Food/Water: The New Oil -- Fresh Air Terry Gross interviews today

[BrklynLiberal]

You can listen to the interviews at the links.

http://www.npr.org/2011/05/18/136394365/food-shortages-the-hidden-driver-of-global-politics?ft=1&f=13

Food: The Hidden Driver Of Global Politics

Food prices are rising, but the impact is not being felt equally around the world, says environmentalist Lester Brown.

Brown, the founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute, argues that food has quickly become the hidden driver of world politics in a piece published in the May/June issue of Foreign Policy.

"If you're in Pakistan, and you go to the local market to buy wheat to hand-grind into flour to make chapati, and the price of wheat doubles, the price of your chapati basically doubles," he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "They're not insulated from the doubling or tripling of world grain prices the way that we are. ... And this is one of the factors feeding the unrest in the Arab world, North Africa and the Middle East."

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http://www.npr.org/2011/05/18/136402034/burgers-from-a-lab-the-world-of-in-vitro-meat?ft=1&f=13

Burgers From A Lab: The World Of In Vitro Meat

Imagine picking up a nice juicy burger and taking a bite, only to find out that the meaty burger you're biting into didn't come from an animal — it was grown in a lab.

Sound far-fetched? The reality of test-tube burgers in the supermarkets may be close to becoming a reality. Scientists at laboratories around the world are currently working to make meat in labs that will eventually look and taste like the real thing, without any animal parts.

Science writer Michael Specter recently traveled to laboratories in the Netherlands and North Carolina to examine the progress scientists have made in developing in vitro meat. He writes about his trip, and the arguments in favor of lab-made steaks, in the May 23 issue of The New Yorker.

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More at link

Not from Fresh Air, but on same topic

http://www.npr.org/2011/02/27/134069431/soaring-food-prices-hit-poor-countries-spur-farmers

Soaring Food Prices Hit Poor Countries, Spur Farmers

Sharp increases in food prices helped spark the political upheaval gripping northern Africa and the Middle East. Bad weather in key growing regions was among a confluence of factors driving prices to record levels, a U.N. analyst says. But the price spikes are giving U.S. farmers an incentive to boost production.

Underlying the food inflation is a more than 70 percent increase in the price of wheat and corn in the second half of last year.

Elevated food prices are hitting hardest in poor countries such as Haiti, Bolivia and Mozambique, where people spend more than half their income on food.

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You can hear story at link