Never mind that stupid laws make it harder for the small guy to grow food. Strangely, the FAO (the UN's agricultural regulator) recognizes that many people around the world eat insects as food. It would be interesting to see if the Codex Alimentarius has rules about insects as food, then.
Probably most of these people are hungry as well as fed up. The commodity price of grains, beans etc. has doubled in a year. There is nothing like hunger to incite riots. There have been deadly riots about the price of food in Mozambique and other places in the last year.
Today on NPR I heard how a lot of the grain people eat in the Middle East actually is imported from here in the US. Especially in Yemen and Egypt. Maybe 80% of the grain grown in the Pacific Northwest is exported to the Middle East. Egypt subsidizes bread, which is baked in government bakeries and people can buy for about 1 cent for a piece of pita bread. (A lot of the Egyptian economy is government-run, i.e. a lot of the jobs are government jobs and they subsidize a lot of stuff. Rather top-heavy system.)
A lot of the pictures in that slide show of demonstrators brandishing bread were from Yemen. The protesters were displaying pita breads with the Arabic word for "Leave" baked into them. (they want their leader to leave). Lends a whole new twist to "Leave-ning". I guess also that once the protest is over, you can eat your words. (or destroy the evidence and have lunch at the same time)
There is nothing funny about hunger, but perhaps this guy could teach them some baguette nunchuck moves: (just needed some comic relief after worrying about the world)
Have you got food stores? In order to cushion yourself against an uncertain future, just buy a little extra groceries every time. (canned goods, dried beans and rice, flour, powdered milk, sugar, shelf-stable stuff). If you get a good deal on produce that is beginning to turn, you can always dehydrate, jam, or pickle it. It's good to have a couple extra months worth of food around. I recently did a post on how I got a year worth of food together for pretty cheap.
Water is even more important than food. Save 2-liter soda bottles and keep water in them, you'll need 1 or 2 such bottles per person per day, and save at least a week worth of water, or maybe a couple weeks. Soda bottles are better than gallon plastic milk jugs, they take a lot more abuse and they are easier for a kid to carry. Put in one drop of bleach per cup of water. Keep it in a dark place to discourage algae. Do rotate your water every few months to keep it from going stale. In case you end up with an ongoing water problem, where tap water's not drinkable, you can also get a gravity water filter. The cheapest one I found is a kit made by Just Water that you supply 2 5-gallon buckets for, and then you attach their hardware to them. It can do 15 gallons a day, but you can also get an air pump that forces the water through faster. With shipping, the basic kit with a spigot was $35 or so. That beats getting a Big Berkey for upwards of $200. I just ordered one so when it comes I'll let you know how it works. http://shop.monolithic.com/pages/the-just-water-bucket-water-filter
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