A Healthy Appetite
I've never been a big fan of the Tequila Slammer: licking a lime then snorting salt before downing a dose of Mexican firewater (I'm sure that's how it's supposed to be done) seems an awful lot more bother than supping a good old pint of Pedigree.
But if you are a fan of the worm-ridden liquor then despair as its price is about to hit the roof. Fields of the plant from which it is derived, the blue agave, are being uprooted in Mexico in order to grow cash crops that make more green - dollars that is - namely wheat and corn.
It's down to the knock-on effect of increased U.S. demand for ethanol - the biofuel made from starchy cereals such as corn - which in turn has spiked because of the high prices of oil. The fact that more and more agriculturally-based economies are switching to growing crops for ethanol means that more is to be made from faster-growing foods such as beans, another nail in the coffin for slower growing crops like the agave.
But there's a much more serious side to this than drinkers being deprived of a favourite tipple. The demand for biofuels is just one of the factors that has contributed to what's being described as 'The Silent Tsunami' - a growing global food crisis that has seen food riots across the world and an increase in the scale of malnutrition and starvation.
Poor countries dependent on western food imports are now having to face higher prices. Many also, as part of deals made to receive foreign aid, loans and debt cancellation, have been 'encouraged' to promote more free trade, thus providing less competition for western imports. For some that's meant no longer subsidising their own farmers, with the result not only that they can no longer afford to grow enough to supply local markets but also that there is no surplus for the government to buy and stockpile against times of shortage such as now.
Faced with such a 'tsunami' it's hard to know how to respond, but respond we must. In the sermon on the mount Christ promised satisfaction for those 'who hunger and thirst for righteousness.' When you're starved and thirsty, body, soul and mind are consumed by little else than the desire for food and drink, complacency is not an option.
So may we be hungry on behalf of the world's hungry: may we be those who are driven from apathy by a desperate appetite for justice.
Jason Gardner
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