… nor is it about meat eating. There is something else going on.

Sang Run was out in his boat at 7am when disaster struck his village. He arrived back at 11am to find bulldozers had flattened his home and those of the 229 families who lived beside him. He heard from neighbours that it had happened in an instant. Uniformed men, sent in by governor Say Hak, used electric batons to chase terrified residents from the burning ruins; three of Sang Run’s neighbours were knocked unconscious.

Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark report from Cambodia where extensive speculation is leaving land fallow and removing people from their homes. Why is this happening? One speculator says it all,

We are going to move as fast as we can. It’s fantastically exciting, the opportunity to zone the whole island, to see where the luxury exclusive villa plots will be, for the Brad Pitts, etc.

At the heart of the world food crisis is the dispossession of the rural poor. Whether for commercial and industrial development or for building golf courses for the super rich, land is passing out of food production and being taken away from the small farmers who grow much of the food consumed locally. They, in turn, are becoming destitute, and they are the ones who will starve. The driver is more than human greed and governmental corruption.  Rampant global inequality privileges the exotic holidays of the rich over the feeding of the poor, turning productive farmers and fishers into supplicants at the rich man’s table.  Some will be lucky to get crumbs.