Here are the stark numbers today:
Global food prices force about 100 million people into hunger.
High food prices are pushing 30 million Africans into poverty.
About 850 million people are suffering from chronic hunger worldwide.
Food prices have hit the highest levels in real terms in 30 years.
Price of rice has gone up by 75% globally.
Global food prices rose by 43% in 2007 alone.
The US has diverted about 40 million tons of maize to produce ethanol.
An acre of maize produces only 50 gallons of gasoline.
EU plans to get 10% of auto fuel from Bio-energy by 2020.
Food riots and food wars are not just taking place in the streets of Egypt and in Mexico, they are taking place in the corridors of the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN)
Last week's Rome Food Security Summit was all about getting world leaders in one place and agreeing on a strategy to ensure access to sufficient food for all. Billions of dollars are being wasted on feeding obese people in the West while millions starve around the world, Jacques Diouf, the United Nations food agency chief, has told world leaders at a summit on food security in Rome.
"No one understands... how over-consumption by obese people in the world costs $20bn each year," Diouf said. "On top of this, there are $100bn in indirect costs resulting from premature deaths and associated diseases."
Speaking at the opening of the three-day UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) summit in Italy's capital, Diouf also highlighted how an estimated $1.2 trillion was spent on weapons in 2006 while aid to agriculture fell by more than half, from $8bn in 1984 to $3.4bn in 2004.
The official statements coming out of the event were heavily laced with the same message: "It's time for action". Not everyone is happy with the summit's outcome, I'm not.
It saw the signing of a declaration to make food security a matter of permanent policy, and implement short and medium-term measures to alleviate the current crisis and reduce risk of a recurrence. What about the long term future?
There have been murmurs that the declaration was watered down as participants were unable to agree on the causes of the food crisis - the very first step towards seeking a solution.
Biofuels, for instance, were a big bone of contention, as I wrote in the last diary. There were proposals for standards or criteria for biofuels, to reduce the effect that competition for grain supplies is having on the availability of grain-based food.
As The New York Times summed it up:
"Everyone complained about other people's protectionism, and defended their own".
When you consider how the American reserve bank and the European bank have just, in the last six months, put up hundreds of billions to stabilize the financial structure of the world, I find it amazing that this sort of money cannot be available straight away for the people who are now suffering from hunger. On one hand in the West, we have the problem of obesity and food waste and, on the other hand, we have 100 million people going to bed hungry every night.
With 850 million hungry people in the world and a need to double food production by 2030, the world really does not have much time to waste squabbling over who should be giving up what. The comments on protectionism sound eerily similar to those made over the stalled Doha trade talks since they began in 2001.
The FAO's spirit is the one everyone should be sharing. Now is the time for action. It is not the time for vested national interests. And this applies to developing countries implementing export bans on certain staples just as much as the US and EU doggedly propping up their own agriculture through high subsidies.
You and I have been listening to world leaders saying time and time again the things that NGOs have been saying for the past 20 years or so. We have been saying that everyone has the right to food. We have been saying that the lack of food is a man-made problem, and that women and children suffer the consequences.
We have been saying that the real cause of the rise in food prices is the forced integration of local economies into an international economy controlled by speculative monopolies. Someone observed, can't quite remember who but this is a pertinent point, that if five grain giants control food trade, it does not matter how much food there is in the world, they will make their super profits. Let's not forget that Climate Change was caused by roughly 25 per cent by industrial agriculture. Add another 10 per cent because of rising fuel prices and you're talking about 35 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions coming from a non-sustainable farming system. What are we going to do when we hit severe food and water shortages in a dozen years or so?
"We could solve the climate problem and the food problem with investments, but not the level of investments the World Bank is talking about by supporting ecological agriculture. It is about supporting local economies, and the most important point is a valid international assessment,"
said oneBBC journalist.
At the end of the day, the rich countries, ie the developed countries, do not seem to be prepared to stop subsidizing their agricultural products and dumping them, undercutting the local farmers in developing countries. There's no better time to push for real reforms than at the G8 summit in Hokkaido, Japan, next month. But, as I said before the Rome Conference, don't hold your breath. I'm not.