Santo Domingo.– The Dominican Republic has expanded
subsidies on basic food staples to maintain calm after deadly food riots
recently struck neighboring Haiti.
Trucks loaded with milk, chicken, eggs and other food
staples have been rumbling across the country, where almost half of 9.5 million
residents live in poverty.
The subsidized food is on average 30 percent below
supermarket prices. The government recently expanded the effort by selling a
US$3 package that includes a frozen chicken and 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms) each
of potatoes and onions. An estimated 20,000 of the packets are being sold
daily, according to a Saturday news release.
Food riots in Haiti, which shares the island of Hispaniola
with the Dominican Republic, killed seven people in April and cost the prime
minister his job.
Dominican President Leonel Fernandez implemented the
subsidies as he seeks re-election this month.
The food packages are a welcome reprieve to 34-year-old
handyman Vidal Rosario, who said people in his working-class neighborhood in
northern Santo Domingo have been rationing their food.
"It makes life easier on poor people," he said of
the deliveries by government trucks at a basketball court near his house.
Written by: Willduit, 11 May 2008 3:35 AM
From: Dominican Republic
If the Domican is poor, then can you imagine how poor the Haitian is? I know of many Haitian immagrant laborers who concider them self damn lucky to be able to eat one meal a day. They usually try to eat the meal, of rice or sweet potatoe, or even green Papaya in the evening so that they can sleep with food in their bellies. We use to joke about the Haitian dinner if they were unable to get good food, they would buy as much sugar as they could and a hard roll of bread, then mix the sugar with water and eat the hard roll, so they could sleep at night.
I cry for my brothers Dominican or Haitian that do not have food. I anguish over the fact that the Haitian is so poor that we here in the United States can not even imagine what it is like to work a full day in the feilds with a heavy hoe, on one small meal a day. May God help them, and let all of us be alert to what we can do to help those poor of the poor. Willduit
Written by: josean, 11 May 2008 7:02 AM
From: United States
Prior to the food crisis people were barley making ends meet, if at all, given the massive extraction of pesos from the economy via Mr. Fernandez excessive taxes. Add to that the mismanaging of two major hurricanes Noel and Olga , and the mismanaging of the release of flood waters from a major dam, which ruined farmland and crops and you can see why we are in the situation we are in. This government's food policies in both their administrations have been to rely on "cheap imports" rather than incentivising local production. Now he wants to blame the current local situation soely on the international food emergency. Yes there is a local impact do to the factors outside the country but this government's agricultural policies are abysmal at best and its economic model of uncontrolled urban development in La Capital, the capricious METRO project and their "all the economic investment eggs in the tourism basket" strategy are the real reasons we are now feeling the effects of this crisis.
Written by: josean, 11 May 2008 7:03 AM
From: United States
It is impossible for any government to plan for every unknown but you can plan for some obvious possibilities. You cannot imagine you are going to get four flat tires all at the same time but you know you may get one so keep a spare in your trunk. Even Fidel Castro who is a thousand years old, way beyond his prime and on his death bed, wrote an article in Granma over a year ago warning about the possibility of food shortages as the transferring of food crops increase towards the production of bio-fuels.
Now Mr. Fernandez claims he is the only one who has the ability to conceptualise, sort of a Fidel like trait if you will, but he could not see the possibility of this situation developing, especially with the vulnerability created by the natural disasters I have already mentioned. It appears his attention has only been on his personal need to get reelected at the expense of the Dominican people.
Continues:
From: United States Virgin Islands, Christiansted.from the bar at the Comanche
there are not many logical places to put those eggs josean other than tourism and agriculture ....export of that agriculture to raise capital and feed the local markets....growing potatoes and onions here is dumb and counter productive.....organic cashcrops that can be utilized locally is the way to go...export export......potatoes and onions .....import import.....grow something else on that land ...and educate people about diet,because they have never seen it before does not mean they cannot eat it.....enough of the white bread and rice diversify eating habits and create market for other types of agriculture...
Written by: josean, 11 May 2008 7:28 AM
From: United States
Now it appears his internal polling is shown a serious vulnerability on this issue with the electorate so he is subsidizing everything so he can buy votes and stay in power.
