RAGHU DAYAL Shifting paradigms of food security and the impact of trade liberalisation on it FOOD SECURITY

Global price rises and floods last year have caused severe food shortages in northeast Uganda, where nearly 30 people have died and some have been reduced to eating rats, officials said on Tuesday. The deaths occurred in the remote Karamoja region, an impoverished semi-arid area bordering Kenya and Sudan that is notorious for fighting over livestock and scant resources.

A leading aid group warned yesterday that thousands of young children in cyclone-ravaged Myanmar could starve to death within weeks unless emergency food supplies reach them soon. Save the Children said on its website that the youngsters could succumb to hunger "within two to three weeks". "We are extremely worried that many children in the affected areas are now suffering from severe acute malnourishment, the most serious level of hunger," said Jasmine Whitbread, chief executive of Save the Children UK.

The Red Cross estimated Wednesday that the cyclone death toll in Myanmar could be as high as 128,000

The 1.5 million people left destitute by Burma's cyclone are in increasing danger of disease and starvation, experts said on Wednesday, but its ruling junta said no to a Thai request to admit more aid workers. Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej met his Burma counterpart Thein Sein in Rangoon for 2 hours trying to convince him the former Burma should open up for international relief operations and ease visa rules for aid workers.

Yangon: The United Nations said on Tuesday that only a tiny portion of international aid needed for Myanmar's cyclone victims is making it into the country, amid reports that the military regime is hoarding good-quality foreign aid for itself and doling out rotten food. The country's isolated military regime has agreed to accept relief shipments from the UN and foreign countries, but has largely refused entry to aidworkers who might distribute the aid.

The global food crisis has brought on riots in about a dozen countries and left many panicked world leaders scrambling for answers. Alarming increases in once-affordable basic food staples such as rice, corn, and wheat have made millions more of the world's poor vulnerable to hunger and malnutrition. Past food market emergencies have been mainly regional in scope.

The Fifties and Sixties were replete with news of food shortages in India. Following the Green Revolution, India became self-sufficient and the memories of shortages became history. The ongoing global food crisis is altogether a new development. The energy crisis, on the other hand, is not new and has remained a global issue since the Seventies. The commodity crisis is more a cyclical phenomenon and hence not entirely unfamiliar, while the banking crisis is self-inflicted. The man-made food crises in Africa are different and have been frequent, leading to misery and starvation deaths.

The Chief Minister, Shri Shivraj Singh Chouhan has said that science and technology are effective weapons in the fight against hunger and poverty. He said that live examples of this are Hoshangabad and Narsinghpur districts which are standing shoulder to shoulder with Punjab and Haryana in wheat production by adopting improved and scientific methods of farming. The Chief Minister was addressing a function here today on the occasion of Technology Day. The function was organised at Nehru Nagar-based Vigyan Bhawan by Madhya Pradesh Council for Science and Technology (MAPCOST).

With shortage of the food supply in Rolpa, families displaced during the conflict have been facing starvation, reports say. 32 tons of rice and five tons of pulses supplied by World Food Programme, Save the Children and USAID are yet to reach the district. The 243 families were given ration card last month to regularise the food distribution. As per the schedule of the local authority, the distribution of ration was to begin from the fourth week of April, but the Nepal Red Cross Society local committee is still unaware when the foodstuffs would arrive.