Food Prices Spike Worldwide (2/3)

With oil prices rising steeply in recent years, the economic incentive to produce grain-based fuels has risen as well.

Taken together, these factors have led to growing food shortages and rising prices that could spell disaster for the world's poor people, according to Lester Brown.

"People on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder are just barely hanging on, and as food prices rise, many are simply losing their grip and beginning to fall off, and what we are looking at, in the absence of a major intervention, is a very substantial" class="hjdict" word="substantial" target=_blank>substantial increase in hunger in the world, and in mortality" class="hjdict" word="mortality" target=_blank>mortality rates."

For the past two years, Australia's wheat harvest has been lowered by drought. Experts note that Australia is one of many wheat suppliers to the global marketplace. But they add that, given the tightness in world grain stocks, any production shortfall in virtually any country spells trouble far beyond its borders.

Siwa Msangi, a research fellow at the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute, says the margin" class="hjdict" word="margin" target=_blank>margin for error in global food production has been virtuallyeliminated.

参考译文：

最近几年，随着石油价格的飞速攀升，以谷物为原料生产燃料的经济诱因也随之增加。

莱斯特.布朗说，这些因素综合起来导致了食品的持续短缺以及价格的持续上涨，给世界上的贫困人口带来了灾难。

他说："在全球经济的梯子上，处于底部的人们刚刚能维持生存，但因为食品价格上涨，许多人将抓不住扶手，从梯子上摔下来。在严重缺乏干预的情况下，我们看到的是：世界上处于饥饿的人越来越多，死亡率也随之增加。"

过去两年，由于干旱，澳大利亚的小麦产量有所下降。专家指出，澳大利亚是全球市场主要的小麦供应国之一，但是，他们还补充说，由于世界粮食储备紧缺，任何国家的任何农产品的紧缺实际上都会给其他国家带来麻烦。

华盛顿国际食品政策研究所的研究员斯娃.姆桑吉（Siwa Msangi）说全球粮食产量的盈余实际上已经不存在了。

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