Food prices could double in the next 20 years and demand in 2050 will be 70 percent higher than now, UK charity Oxfam said on Tuesday, warning of worsening hunger as the global food economy stumbles close to breakdown. “The food system is pretty well bust in the world,” Oxfam Chief Executive Barbara Stocking told reporters, announcing the launch of the Grow campaign as 925 million people go hungry every day. “All the signs are that the number of people going hungry is going up,” Stocking said. Hunger was increasing due to rising food price inflation and oil price hikes, scrambles for land and water, and creeping climate change. Food prices are forecast to increase by something in the range of 70 to 90 percent by 2030 before taking into account the effects of climate change, which would roughly double price rises again, Oxfam said. “Now we have entered an age of growing crisis, of shock piled upon shock: vertiginous food price spikes and oil price hikes.
