Mozambique's Spiking Wheat Prices. Corporate Land Grabs. Malnutrition in Pakistan. And More. – Link Round-Up

As we approach Sukkot, the week-long holiday of agricultural thanksgiving and a time when wewelcome those who are less fortunate to sit in a sukkah and partake in our bounty, we must not forget about those for whom harvests and bounty are scarce. A few sobering headlines:

Not a Food Crisis [The New York Times] Russia’s misguided decision to ban exports of wheat for the next 12 months has sent a destabilizing shock through agricultural markets, pushing prices of grains to their highest levels since 2007 and 2008, when food shortages sparked rioting around the world.

Mozambique Has Wheat Price Hike, But This is Not Food Crisis 2.0 [The Chronicle Herald]
Regularity and repetition — of returning rains, of seasonal temperatures, of the cycles of life and death — are the essence of agriculture. So perhaps it is not surprising when events recur.

Corporate Land Grabs Threaten Food Security [Christian Science Monitor]
Proponents of the local food movement like to talk about keeping “food miles” to a minimum. Buying a New Zealand apple in New England is a big no-no. Imagine if instead of stores buying fruit from the South Pacific, the government was buying land in South America to produce “our own” food

The Paradox of Food Insecurity in Africa [The Daily Monitor]
The issues discussed in this column so far have mainly centred on food security, the environment, poverty reduction through farming, and the need for gender equity and women empowerment in agriculture. These also happen to be some of the millennium development goals (MDGs) set forth in September 2000.

Hunger Costs Poor Nations $450 Billion Annually [Voice of America]
A new report says hunger could cost poor nations US$450 billion a year.  The ActionAid report – Who’s Really Fighting Hunger? – gives a scorecard of how nations are faring in trying to reach the first Millennium Development Goal – cutting chronic hunger in half by 2015.

India-US Discusses Agricultural Cooperation, Food Security [Sifty News]
As part of US Government’s partnership with India on agricultural cooperation and food security, the first meeting of the U.S.-India Agriculture Dialogue steering committee took place at Hyderabad House here on Tuesday.

Pakistan Floods Push Malnourished Kids to the Brink: Children Need Food [Huffington Post] More than 100,000 children left homeless by Pakistan’s floods are in danger of dying because they simply do not have enough to eat, according to UNICEF. Children already weak from living on too little food in poor rural areas before the floods are fighting to stay alive, as diarrhea, respiratory diseases and malaria attack their emaciated bodies.