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Hunger brings anguish for millions of Pakistanis
Aftab Borka, Reuters
When Pakistani labourer Mangal Ram's children cry from hunger all he has to offer them is empty promises.

"My kids complain and cry for more food but what can I do?," said Ram, 50, a father of seven who lives in the desert village of Tharparkar, in the southern Pakistani province of Sindh.

"We say 'wait, we'll cook more', what else can we do?" he asks with a shrug.

Ram's anguish is becoming increasingly common in Pakistan where inflation is running at about 20 percent, led by fuel and food prices.

Soaring food prices and shortages of staples mean about 77 million people of Pakistan's 160 million population are food insecure, a 28 percent increase over the past year, according to U.N. World Food Program (WFP) estimates.
(11 July 2008)

Catastrophe looms in Zimbabwe amid skyrocketing prices, empty shelves
Nelson Chenga, Financial Gazette (Zimbabwe)
IF Zimbabwe were a starved, dying animal in a drought-ravaged savannah, vultures would by now be circling in low over the acacia bushes for the feast.

The country has survived many food crises ever since independence, but it seems the worst looms.

Shop shelves are empty. Unrelenting inflation is whipping prices of meagre foodstuffs available into a faster and more furious gallop.

... Two meals are a luxury nowadays.

In mid-May this year the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor Gideon Gono bemoaned: “The devastating fangs of the global food crisis are biting and cutting into the livelihoods of every household across the globe, especially among the vulnerable members of society.”

However, for Zimbabwe the government’s decision to discontinue donor food aid after President Robert Mugabe declared that no one would starve in the country has further exacerbated an already highly precarious situation.

But what happened to Zimbabwe’s once upon a time enormous capacity to feed itself as well as its neighbours far beyond its borders?

Every farming season since 2000 has had its own mixed grill of problems ranging logistics, shortages of fuel, seed, fertiliser and chemicals.
(11 July 2008)

Food shortages grow in rural Nepal
Charles Haviland, BBC
Rising food prices and destroyed crop harvests are hitting Nepal very hard.

Although few people if any are starving, many are going hungry and the United Nations says several hundred thousand need urgent food assistance.

Most of the hungry are living in remote parts of the mountainous country, inaccessible by road.

In the village of Sokat in what is known as the Far West, I met a destitute family.

Jamauti Kami blows onto a fire in the dark kitchen of her mud-built house. She is cooking a meagre lunch for her six children: a bit of rice for the first time in three days, with a leaf vegetable.

... So even if the yield is good, home-grown crops will only feed a poor family for one or two months a year. So they must buy food - but at a price.

The nearest roadside village and market is Chaukhutte, a collection of iron shacks more than four hours' walk from Sokat.

Sacks of rice from the plains are unloaded from trucks and into a store room. The people buying it, mostly women, face a long slog back to their villages carrying the heavy, 50kg bags.

It has rocketed in price.
(10 July 2008)