What is a Food Crisis?

Somehow, North Korean TV exposed a grain of truth, just a grain

Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) — North Korea, which the World Food Program says faces its worst food crisis in nearly a decade, is broadcasting reports to its people highlighting food shortages elsewhere in the world and blaming the U.S. for the problem.

According to NHK, Japan’s public Broadcasting Corporation, North Korea’s state-run TV has been running a series of programs on the world food crisis. In one sequence re-broadcast by NHK today, an economist strongly criticized the U.S. and other developed countries for consuming agricultural products to make bio-ethanol and said this was causing the food crisis.

Here in the US, food crisis means my meal went up a dollar or two, in North Korea that means stripping bark off of trees for consumption.

While way out of context, it does contain a grain of truth about bio-fuels. However, in the US the government purchases certain crops at subsidized prices which then goes to food aid.

Unlike other “news” from the KCNA, this one took a bit of effort to debunk.