From: United States Virgin Islands, Christiansted.from the bar at the Comanche
Josean please name your candidate when you post it would give your posts more integrity......if it is Moreno..who I also find appealing say so ....if you are an anarchist say so ....the perpetual Cassandra say so.....but define yourself as more than a patriot of sincere beliefs and gadfly...you attack many problems with insight and humor....It is the constant negativity that irks
From: United States Virgin Islands, Christiansted.from the bar at the Comanche
Josean reserving a space so you can return and post is a nice little trick ...I thought you used it only when you could not be first....now we wait in suspense to see what you will put in that space ie. ERROR....any where in the thread
Written by: josean, 11 May 2008 7:59 AM
From: United States
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, just like an error is just what it states.
I think in the last several moths I have been more than obvious that Moreno is the candidate I will be voting for, but sometimes people see obfuscation where there is known.
Written by: juanb, 11 May 2008 8:00 AM
From: Dominican Republic
Josean is saving the space so that he can be the first to complain, when the PRD loses, that the election was stolen from him. By the way, why is the hero of the PRD, Mejia, invisible this campaign. Could it be the PRD leadership doesn't want to remind people what it was like during the last time the PRD was in power?
From: United States Virgin Islands, Christiansted.from the bar at the Comanche
A rose is a rose ....A cigar is a smoke....in your case a smokescreen ...
From: United States Virgin Islands, Christiansted.from the bar at the Comanche
Juan b sadly I think you win the cigar ...you have josean pegged
From: United States Virgin Islands, Christiansted.from the bar at the Comanche
Josean are you hoping for a runoff? at tremendous expense and an inevitable outcome....2 billion more pesos
From: United States Virgin Islands, Christiansted.from the bar at the Comanche
Josean the quote about the cigar by kipling is " a woman is only a woman but a good cigar is a smoke" on Mothers Day for many people........ I prefer to use a Rose
Written by: josean, 11 May 2008 8:17 AM
From: United States
juanb,
I don't know about the election being stolen because unlike you I cannot predict the future!
But I know about Sun-land monies being stolen and the PLD's manipulation of the Supreme Court and forcing it to stall the ruling until after the election
I also know about the stealing of the little payrolls which the PLD central committee leadership has admitted to!
And I know about the PLD stealing educational opportunity from millions and killing their aspirations for a better productive future so they to wind-up in misery, delinquency and prostitution, making use the fourth in the world in this export category; to build an asinine METRO.
And I know about the PLD stealing Dr. Bosh's and the Dominican peoples dream of creating a dignified country.
From: United States Virgin Islands, Christiansted.from the bar at the Comanche
The Dream Lives
Written by: josean, 11 May 2008 8:20 AM
From: United States
Thank you Ted!
From: United States Virgin Islands, Christiansted.from the bar at the Comanche
Josean you remind me of the story of the doctor who tell his patient he has good news and bad news and in which order did he want to hear them....the patient says "bad news first"...doctor says" you have cancer and probably only 6 months to live " patient stunned says " and the good news "....doctor pointing to a very beautiful nurse says " you see that nurse, I am sleeping with her"....Josean when do we get the good news ?
Written by: rom1804 
, 11 May 2008 8:40 AM
From: Zimbabwe
At least DR has a METRO 'lol'
From: United States Virgin Islands, Christiansted.from the bar at the Comanche
Written by: josean, 11 May 2008 9:04 AM
From: United States
From: United States Virgin Islands, Christiansted.from the bar at the Comanche
Josean same old stuff .."..the dogs bark the caravan moves on " Pa Lante
Written by: josean, 11 May 2008 9:23 AM
From: United States
You think so?
From: United States Virgin Islands, Christiansted.from the bar at the Comanche
Author is a known PRSC hack and constant whiner and complainer during election cycles
Written by: josean, 11 May 2008 9:36 AM
From: United States
From: United States Virgin Islands, Christiansted.from the bar at the Comanche
this one is Hippo hack
Written by: Perez, 11 May 2008 10:56 AM
From: Dominican Republic
and yet, some people say, e pa'lante que vamos! . incredeible! no hay peor ciego que el que no quiere ver.
Written by: josean, 11 May 2008 11:26 AM
From: United States
So true, Perez!
Written by: Jander, 11 May 2008 11:58 AM
From: Dominican Republic
Could we really run out of food?
