I don't usually post items about human-interest stuff but this literally made me sick...
Poor Haitians Resort to Eating Dirt
From here:
It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau.
The story only gets worse...
At the market in the La Saline slum, two cups of rice now sell for 60 cents, up 10 cents from December and 50 percent from a year ago. Beans, condensed milk and fruit have gone up at a similar rate, and even the price of the edible clay has risen over the past year by almost $1.50. Dirt to make 100 cookies now costs $5, the cookie makers say.
Imagine if our food went up 20% in a month or two. Are we headed for that?
Food prices around the world have spiked because of higher oil prices, needed for fertilizer, irrigation and transportation. Prices for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat are also up sharply, and the increasing global demand for biofuels is pressuring food markets as well.
GROWING OUR FUEL IS NOT GOING TO WORK, PERIOD.
2 comments:
isn't that frightening? prices have gone up on the mud they have to BUY that they're forced to eat because they can't afford FOOD. they have to eat mud, and they have to pay for it. people are SURVIVING ON MUD that's getting too expensive for them. we really live in this world.
kat
"people are SURVIVING ON MUD that's getting too expensive for them. we really live in this world."
I would respond to what you said but, instead, I'll just repeat that because it perfectly sums it up.
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