Poor Haitians resort to eating dirt

[Dogmudgeon]

This was http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3161598">also posted in LBN by Judi Lynn. I will copy her excerpt:

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Source: Miami Herald

Poor Haitians resort to eating dirt
Posted on Tue, Jan. 29, 2008Digg del.icio.us AIM print email
By JONATHAN M. KATZ
Associated Press Writer

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau.

The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.
(snip)

Food prices around the world have spiked because of higher oil prices, needed for fertilizer, irrigation and transportation. Prices for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat are also up sharply, and the increasing global demand for biofuels is pressuring food markets as well.

The problem is particularly dire in the Caribbean, where island nations depend on imports and food prices are up 40 percent in places.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/915/story/398193.html

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--p!

[otherlander]

1. If this doesn't prove that ethanol is a scam I don't know what does.

:grr:

[GliderGuider]

2. We put food in our gas tanks, they eat dirt.

:puke:
Agrifuels are a crime against humanity.