Food Insecurity
She Witnessed Mao’s Worst Excesses. Now She Has a Warning for the World.
In 1955, not long after Ms. Chen joined the Central Film Bureau, Hu Feng, a well-known Chinese Marxist writer, was detained for penning a report arguing that literature should allow for greater expressiveness. His words triggered a purge that rippled through Ms. Chen’s circle of friends and colleagues, some of whom were accused of being […]
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More Americans Are Going Hungry, and It Costs More to Feed Them
The first time Kelly Wilcox drove her 2017 Dodge Grand Caravan to the food pantry near her home in Payson, Utah, she noticed one thing right away that surprised her: newer models of Toyota and Honda sedans and minivans. “I saw a bunch of other people with cars like mine, who had kids in cars,” […]
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Economy Is at Risk of Recession by a Force Hiding in Plain Sight
This past week brought home the magnitude of the overlapping crises assailing the global economy, intensifying fears of recession, job losses, hunger and a plunge on stock markets. At the root of this torment is a force so elemental that it has almost ceased to warrant mention — the pandemic. That force is far from […]
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Mission Impossible? Officials Wrangle to Free Ukraine’s Grains
BRUSSELS — Russian and Ukrainian negotiators are scheduled to meet Wednesday in Istanbul, in the increasingly desperate effort to release huge amounts of grain from Ukraine’s ports and ship it to a world facing rising hunger. Officials have tried for months to break the impasse without triggering an escalation in the war or, worse, a […]
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Is the World Really Falling Apart, or Does It Just Feel That Way?
Has the world entered a time of unusual turbulence, or does it just feel that way? Scanning the headlines, it’s easy to conclude that something has broken. The pandemic. Global grain shortage. Russia’s war on Ukraine. Political and economic meltdown in Sri Lanka. A former prime minister’s assassination in Japan. And, in the United States: […]
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In South Asia, Climate Change Worries Take On Fresh Urgency
FATEHGARH-SAHIB, India — When the unseasonably heavy rains flooded the fields, and then the equally unseasonable heat shriveled the seeds, it didn’t just slash Ranjit Singh’s wheat harvest by nearly half. It put him, and nearly all the other households in his village in northern India, that much further from financial stability in a country […]
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‘We Buried Him and Kept Walking’: Children Die as Somalis Flee Hunger
DOOLOW, Somalia — When her crops failed and her parched goats died, Hirsiyo Mohamed left her home in southwestern Somalia, carrying and coaxing three of her eight children on the long walk across a bare and dusty landscape in temperatures as high as 100 degrees. Along the way, her 3-and-a-half-year-old son, Adan, tugged at her […]
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At Davos, a Referendum on the World Economic Forum
The small ski town of Davos, high in the Swiss alps, has heightened security measure in place during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, when armed guards perch on hotel rooftops while world leaders and business executives sip champagne below. Yet today, everything that Davos stands for — globalization, liberalism, free market capitalism, […]
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War in Ukraine Compounds Hunger in East Africa
NAIROBI, Kenya — First came the drought, drying up rivers, and claiming the lives of two of Ruqiya Hussein Ahmed’s children as her family fled the barren countryside in southwest Somalia. Then came the war in Ukraine, pushing food prices so high that even after making it to the outskirts of the capital, Mogadishu, she […]
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