One paradox at the heart of the present world food crisis is that the same market forces which threaten to starve millions in the developing world are the ones that have led to chronic overconsumption and an obesity epidemic in the west. We may live in an age of abundance, but it is also one marked by extreme inequality: every day 800 million people go hungry, even more than a billion others are overweight. Between 1981 and 2004 the World Bank estimates that cheaper food allowed 400 million people to escape from extreme hunger, but many of them will fall back into a cycle of poverty and starvation unless they are quickly given some relief from the gross inflation of food prices currently underway.
