My favorite celebrity chef (cuz I know him), Andrew Zimmern, blogs about the Twin Cities food scene. However, most of you probably know him from his Travel Channel show, Bizarre Foods. Anyhoo, he has a great post on what he's been seeing touring the world for his show.

I have been abroad for a while, and after coming home, I can tell you with utmost assurance, from both anecdotal and scholarly resources alike, that we are in for a sh*tstorm of problems related to the rice panic, the rise of Chinese and Russian food demand, and the falling strength of the dollar. I was in three European countries last week and spent a lot of time with farmers, fishermen, and restaurant employees. The situation in Europe is terrible, and you will read a lot about it in the coming weeks, I am sure.
(Chow & Again)

The impact of biofuels and the plummeting value of the dollar are fueling what the World Food Program calls a silent tsunami. More and more farmers in the US are growing corn for corn-based ethanol because they will get the highest return on their investment due to the rising price of corn. In conjunction, the cratering value of the dollar is making it easier to export American foodstuffs (like corn) and this negatively affects 3rd world farmers.

Okay ... I'm overly simplifying this, but many other people than me are concerned about this. Here's more of what Andrew has been seeing.

The French housing market is about to crater, the average EU citizen is facing unprecedented economic uncertainty as food prices eclipse the reach of single earner families in the middle class and lower income families with two wage earners. The cover of the International Herald Tribune even ran with a story about this phenomenon. And watching Al Jazeera, BBC News, and China News for a few weeks would scare the crap out of the average American. Anti-Americanism, fear of economic uncertainty, rising Chinese nationalism of the type that burst into the news last year in Russia (remember the Putin youth stories!?), and a tidal wave of problems rumbling across the Middle and Near East (Pakistani political clashes, Muslim Brotherhood threatening Egypt’s Mubarak oligarchy, Iranian obstinateness, Iraqi everything . . .) are making traveling and news watching uncomfortable.

There seems to be a solution for our ailing image abroad in all this, and it’s food related. Why doesn’t the United States stand up tomorrow and announce a global hunger initiative aimed at getting food into the hands of the world’s hungriest? Why don’t we single-handedly take care of the UN World Food Programme’s money crunch? Why not stand up and show the rest of the world that in our country, we stand alongside the least fortunate in time of need? Well, probably because we can’t even do that in our own country.
(Chow & Again)