News: Back to Soylent Green? Food for Thought...

While on holiday, I can not but read the news headlines. And get worried:

March 28:
Al Jazeera - Asian rice crisis starts to bite (Full)

March 30:
Reuters - Tensions rise as world faces short rations (Full)

March 31:
The Wall Street Journal - Rice Hoarding Pressures Supplies (Full)
The Guardian - Farmers fall prey to rice rustlers as price of staple crop rockets (Full)
International Herald Tribune - World food prices soar as Asia consumes more (Full)

April 1:
The Wall Street Journal - Fewer Acres of Corn Likely To Keep Prices High (Full)
Los Angeles Times - A 'perfect storm' of hunger (Full)
Financial Times - Rush to restrict trade in basic foods (Full)
Financial Times - Struggle to keep food supplies at home (Full)
Reuters - Costly food? Investors only partly to blame (Full)
The Daily Star (Egypt) - Egyptian government moves to tackle rising costs of key staples (Full)
BBC News - (Food)Riots prompt Ivory Coast tax cuts (Full)

April 2 2022:
The World Today - Soylent Green feeds half of the world....

As a 13 year old, I got sleepless nights after watching "Soylent Green" a movie set in the year 2022, depicting a dark future: The water and soil have been poisoned and airborne pollution has produced a year-round heatwave from the greenhouse effect. Most housing is dilapidated and overcrowded, and impoverished homeless people fill the streets. Food as we know it today –including fruit, vegetables, and meat– is a rare and expensive commodity. Half of the world's population survives on processed rations produced by the massive Soylent Corporation, which just started marketing its newest product: Soylent Green. Soylent Green is a small green wafer advertised as produced from "high-energy plankton". In the movie, the main character, Robert Thorn (Charlton Heston) is a New York City police detective who investigates the murder of a Soylent Green executive. Through an intriguing plot, Thorn discovers the Soylent Green is not made from plankton, but from human corpses. Cannibalism seemed to be the only way the world's (over-)population apparently could still feed itself....

How far are we today from the different world problems highlighted in Soylent Green? Overpopulation, global warming, increasing food shortages... How far are we for Soylent Green biscuits to be the only solution for the world to feed itself?

Check out this post, describing the different factors of the global food crisis (facts-not fiction, today-not 2022!)

Picture courtesy Wikipedia