"Bill" wrote in message
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In article
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Billy wrote:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1208...=googlenews_ws
j


Food Inflation, Riots Spark Worries for World Leaders, IMF, World Bank
Push for Solutions

By BOB DAVIS and DOUGLAS BELKIN
April 14, 2008; Page A1

WASHINGTON -- Finance ministers gathered this weekend to grapple with
the global financial crisis also struggled with a problem that has
plagued the world periodically since before the time of the Pharaohs:
food shortages.

Surging commodity prices have pushed up global food prices 83% in the
past three years, according to the World Bank -- putting huge stress on
some of the world's poorest nations. Even as the ministers met, Haiti's
Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis was resigning after a week in
which that tiny country's capital was racked by rioting over higher
prices for staples like rice and beans.
[photo]
As food prices soar, protests are breaking out around the world,
including this riot Saturday in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Rioting in response to soaring food prices recently has broken out in
Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Ethiopia. In Pakistan and
Thailand, army troops have been deployed to deter food theft from fields
and warehouses. World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned in a recent
speech that 33 countries are at risk of social upheaval because of
rising food prices. Those could include Indonesia, Yemen, Ghana,
Uzbekistan and the Philippines. In countries where buying food requires
half to three-quarters of a poor person's income, "there is no margin
for survival," he said.

Many policy makers at the weekend meetings of the International Monetary
Fund and World Bank agreed that the problem is severe. Among other
targets, they singled out U.S. policies pushing corn-based ethanol and
other biofuels as deepening the woes. . . (continued)

Found this which deals with water.

http://www.worldwater.org/data.html

Country Annual Renewable Water Resourcesa (km^3/yr) Year of Estimate
Israel 1.7 2001
Iran 137.5 1997
Russia 4498.0 1997
Saudi Arabia 2.4 1997
Brazil 8233.0 2000
United States of America 3069.0 1985
Canada 3300.0 1985

Bill

--
Garden in shade zone 5 S Jersey USA

Don't mean squat to the individual. in any country you mentioned. That is,
the water is usable if substantial for instance. On the other side of the
coin, watershed is much less in one part of the country than the other.
--
Dave

Hypocrisy. Big SUV, filament lights on all night. You think your neighbor
should be changiing to compact fluorescent light bulbs and driving the
hybrid.