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.....ls/CouldWeReallyRunOutOfFood.aspxHere is some reality for the ones blaming your President.
It may be way of securing some more votes thats just politics but not many countries are subsidizing anything.
"This is no joke, already, in Asia. Rice prices surged to a 20-year high earlier this year -- more than $18 per hundred pounds -- as countries that have the most are hoarding it for their own people. Vietnam, India and Egypt have restricted exports to keep local markets stocked. Thai, Philippine and Indonesian officials are warning of civil unrest if the flow of rice does not increase"
From: United States Virgin Islands, Christiansted.from the bar at the Comanche
thanks jander for bringing a little reality to the table ...so to speak
Written by: Belial, 11 May 2008 1:08 PM
From: United States, Texas
I humbly apologize for returning to the topic of food subsidies.
Please, forgive me.
These food subsidies, like in Cuba, should be a permanent policy, not a emergency or electoral policy.
Every bourgeois state, like the Dominican regime, offers food subsidies, but usually these subsidies go to the members of capitalist class and of the upper layer of the middle class. The bourgeois in the restaurant or country club charges most of his and his family's meals to an expense account on company books. The company then claims the bourgeois meal as a "business expense" deductible from the company's taxable income. So, neither the bourgeois nor his company pays for his meals. The bourgeois state pays for bourgeois meals, by foregoing revenue to which the state is otherwise entitled.
Filthy, lying, greasy, and stiinking bourgeos apologists, like GC, deny that this intricate tricknology constitutes a food subsidy for the bourgeoisie and upper middle class.
Written by: Belial, 11 May 2008 1:24 PM
From: United States, Texas
A bourgeois meal subsidized surreptitoiusly through the tax system by the bourgeois state may run as much as $1000 for ONE meal for only two people.
For a $1000, the bourgeois state can buy rice, corn, beans, potatoes for distribution to a thousand people. Often, at least a million children are starving in the streets of the rotten capitalist countries.
Returning to the food subsidy for the rich, the bourgeois parasite ... gloriously decked out in a pin-stripped suit or in a poker-dot dress and living fabulously at taxpapers' expense ... is gluttonous, eating $1000 meals while sometimes almost half of the country's population, in the DR about 42%, regularly starve.
Written by: Belial, 11 May 2008 1:33 PM
From: United States, Texas
Slimy and lying bourgeois apologists, like GC, argue that when the bourgeois state pays for the meals of the rich, it's not a food subsidy, rather, they say, it's only a "tax deduction" that fuels for entrepreneurial spirit of the rich.
From: United States Virgin Islands, Christiansted.from the bar at the Comanche
Filthy, lying, greasy, and stiinking bourgeos apologists, like GC......Why thank you Splat coming from you I will treasure your comments ....and remember Splat.......who cares..........noooooobody
Written by: Belial, 11 May 2008 1:39 PM
From: United States, Texas
"Filthy, lying, greasy, and stiinking bourgeos apologists, like GC......Why thank you Splat coming from you I will treasure your comments ....and remember Splat.......who cares..........noooooobody"
0000
Heavens.
Did I, of all people, use immoderate language?
Written by: Belial, 11 May 2008 2:09 PM
From: United States, Texas
"Now it appears his internal polling is shown a serious vulnerability on this issue with the electorate so he is subsidizing everything so he can buy votes and stay in power."
oooo
There it is ... the naked city.
If fear of starvation grips the people in the city, behold.
Unbelievably, the PRD rushed the Leonel's rescue, criticizing the food subsidies.
With enemies like this, Leonel doesn't need friends.
But the IMF and World Bank, powerful voices of US imperialism, say the Dominican economy is booming. After all, investors, especially the foreign ones, are thrilled.
So, why don't the hungry people in the DR suffer or die quietly?
Bourgeois prosperity.
Written by: Belial, 11 May 2008 4:15 PM
From: United States, Texas
"The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than US$1 per day, and moderate poverty as less than $2 a day, estimated in 2001 dollars."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty[Note that the Bank doesn't say 1 or 2 bucks for a family of less than four.]
The World Bank definition of poverty has been joyfully adopted by the United Nations and the CIA World Factbook.
