UN Food Crisis Summit Delegates Work on Compromise

1. Citation

UN food crisis summit delegates work on compromise

The Associated Press

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iwx4bYD140egrMPye_3RBhOxE6IgD913HML00

June 4, 2008

2. Summary

This article is about the growing crisis that we are facing as a human race, not in just certain places, but everywhere: world hunger and global warming. In the article it explains how the UN came together to discuss the issue. They are trying to "alleviate the suffering caused by the price crisis, stimulate food production, increase investment in agriculture, address obstacles to food access and use resources in a sustainable way"(article) and hopefully are going to achieve this. In an effort to find new methods of fuel they are producing biofuel from sugarcane, corn, and other crops, also corn-based ethanol produced by the US. They expect this fuel to make up 10 percent of the world's fuel by 2020. Although the UN is doing this to benefit the world's massive population by providing food, environmentalists have caused some controversy for voicing their opinions on the risks of increasing the rate of global warming. They believe they increase food production up to 50 percent more by 2030. They have high expectations and hope it proves successful.

3. Reactions

A. This article relates to the AP world theme of impact of technology, economics, and demography on people and the environment because of the new advancements that are allowing the UN to come up with these solutions.

B. The historical background on the issue is that in poorer countries food has always been scarce but over the years there has been a significant increase in the number of people without food. We have finally realized after all these years there are efforts that can be made to help this problem.

C. The point of view of the article is of Marta Falconi of the Associated Press now working in Rome, but is an American journalist.

D. The article shows some potential bias because she writes of mostly the benefits of this new plan and shares barely any information on the down falls or faults of this solution. It may in fact not be a solution if there are many drawbacks to it but they are not really included in this article. If she had written more of the environmentalist's reasoning behind their opinions it would have given more information to make a conclusion from.

E. The point of view missing from the article is of a member of the UN explaining their plans more in depth and tell us of more of their plans for the future.

F. I believe it is a great idea for the UN to be coming up with these solutions, but they need to work at a faster rate because if the biofuels being used only support ten percent of fuel by 2020, this is not a very reliable resource. We need more of these ideas and to put them into effect as soon as possible.