A woman watering vegetables in a wetland in MozambiqueMATTHEW MCCARTNEY
The pictures look familiar to the point of grim cliché. Starving children in Somalia dying in droves as drought desiccates the landscape. Yes, we have seen this horrific scene before and too many times.
But what's happening there, while an extreme example, is not an isolated event. It is just one of a series of food-related crises of the past year that have many questioning the ability of current agriculture systems to provide adequate food, fiber and fuel in the face of environmental, population and political challenges. The famine in northern Somalia was preceded by weather-related crop losses over the last year in Russia and Australia, which contributed to a rapid rise in food prices. This in turn fueled food insecurity throughout the developing world ...