Thus, under the lunacy and horrifying bestiality of filthy bourgeois economics, if you make three or four dollars a day ... in 2001 US dollars, of course ... then you're not poor, either moderately or extremely.
In other words, according to the bourgeois experts, if you bring home 3 or 4 dollars a day, you're alright. You're doing good. You should thank God you're not poor.
So, when the CIA says that 42% of the Dominicans live below the poverty line, it is saying the 42% of Dominicans make, in a "booming" capitalist economy, less than two dollars a day or, more likely, nothing at all.
Written by: Belial, 11 May 2008 4:21 PM
From: United States, Texas
Now, US "poverty."
"Poverty definition --- Following the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Statistical Policy Directive 14, the Census Bureau uses a set of money income thresholds that vary by family size and composition to determine who is in poverty. If a family’s total income is less than the family’s threshold, then that family and every individual in it is considered in poverty. The official poverty thresholds do not vary geographically, but they are updated for inflation using Consumer Price Index (CPI-U). The official poverty definition uses money income before taxes and does not include capital gains or noncash benefits (such as public housing, Medicaid, and food stamps)."
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/definitions.htmlA family of four that falls below $17,062 in annual income falls into poverty, the US Census Bureau declared last September 2007.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/full....903E6D71F3DF935A15756C0A9679C8B63Written by: Belial, 11 May 2008 4:30 PM
From: United States, Texas
Oh, a family of four must make at least $48 a day to stay out poverty in the USA.
So, if the gospel of bourgeois economics ... that is, the iron law of wages ... is respected, an average Dominican family regardless of size should make about two dollars a day and an average family of four in the USA should make about $48.
So, either cut wages/benefits or outsource.
We surely don't want to transgress the gospel and fall into sin.
From: United States Virgin Islands, Christiansted.from the bar at the Comanche
Splat ....have you finished expending all your hot air....you and that other hot air bag could float a zeppelin.....you pure cut and paste rubbish and him boring verbosity of little value that is the part that is not uber racist narcissism and separatist nonsense ala farakahan camouflaged in voodoo economics rubbish,,,,you have returned to your rat hole in the shelter of your privileged lives in the USA.... only to sally forth again to whine and complain that you did not get a free lunch and want the cards dealt again.....you are wrong losers...there will be no grand redistribution ala Mugabe
Written by: Belial, 11 May 2008 4:51 PM
From: United States, Texas
After the US people, what about them Cubans? They only average something like $20 to $30 a month.
So, according to the World Bank, UN, and CIA Factbook ... if extreme poverty is $1 dollar a day and moderate poverty is $2, the all of them Cubans live in extreme poverty, huh?
But the Cubans get big fat rations book.
[That's not "money income" which the US Office of Management and Budget requires, so the book doesn't count, the bourgeois ideologists argue.]
The Cubans get free health care.
[Doesn't count either. It's gotta be "money income," you fool.]
Some 85% of the Cubans own their own homes.
[Don't count because many of those homes are run down.]
Cubans get free education.
[Don't count. It got to be "money income." Didn't I tell you that.]
[You stupid Cuban fool, can't you read? The "US Census Bureau uses a set of money income thresholds that vary by family size and composition to determine who is in poverty." ]
Written by: Belial, 11 May 2008 5:10 PM
From: United States, Texas
The holy bourgeois gospel, "according to which the growth rate of population was an increasing function of wages, reaching a zero for a unique positive value of the real wages rate, called the subsistence wage. Assuming the demand for labor to be a given monotonically decreasing function of the real wages rate, the theory then predicted that, in the long-run equilibrium of the system, labor supply (i.e. population) will be equated to the numbers demanded at the subsistence wage. The justification for this was that when wages are higher, the supply of labor will increase relative to demand, creating an excess supply and thus depressing market real wages; when wages are lower, labor supply will fall [...or a lot people will die, millions], increasing market real wages. This would create a dynamic convergence towards a subsistence-wage equilibrium with constant population."
Exterminate, exterminate, and exterminate.
From: United States
How 'bout this solution. Split the republic into 3 different sovereign territories each run by the PLD, PRD a the PRSC. Within a few years you'll notice a massive migration of those from the PRD and the PRSC side swarming to get across the border to the PLD side because that will be the only side with political stability and economic prosperity. They'll become little Haiti's in no time.
