It is an overcast morning in the Bulaq neighbourhood of Cairo, three hours after the muezzin's call to prayer. The streets are choked with honking cars, while goats - and a few ragged-looking people - pick at piles of stinking rubbish overflowing from metal wheelie bins.The scenes Black describes are being repeated across the developing world - the result of rapidly rising food prices caused by increased demand, depleted stockpiles and the use of grains for biofuels combined with the high price of oil. Rising food prices are leading to anger and unrest: there have already been food riots in Egypt, Bangladesh and Haiti.
Tempers flare outside a government bakery as the smell of hot baladi (country) bread wafts out from the ovens. There is pushing and shoving as a worker appears at the window to hand out plastic bags of the rough, round flat loaves - each weighing a standard 160 grams (5.5oz)- to customers.
"I've been here since before six and this is what I get," grumbles Umm Islam, her face contorted in fury. "My husband is retired and I have five children and it's not enough."
And Bloomberg reports:
Record high grain prices have led to strikes in Argentina, riots in Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Morocco and the Ivory Coast, and a crackdown on illicit exports in Pakistan and the Philippines. The World Bank says 33 countries from Mexico to Yemen may face social unrest because of spiraling food and energy costs.World food prices have risen by 45% in the last 9 months. In developing countries, where more than half of family income goes on food, those price rises are causing serious problems for a lot of people.
Wealthier countries are also beginning to feel the effects:-
Canada has seen a jump in bread prices, with flour almost doubling in value from a summer ago. The price of rice also doubled in the last year in Canada, and pasta jumped 25 per cent.With prices expected to carry on rising and no solution in sight, we may all end up eating less.
In Italy rising pasta prices brought angry Italians to the streets to demonstrate. Nearly 70,000 people took to the streets in Mexico to protest the price of tortillas which sky rocketed in the month of January.
