Thanks to Earl Babbie for this article and BBC video. See both at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12134307. While the article is focused on riots over food costs in Algeria, the BBC video goes on to comment on the global food crisis, saying that poor harvests are the problem some places but the key cause in South America is increased population. See a related article from The Independent below. For a series of Bob Walker’s blogs on the global food crisis, see http://blog.populationinstitute.org/.
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Fresh rioting breaks out in Algerian capital Algiers

Fresh rioting has broken out in the Algerian capital and several other cities, after days of unrest over food price increases and unemployment.

Police fired tear gas and used water cannon on stone-throwing youths following Friday prayers in Algiers.

The riots have been linked to rising food prices, housing shortages, and wider social and political grievances.
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Thanks to Lester Brown, President of Earth Policy Institute, for the following three press releases.
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THE GREAT FOOD CRISIS OF 2011*
By Lester R. Brown
www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2011/update90
January 14, 2011

As the new year begins, the price of wheat is setting an all-time high in the United Kingdom. Food riots are spreading across Algeria. Russia is importing grain to sustain its cattle herds until spring grazing begins. India is wrestling with an 18-percent annual food inflation rate, sparking protests. China is looking abroad for potentially massive quantities of wheat and corn. The Mexican government is buying corn futures to avoid unmanageable tortilla price rises. And on January 5, the U.N. Food and Agricultural organization announced that its food price index for December hit an all-time high.
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Thanks to Joe Bish for this article from the Post Carbon Institute’s Energy Bulletin.
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At a recent event hosted by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington D.C., Mark Rosegrant, Director of the Environment and Production Technology Division, said, “Income and population growth drive food prices higher, putting pressure on our food system.” And climate change adds more pressure to these already big challenges. “We can expect to see more extreme events – more floods, more droughts, more shocks to agriculture,” noted Sherman Robinson from the United Kingdom’s Foresight Programme on Global Food and Farming Futures Project. There is, therefore, an urgent need to manage these challenges in a more sustainable way.

For full article, visit:
http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-12-10/feeding-larger-population-warmer-planet

The full report can be downloaded at http://www.ifpri.org/publication/food-security-farming-and-climate-change-2050

Thanks to Joe Bish for this article.
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Editor’s Note: A recent report from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN has concluded that soil erosion is a critical threat to food security. Increasing world population means that more food will need to be produced. Yet little new land exists for cultivation. Further, farmland is being lost at an accelerating rate due to erosion, desertification and salinisation. Solutions to combat these problems are presented in this article from the Guardian including tree belts and crop substitution.

Soil erosion threatens to leave Earth hungry Arable land is turning to desert or to salt at an ever-faster rate, lessening the hope that we can feed our booming population.

For full article, visit:
http://foodnews.lovingspoonful.org/?p=81

Thanks to Joe Bish for this article.

See a related article at http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/12/humans-consuming-25-percent-all-plant-life.php. These findings are more optimistic than research two decades ago by Stanford biologist Peter Vitousek, which found that, at that time, humans were appropriating 40 percent of the products of photosynthesis. Sanderson and others have classified up to 83% of the global terrestrial biosphere as being under direct human influence, based on geographic proxies such as human population density, settlements, roads, agriculture and the like; another study, by Hannah et al., estimates that about 36% of the Earth’s bioproductive surface is “entirely dominated by man”.
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Bill Ryerson appeared on Vermont Public Television’s Profile with Fran Stoddard on January 7, 2011.

Watch the full episode. See more Profile.

The first census, in 1790, counted our numbers, then about 4 million. With the release of the current census, we hear about how we are becoming older or more diverse, but we get no discussion of the stunning fact that our nation is one of three global population supergiants and the world’s fourth-fastest growing nation!

We also get no discussion of whether that is good, considering the Great Recession, boom growth’s part in our economic woes and that the Southwest – our fastest-growing region – is in a water crisis of potentially catastrophic implications and proportions.

For full article, visit:
http://www.abqjournal.com/cgi-bin/print_it.pl?page=/opinion/guest_columns/312142480566opinionguestcolumns12-31-10.htm

Thanks to Edmund Levering for this story.
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Drought, flood, record heat and record snow–this year had it all. Living on Earth’s Jeff Young asks weather experts whether climate change pushed these extreme events. Their answers carry a warning about the weather of the future.

CURWOOD: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Steve Curwood. The other day it was colder in southern Florida than northern Maine, while some western states had just set daily records for high temperatures. It’s been that kind of year– extreme. Twenty-ten is bidding to go in the record books as one of the warmest, but it’s the craziness of the weather, rather than just the heat that has scientists concerned. Twenty-ten, they say, stands out for the number and intensity of extreme weather events. It appears climate change is tilting the odds in favor of more of the kind of heat, floods and even snows that 2010 brought us. Living on Earth’s Jeff Young has our story.
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At a time when economic growth remains elusive for the United States and many other major world economies, Brazil is attracting attention from the global business community because of its strong growth prospects. The Brazilian economy, the largest in Latin America, is expected to grow by 5% in 2010, according to the country’s central bank. That is almost twice the rate expected in the United States — estimated at 2.6% for 2010 and 2011 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). One of the issues companies will need to consider before making any major investments in Brazil, however, is the impact of climate change on future operations.

For full article, visit:
http://www.rmmag.com/MGTemplate.cfm?Section=RMMagazine&NavMenuID=128&template=/Magazine/DisplayMagazines.cfm&IssueID=351&AID=4225&Volume=57&ShowArticle=1

Donna Baptiste, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago has published an article in the Journal of Women’s Health that describes Population Media Center’s work in northern Nigeria. It discusses PMC’s program promoting maternal health and addressing obstetric fistula, starting on the sixth page of the attached document.

Donna Baptiste Integrating Women’s Human Rights into Global Health Research An Action Framework.2010 (PDF 311 KB)