From: United States Virgin Islands, Christiansted.from the bar at the Comanche
outsiders and whiners and complainers refuse to see this from any other perspective and show a lack of sensitivity to legitimate issues ie immigration and citizenship much more humanitarian work needs to be done...but without provoking a large segment of the population.....some outsiders try to promote this as an issue of race....... that concept will not help these suffering people and only arouse animosity....there are people who want to poison the well and create racial strife and they will play the slimy race card as easily here as Phony Al and Jesse and Farakhan play it in USA...You have seen these groups of Congressional black caucus members here being counterproductive....they should spend more time fixing the mess they created in Haiti by installing their hero Aristide then leaving the UN to clean up their mess..do not be deceived there is mischief at hand
From: United States
9 million people? wow.. and the rich bastards run around in the lexus and mercedes..
i'm not perfect but i wish i could run this country without pay.. so many people need help and the money coming into this country is absured.. life should be good.. LG
Written by: Jander, 11 May 2008 10:13 PM
From: Dominican Republic
Not everyone that is rich or drives a lexus is a bastard. It's the food chain and being at the bottom of it right now is not a good place.
Look at here
A billion poor people in Asia require food aid and sound fiscal policies to help them cope with skyrocketing food prices,
So 9 million is a drop in the bucket as to what is happening everwhere.
I would like to know to how this turned into a crisis overnight ?
I think it is greed and hoarding just like petroleum.
We will have to eat more pasta..
From: Dominican Republic
I think this "crisis" is based on speculations and media hype... which is instilling fear in producers and distributors, which in turn raise the prices to create an insurance cushion
I blame this "crisis" on irresponsible reporting by media companies!!!
From: United States, New York City
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I cry for my brothers Dominican or Haitian that do not have food. I anguish over the fact that the Haitian is so poor that we here in the United States can not even imagine what it is like to work a full day in the feilds with a heavy hoe, on one small meal a day. May God help them, and let all of us be alert to what we can do to help those poor of the poor. Willduit
Now Mr. Fernandez claims he is the only one who has the ability to conceptualise, sort of a Fidel like trait if you will, but he could not see the possibility of this situation developing, especially with the vulnerability created by the natural disasters I have already mentioned. It appears his attention has only been on his personal need to get reelected at the expense of the Dominican people.
Continues:
I think in the last several moths I have been more than obvious that Moreno is the candidate I will be voting for, but sometimes people see obfuscation where there is known.
I don't know about the election being stolen because unlike you I cannot predict the future!
But I know about Sun-land monies being stolen and the PLD's manipulation of the Supreme Court and forcing it to stall the ruling until after the election
I also know about the stealing of the little payrolls which the PLD central committee leadership has admitted to!
And I know about the PLD stealing educational opportunity from millions and killing their aspirations for a better productive future so they to wind-up in misery, delinquency and prostitution, making use the fourth in the world in this export category; to build an asinine METRO.
And I know about the PLD stealing Dr. Bosh's and the Dominican peoples dream of creating a dignified country.
"Lie-onel " Fernandez and his economic gurus got some "splaing to do!"
Is this an October suprise!
Read on:
http://www.listin.com.do/app/article.aspx?id=58234
How about this one!
http://www.hoy.com.do/article.aspx?id=151095
Could we really run out of food?
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.....ls/CouldWeReallyRunOutOfFood.aspx
Here is some reality for the ones blaming your President.
It may be way of securing some more votes thats just politics but not many countries are subsidizing anything.
"This is no joke, already, in Asia. Rice prices surged to a 20-year high earlier this year -- more than $18 per hundred pounds -- as countries that have the most are hoarding it for their own people. Vietnam, India and Egypt have restricted exports to keep local markets stocked. Thai, Philippine and Indonesian officials are warning of civil unrest if the flow of rice does not increase"
Please, forgive me.
These food subsidies, like in Cuba, should be a permanent policy, not a emergency or electoral policy.
Every bourgeois state, like the Dominican regime, offers food subsidies, but usually these subsidies go to the members of capitalist class and of the upper layer of the middle class. The bourgeois in the restaurant or country club charges most of his and his family's meals to an expense account on company books. The company then claims the bourgeois meal as a "business expense" deductible from the company's taxable income. So, neither the bourgeois nor his company pays for his meals. The bourgeois state pays for bourgeois meals, by foregoing revenue to which the state is otherwise entitled.
