
"A silent tsunami which knows no borders sweeping the world".
That is how the head of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) summed up the global food shortages.
It is certainly a storm that has hit with little warning and has plunged an extra 100 million people into poverty.
The crisis has triggered riots in Haiti, Cameroon, Indonesia and Egypt and is deemed a dangerous threat to stability.
It is not so much famine that is the worry, it is widespread misery and malnutrition.
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She used the example of Kenya's Rift Valley where farmers even now are planting a third less of the land than last year.
This is because fertiliser has more than doubled in price.
"Soaring food prices should be a wake-up call for the world to make long term investment in the food supply chain," she said.
Small farmers are unable to deliver more food without that investment.
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