This morning I talked with a colleague in Sierra Leone. Francis Webber is the Director of the Sierra Leone Alliance Against Hunger. I want to share his comments.

Life is becoming very hard for the average Sierra Leonean as the price of food commodities are on the rise. Sierra Leone poverty is wide spread over 70% of the population cannot live on a dollar a day and yet food prices are going up every day. My worry here is, most of our people living in rural areas cannot provide a meal a day, and this will cause serious malnutrition especially for children living in rural areas.

The worsening crisis for the world’s hungry continues to spread. And as the crisis spreads, the civil unrest spawned by the rising food prices has become a global security issue.

This “perfect storm” which is battering the poor and hungry is the result of a confluence of a number of factors when all added together have caused a deadly rise in food prices.

Haiti’s government was brought down this past weekend when riots over rising food prices could not be checked. And although no other governments have yet fallen due to the hunger of their poor, the possibility such occurances cannot be ruled out.

Unless the world responds in a timely fashion, Haiti will not be the only nation to have its government toppled by hungry rioters. Egypt and the Philippines are among a number of other states also suffering major unrest due to the rising food prices. As Seneca (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) wrote, “A hungry people listens not to reason, not cares for justice, nor is bent by any prayers.”

Both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have predicted dire consequences if world food prices remain at current levels. And the problem is not just a humanitarian question. The problem could also create serious trade imbalences affecting major economies.

Today there is news that North Korea is now facing its largest food shortfall since 2001. The situation is rapidly growing worse in this closed-off Communist country, and is a result of a unexpectedly sharp drop in aid from both South Korea and China, flood-damaged harvests, and the soaring world food prices.

The storm is raging unabated. Untold thousands of poor are threatened by its fury, and as Haiti graphically illustrates, even governments have reason to fear the storm surge.