Filthy, lying, greasy, and stiinking bourgeos apologists, like GC, deny that this intricate tricknology constitutes a food subsidy for the bourgeoisie and upper middle class.
For a $1000, the bourgeois state can buy rice, corn, beans, potatoes for distribution to a thousand people. Often, at least a million children are starving in the streets of the rotten capitalist countries.
Returning to the food subsidy for the rich, the bourgeois parasite ... gloriously decked out in a pin-stripped suit or in a poker-dot dress and living fabulously at taxpapers' expense ... is gluttonous, eating $1000 meals while sometimes almost half of the country's population, in the DR about 42%, regularly starve.
0000
Heavens.
Did I, of all people, use immoderate language?
oooo
There it is ... the naked city.
If fear of starvation grips the people in the city, behold.
Unbelievably, the PRD rushed the Leonel's rescue, criticizing the food subsidies.
With enemies like this, Leonel doesn't need friends.
But the IMF and World Bank, powerful voices of US imperialism, say the Dominican economy is booming. After all, investors, especially the foreign ones, are thrilled.
So, why don't the hungry people in the DR suffer or die quietly?
Bourgeois prosperity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty
[Note that the Bank doesn't say 1 or 2 bucks for a family of less than four.]
The World Bank definition of poverty has been joyfully adopted by the United Nations and the CIA World Factbook.
Thus, under the lunacy and horrifying bestiality of filthy bourgeois economics, if you make three or four dollars a day ... in 2001 US dollars, of course ... then you're not poor, either moderately or extremely.
In other words, according to the bourgeois experts, if you bring home 3 or 4 dollars a day, you're alright. You're doing good. You should thank God you're not poor.
So, when the CIA says that 42% of the Dominicans live below the poverty line, it is saying the 42% of Dominicans make, in a "booming" capitalist economy, less than two dollars a day or, more likely, nothing at all.
"Poverty definition --- Following the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Statistical Policy Directive 14, the Census Bureau uses a set of money income thresholds that vary by family size and composition to determine who is in poverty. If a family’s total income is less than the family’s threshold, then that family and every individual in it is considered in poverty. The official poverty thresholds do not vary geographically, but they are updated for inflation using Consumer Price Index (CPI-U). The official poverty definition uses money income before taxes and does not include capital gains or noncash benefits (such as public housing, Medicaid, and food stamps)."
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/definitions.html
A family of four that falls below $17,062 in annual income falls into poverty, the US Census Bureau declared last September 2007.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/full....903E6D71F3DF935A15756C0A9679C8B63
So, if the gospel of bourgeois economics ... that is, the iron law of wages ... is respected, an average Dominican family regardless of size should make about two dollars a day and an average family of four in the USA should make about $48.
So, either cut wages/benefits or outsource.
We surely don't want to transgress the gospel and fall into sin.
So, according to the World Bank, UN, and CIA Factbook ... if extreme poverty is $1 dollar a day and moderate poverty is $2, the all of them Cubans live in extreme poverty, huh?
But the Cubans get big fat rations book.
[That's not "money income" which the US Office of Management and Budget requires, so the book doesn't count, the bourgeois ideologists argue.]
The Cubans get free health care.
[Doesn't count either. It's gotta be "money income," you fool.]
Some 85% of the Cubans own their own homes.
[Don't count because many of those homes are run down.]
Cubans get free education.
[Don't count. It got to be "money income." Didn't I tell you that.]
[You stupid Cuban fool, can't you read? The "US Census Bureau uses a set of money income thresholds that vary by family size and composition to determine who is in poverty." ]
Exterminate, exterminate, and exterminate.
i'm not perfect but i wish i could run this country without pay.. so many people need help and the money coming into this country is absured.. life should be good.. LG
Look at here
A billion poor people in Asia require food aid and sound fiscal policies to help them cope with skyrocketing food prices,
So 9 million is a drop in the bucket as to what is happening everwhere.
I would like to know to how this turned into a crisis overnight ?
I think it is greed and hoarding just like petroleum.
We will have to eat more pasta..
I blame this "crisis" on irresponsible reporting by media companies!!!