Cambodian Kids Get No Free Breakfast as Rice Aid Cut

[Robbien]

Source: Bloomberg

April 23 (Bloomberg) -- Thirteen-year-old Pin Oudam gets a free breakfast of rice, fish and yellow split peas every morning at his school in Kampong Speu, Cambodia's poorest province. Next week he won't.

The World Food Program cut off rice deliveries to 1,344 Cambodian schools last month after prices doubled and suppliers defaulted on contracts. Schools will run out of food by May 1, depriving about 450,000 children of meals, the WFP estimates.

. . .

The WFP was forced to end the Cambodian school program because suppliers didn't honor contracts to deliver 4,000 tons of rice at $390 to $450 a ton, says Thomas J. Keusters, the agency's representative in Cambodia. Other local dealers quoted prices of $620 a ton that were out of the agency's reach, he says. A year ago, the WFP paid about $260.

. . .

The WFP originally budgeted $3.4 billion to feed 73 million people worldwide this year. Last month, it appealed for an additional $500 million to cover higher food costs. That shortfall was revised to $756 million this week.

In Sri Lanka, two of the Rome-based aid agency's suppliers defaulted on contracts in the past 10 days, Risley says. In East Timor, where the government supplies rice to the WFP, authorities haven't been able to purchase the cereal from Vietnam because of a ban on exports from that country.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aeS.ENnGw20g&refer=home

[glowing]

1. Ok, so when do we actually start teaching people how to grow, and produce

things that their country can sustain..

[slampoet]

3. The reason they can't grow enough rice is due to Agent Orange and other pollutions from the War.

That Delta region was a rice producer for the whole of Asia before we screwed up their environment.



They frikkin KNOW how to grow things.

[glowing]

5. Got you.. so when do we try to clean up their environment.. or give them

some damn rice?

[ConcernedCanuk]

6. And Iraq is gonna have a hard time growing food with all the Depleted Uranium the USA is spreading

.
.
.

And the bUSH Administration knows this.

They are not only infecting the citizens, they are reducing the Iraqi's ability to grow crops and have safe water.

It's called GENOCIDE.

[slampoet]

7. truth.

[ohio2007]

9. Three months after US forces dropped tonnes of bombs on Arab Jubur and put AQ to flight, farmers

Farming flourishes in Iraq’s Arab Jubur


Farmers return to their fields, children to their school after US troops kicked Al-Qaeda out of Arab Jubur.


Three months after US forces dropped tonnes of bombs on Arab Jubur and put Al-Qaeda to flight, farmers are everywhere out in their fields tending their tomatoes.



snip
"When Al-Qaeda was here it was impossible to farm," said the jolly-faced farmer from under an orange cap while taking time out from his labours to visit his cousin's newly-reopened grocery store on a dusty rural road.


"They cut the power so we couldn't pump water," said Wadi. "We couldn't buy fuel. They would shoot at anyone they saw in the fields. They kidnapped and murdered many people. They destroyed life here."


The last crops he planted - in 2005 - withered and died because he couldn't irrigate them after Al-Qaeda arrived in force.


snip


http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=25478


We will see what kind of tomato harvest the farmer will have in no time if the depleted uranium has truely blighted the land

[Hannah Bell]

8. They don't need "us" to teach them how to grow food. n/t

[JoDog]

2. I think they can grow rice in Cambodia

just not at the level of production the current population needs.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

4. I hope they sue the living fuck out of the suppliers for breach of contract. -nt