Oprah just finished a 21-day cleanse. She eliminated caffeine, sugar, alcohol, gluten and animal products from her diet. She gained some awareness:

“What I know for sure is I’ve reached a new level of awareness about food, eating and the whole process of how it gets to my table. I used to say thanks before a meal out of perfunctory habit. Now I consider it true grace to be able to eat anything in a world of increasing food shortages and starving people.

This has been exactly what we intended: enlightening. I will forever be a more cautious and conscious eater. That’s my commitment for now. To stay awakened.”

Question for Oprah - How long is forever? And now that you are a more cautious and conscious eater, what difference will that make to the rest of the world? And, yes, Oprah, you can make a difference to the world other than giving all the studio guests a new car. It am not an Oprah fan, but a fan of everyone in the world having something to eat. I did my own cleanse, too.

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There is at least one group of people who are happy about high food prices, the rice growers in Japan. Bread and pasta prices are soaring, but the price of rice has been falling. As a result, the Japanese, for one, are going back to the staple the country grew up on.

Japan’s farm ministry say per-capita rice consumption is up 0.6-percent from last year. What, did they go house to house to see who’s eating more? In response, Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries is launching a ¥200 million ($2 mil) ad campaign to urge Japanese to eat more rice.

It reminds me of a problem we have here in America. Everybody eats too much, so ad campaigns urge them to, ’supersize it’?

In 1965, Japan had a 73-percent food self-sufficiency which dropped to 39-percent last year, in large part because Japanese were eating more wheat-based products and imports from countries like China. Poisoned dumplings from China and rising prices of bread and pasta have caused the Japanese to eat and make more at home.

Flavoring for rice (furikake and ochazuke) sales are up 30-percent as have sales of ingredients that are mixed with cooked rice. Sales of ingredients for home-cooked meals are also up.

Japan’s government has always wondered what to do with the oversupply of rice produced by its farmers. Instead of giving it away or selling it cheaply to other countries, the bureauwigs just hoped that their own would eat more. Well, they got that wish!

Meanwhile, far too much of the rest of the world is going hungry.

Image courtesy of fumiya

There’s a saying, “give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish, feed him for life”. What do they say when monkeys learn how to fish? And, don’t they say things like when cows fly or pigs play the piano?

In Bangkok, the long-tailed macaque monkey can grab fruit from trees or bananaz from tourists, in India, the “cute little” monkeys are considered thieves and pests but in Indonesia, the silver-haired (retired and collecting a pension maybe?) macaque knows how to fish.

Big deal! I mean you get a pole, some string, a hook and some bait, right? Not these little primates. They just reach in and grab the little Nemos.

Though baboons, orangutans, and chimpanzees have been known to fish as well, researchers say this is a “rare and isolated” behavior. Now I wonder, can these monkeys teach us how to fish?

The dude who helped co-draft China’s national energy strategy, Song Yanqin, participated at Asia Clean Energy Forum 2008 and said that “food security comes first in China, more important than fuel”. He went on to explain that China has no plan to sacrifice food for fuel. Biofuels can find another source, dang it. China is hungry. We want to eat first, then think about energy sources and all that.

The debate is indeed far from over as to the effects of using maize, palm oil, sugarcane and jatropha to produce biofuels or what the effect would be on food prices.

One U.S. designer of high-tech alcohol plants said that “food versus fuel is 99-percent noise. Do your homework and get a noise filter. Time magazine is not your key reference document”. Does that mean that main stream media is not the authority on this topic? What about us bloggers?

In any event, China plans to have dinner, then think about it.

What’s your stance on the biofuel vs food price increase issue?

Image by stelzert

All this talk about there not being enough food to go around apparently made one tiger take matters into his own hands, um, paws.

An 11-year old 150kg (330lb) Siberian tiger killed a 40-year old male zoo keeper in Kyoto, Japan.

Officials had to shoot the tiger with a tranquilizer gun and wait for him to konk out before they could get in to get out the man. The zoo keeper was already dead.

