Food security: Drought. Rice. Unrest.

At first bet, food and security don't seem to belong in the same sentence but...climate change is slowly causing disruptions to the global food supply, resulting in national security concerns. The NYTimes has cool article on how a 6 year drought in Australia is causing havoc with rice prices, and subsequent unrest in countries dependent on rice exports for their staples.

Looks like environmental concerns, and subsequent effects on food/water supplies will to continue to creep into international affairs - for example the article mentions how the use of crops like corn for biofuels is contentious because its pushing up food prices, with developing countries being mostly affected by these price increases. This affects policies on renewable energies, etc.

Reminds me of a recent Colbert Report on how potential water shortages may cause future political unrest. So food/water, climate change and security may be keywords in many discussions to come...arguably with developing countries suffering the most from shortages and price hikes.

An addition: South African trade union workers are marching against rising food prices...

NY Times, Cell phones and global poverty...

The NY Times has finally caught on that cell phones are a good platform for communication and connectivity in developing countries...

The title of the article is "Can the cell phone help end global poverty?" which seems like an overstatement... but it's a fairly nice article on an anthropologist from Nokia who does user research in Africa and other developing parts of the world...his mission is to harvest information on people, their cell phone needs and subsequently inform the design of Nokia cell phones...they must be doing a good job because I'm a total Nokia junkie :)