The title can be interpreted in different ways, but it basically means what it says; the reason? Global Food Crisis!

Drastic Price Increase

The years 2007 and 2008 saw dramatic world food price rises bringing a state of global crisis and causing both political and economical instability and social unrest in both poor and developed nations. Already since 2006 the price of rice throughout the world has risen by an estimated 217%, wheat by 136%, maize by 125% while soybeans by 107%. In April 2008 the price of rice hit 24 cents a pound which is twice the price it used to be only 7 months earlier.

Causes

The main causes for the world wide food price increase continue to be the subject of debate. These include unseasonable droughts in grain producing nations and rising oil prices. Oil prices further increased the cost of fertilizers, food transport and industrial agriculture. Other causes are the increasing use of biofuels in developed countries which reduce land for producing food and an increasing demand for a more varied diet (e.g. meat) across the expanding middle-class populations of Asia. These factors coupled with falling world food stockpiles have contributed to the dramatic rise of food prices throughout the whole world.

Effect Of Dollar on Food Prices

Some might ask what has the dollar got to do with increasing food prices? Well pretty much everything. Most of the world and in particular Third World Countries still have dollar backed currencies and also most of the aid comes in dollars, thus the American currency is very important for those countries. But the dollar has been depreciating during the past couple of years and it seems that it's going to keep loosing to the other main currencies which is resulting in a hard hit to poor countries, hence the UN backed summit with most world countries and the FAO to discuss on ways to solve, at least partially, the problem.

But what would happen if suddenly the dollar collapses?

• About 40% of the world population lives with less than $2 a day
• About 25% of the world population lives with less than $1 a day

It doesn't take a politician or an economist to figure out that if such thing were to happen, and it is going to happen fairly soon, then a considerable part of the world population would starve to death due to their money being just valueless paper. The other major problem is that while now it is still possible to help them by subsidizing local farmers in poor countries, when the dollar collapses the whole world will fall into a huge crisis, which means that no help will be given by developed countries. Billions of people will die helplessly.

This will also cause a chain effect where mass starvation will facilitate the spreading of diseases further resulting in more deaths.

World Depopulation Conspiracy

Many believe that the collapse of the dollar leading to a global economic crisis which will kill billions of people mainly in poor countries is part of an agenda by the so called New World Order Elite which includes decreasing the population by up to 3/4. Whilst this figure sounds exagerated, the current world situation is going to lead to such dramatic events unless something is done now and more than 1 billion people will die.