Photo: Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters

For months we have been following increasingly urgent reports about food scarcity, rising prices and vulnerable populations. Last week, the World Food Program said the crisis is a silent tsunami that is "threatening to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger."

The World Food Program says it has never seen a crisis of this proportion. Analysts expect it will be difficult to reverse in the short term. The Financial Times says humanitarian aid at levels comparable to Indonesia's 2004 tsunami response will be needed to prevent the starvation of millions.

For Mercy Corps the increase in food prices is hurting the very people our program staff around the world are working to support.

Reports from those working most closely with affected communities confirm that the situation is dire — and has the potential to grow much worse.

Penny Anderson, Mercy Corps' food security program officer, told OPB radio: "I've been working with Mercy Corps for over eight years now and I have never seen anything like it."

In Niger, prices of bread, powdered milk and wheat flour have spiked, exacerbating the West African nation's precarious food situation. Currently about two-thirds of the population is at serious risk, with shortages pushing the country closer to famine.

In Syria, spiraling food prices have forced Mercy Corps to cut back on the amount of food we can buy and distribute to hundreds of Iraqi refugee families.

In Tajikistan, where Mercy Corps recently distributed blankets and generators to help residents keep warm during an unusually harsh winter, about 40 percent of households in the Rasht Valley are down to no more than one warm meal a day. Neighboring Kazakhstan has suspended wheat exports — shutting off Tajikistan's primary supply of the grain.

Like several other humanitarian aid agencies, Mercy Corps has established a Global Food Crisis fund to help its field teams respond to needs arising from the worst global food crisis in recent memory.

Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

Liberia lacks doctors, teachers, lawyers, electricians ... but they may have too many cooks.

Why? To help provide jobs following the end of Liberia's long and costly civil war, many international humanitarian agencies began delivering skills trainings to women. The most commonly taught skill? Baking, of course.

But there just aren't enough jobs for all the newly trained pastry makers. So women who learned to make wedding cakes and fancy foreign pastries are now selling two-cent donuts on the street. And foreign-owned companies (mostly Lebanese) continue to dominate the pastry making business.

In the rush to help Liberia, it appears that well-intended job trainings did not reflect market demand. The problem goes beyond baking. Other aid organizations continue to train women in the art of tie-dying. But unless Liberia's demand for tie-dyed shirts and sarongs reflects 1960s America, they may be wasting their time.

Photo: Jason Sangster for Mercy Corps

The UN head of food and agriculture, Jacques Diouf, is urging oil-producing countries to reinvest oil revenues into local agricultural programs out of concern for rising food prices. The oil-rich countries termed by the UN the Near East (which includes most North African and Middle Eastern countries) has seen steady declines in agriculture productivity during the last two decades, and external food aid has dropped significantly as well. However, according to the FAO, the number of undernourished people in the region has grown from 33 million in the early 1990s to over 100 million by 2004.

With plans to feed as many as 73 million people this year, the UN World Food Program is alarmed by recent price increases, according to the New York Times editorial, "Priced Out of the Market". Increasing food prices in themselves are not extraordinary, but the fact that grain and wheat producers, among others, are shifting their effort away from food to alternative energy production will dangerously complicate the situation - higher prices combined with a global food shortage will prove deadly.

The FAO's Hunger Map shows that most of the countries with the most dire need for food aid are not high producers themselves. While Near Eastern countries are still able to find enough food resources to feed their people right now, the Financial Times quotes Mr. Diouf's warning that “it is a difficult balance for governments to respond to the need of their populations by importing food at very high prices, and also to ensure that the poorest of their populations get access to food at reasonable prices.”

As tensions continue to run high, Mercy Corps warns that further chaos and violence in Kenya, long a bastion of regional stability, could push neighboring East African countries toward new humanitarian crises.

Our colleague Matt Lovick states, "historically, Kenya has been the hub that allowed goods and assistance to reach these land-locked, war-torn places," said Matt Lovick, Mercy Corps’ Nairobi-based East Africa regional program director. "Its importance in fostering and maintaining stability in this region cannot be underestimated."

If hostilities escalate in Kenya, neighboring economies could suffer immediately from a shortage of critical resources. Markets, planting seasons and access to food could all be severely disrupted, increasing the risks for communities already on the brink of disaster.

Check out the latest update from IRIN News Agency.