Endless Appetites: How the Commodities Casino Creates Hunger and Unrest Hardcover - 2011 - 1st Edition

From the rear cover

Praise for Endless Appetites

"For all those concerned about the issues of hunger in the world, this is essential reading." --GEORGE McGOVERN, former U.S. Senator and 2008 World Food Prize laureate

"Alan Bjerga's well-written book, Endless Appetites, takes readers from distant farms to commodity markets all over the world as he examines the growing complexity of farming, food production, and distribution. This award-winning journalist skillfully weaves stories with data as he explains why food prices continue to rise and why, despite record food production, famines still occur. Although it deals with a complex problem, Endless Appetites is easy to read and easy to understand. I highly recommend this book to everyone who cares about food." --DAVID BECKMANN, President, Bread for the World and 2010 World Food Prize laureate

From the jacket flap

The international food crisis--particularly the availability and affordability of food products--has become one of the most pressing challenges of our time, and is being talked about everywhere from college campuses to emergency UN meetings. While American farms are more prosperous today than ever before, the same cannot be said for those in other parts of the world. Since 2007, farm-product prices have risen at ridiculous rates, leading to increasing hunger, malnutrition, and social and political upheaval around the world. Endless Appetites: How the Commodities Casino Creates Hunger and Unrest explores how crop markets--first established in the 1800s to help stabilize agricultural commodity prices--are increasingly acting like an investors' casino, with prices absorbed by rich nations taking food from the mouths of poor ones.

Drawing on his experiences visiting farms and talking with farmers around the world--in Ethiopia, Kenya, Thailand, and Nicaragua--as well as in the United States, acclaimed journalist Alan Bjerga examines the growing international food crisis firsthand. Raised on a farm in the Midwest during the last food crisis, Bjerga has the personal and professional experience to understand the plight of individual families and make the kind of intelligent, insightful suggestions for change that only an expert can.

As grocery store prices continue to rise, it is clear that something has to be done to stabilize food prices and close the hunger gap, not just at home, but around the world. Increases in food prices in 2011 set new records, and things are only going to get worse unless we act now. Endless Appetites takes the reader inside the commodities system at the center of the heartbreaking rise in worldwide hunger and considers how to solve the problem of food security for everyone.