The food crisis in the beginning of year 2008 (April) was triggered by the dramatic escalation in the global food prices, that had caused hunger, riots and hoarding in poor countries. The crisis had been tackles by world wide actions, both the short term and long term meassures. The short term measure was to assist the poor countries with rapid financial assisstance by the World Bank, and as such eased the pressure to World Food Programme, a UN agency in feeding around 73 million people in that particular year. The longterm measures were to help developing countries to increase their food production capacity, as well as the continous effort to improve the world trading system. The top rice producers and the april 2008 rice projection as of November 2007, US Dept. of Agriculture data, were as follows: China 129.5 million tonnes India 94.0 Indonesia 35.5 Bangladesh 28.4 Vietnam 23.3 Thailand 18.5 Burma 11.3 Philippines 10.4 Brazil 8.2 Japan 7.9 Source: Borneo Post, April
by F.J. Putuhena