story, the crucial issues of food security and worldwide hunger are addressed. Nearly 1 billion of the world's people go hungry. This number is getting bigger. Nobody seems to care aside from the hungry themselves. more about "1 Billion Hungry People", posted with vodpodSome excerpts of particular interest to me from the FAO site:"World food prices have dropped since early 2008, but lower prices have not ended the food crisis in many poor countries," said FAO Assistant Director-General Hafez Ghanem, presenting the new edition of FAO's hunger report, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008."For millions of people in developing countries, eating the minimum amount of food every day to live an active and healthy life is a distant dream. The structural problems of hunger, like the lack of access to land, credit and employment, combined with high food prices remain a dire reality," he stressed.Prices of major cereals have fallen by over 50 percent from their peaks earlier in 2008 but they remain high compared to previous years. Despite its sharp decline in recent months, the FAO Food Price Index was still 28 percent higher in October 2008 compared to October 2006. With prices for seeds and fertilizers (and other inputs) more than doubling since 2006, poor farmers could not increase production. But richer farmers, particularly those in developed countries, could afford the higher input costs and expand plantings. As a result, cereal production in developed countries is likely to rise by at least 10 percent in 2008. The increase in developing countries may not exceed even one percent.Right. As I, following many others, have been talking about for the last few years, the inexorable rise in fossil fuels will necessarily hurt the food economies in the most grievous ways. Oil is a requirement for modern pesticides, natural gas a requirement for fertilizer. As we run out of these, the prices for these inputs rise dramatically. Meanwhile, the ability to distribute the food th