Police investigation determined that the zoo keeper lured the tiger out with a chicken in order to clean the cage. But, somehow the tiger got back in.

Seems to me that if the tiger had had enough to eat in the first place, it wouldn’t have been tempted to ‘eat more human.’

Q: So…what did the one alligator say to the alligator after they ate a human?

A: I love these. They are chewy on the outside and crunchy on the inside.

Zoos. We don’t need them.

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Toot toot!

That would be China blowing its own horn.

China’s agricultural minister is claiming that the Middle Kingdom is a major contributor to world food security for the simple reason that the big Panda feeds one-fourth of the global population.

Yeah, right. China takes care of her own.
Whoopdee doo!

What if every country was satisfied that it were able to just take care of itself? Good enough? I don’t think so.

“We are not causing anybody to care about feeding us” does not make a country a contributor. It just makes that country a non-burden. A contributor is an active participant, no?

Blessed are the peacemakers is what the Good Book says. Not the peace keepers.

Blessed are the contributors, not the well fed.

Are we to say, “Thanks, China. For taking care of yourself?”

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Not all countries think more biofuels are the answer. At least not yet.

There’s Japan, the United States, Brazil…the major biofuel-producing countries.

The beef, um, corn is that biofuel output is causing food prices to soar. Biofuels are made from corn, sugar cane and other food stuffs.

At the just closed U.N. Food summit Japan argued for promotion of second generation biofuels, those made from nonfood sources like grass. (But, then the cows, horses and such are likely to want some input.)

The final U.N. declaration called for supplying seeds, fertilizers and such to low-income food-deficit countries. The overall goal “to eliminating hunger and to securing food for all, today and tomorrow.”

Here! Here!

In the end, however, lots of doublespeak and vague wording. The importance of ”in-depth studies” and ”international dialogue.” To be sure, while everyone is talking, nothing is being solved.

The next round of hot air blowing (another cause of climate change?) the G-8 meeting in Hokkaido next month.

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For those expecting rice and corn to be the only food prices to reach record levels, we have news. Chicken meat is going to be sold for more money this year because food companies noted sharply higher production costs. With oil and grains breaking record after record, there is nothing that can be done but to increase the prices, said Chief Executives from the two largest US companies.

Corn, which is a major feedstock, reached a record $6.5 a bushel this year because of high demand from food companies and the bio-ethanol industry. Chicken producers are concerned because they haven’t been able to increase their prices at the same rate their costs soared.

“We have attained some (higher) pricing but not at the same pace as our inputs have increased, especially in chicken. The lag of higher priced corn is just now coming through the products that we are taking to market,” Richard Bond, chief executive at Tyson Foods Inc, said on Thursday. The first solution producers will take, is to cut production 3 to 4 percent to generate the higher prices needed to cover costs.

Now I really wonder if anyone will listen to Jeffrey D. Sachs, who said that the African farmers are one of the solutions to the spiraling food prices, or if any will turn vegetarian if the chicken is going to be very expensive.

There are so many reasons why food prices sky-rocketed during the last twelve months, but more important than blaming, is to find a viable solution.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, head of Columbia University’s Earth Institute and adviser to the U.N. chief, talked on Monday about the food crisis in developing countries. He said that simple reforms could double Africa’s food production in just a few years and this solution may probably cool down food prices. He also mentioned that the African farmers need help from wealthy countries to invest into better practices including fertilizers, water management systems or drought-resistant seeds.

In an interview in Nairobi, Sachs also mentioned that in his belief, a $10 billion aid to small farmers would probably solve the problem which is worse than believed. During the last year, rice prices went up more than 40-percent and reached higher values because of the cyclone in Myanmar, a large rice exporter, that devastated the whole area.

According to Sachs, the only solution is to immediately invest in agriculture.

Picture by Frankie Roberto

If every person from a rich country would pay $10, Africa would double its production and help reduce the burden on poor countries, because those are the most affected by high food price.

Riots and protests in Asia, the Caribbean and several African countries, arose last month which means that the food crisis is real.